Part II: Interview series with William J. Drummond
I did not think much of the circular connecting button that flashes on your screen before a Zoom meeting till my first interview with William J. Drummond. A now deeply philosophical symbol, the connecting button spiraled before my eyes, symbolizing the judgment and fear that I had left behind. As I sat on the other end of the screen, waiting for a conversation that was the byproduct of some courageous correspondence to materialize, I felt braver than ever before.
And Drummond made sure to replenish my sense of fearlessness. Soon enough, the connecting button turned into successfully connected, and he appeared on my screen—wearing a pair of black headphones and a gentle smile. As we exchanged pleasantries, I dived right into the interview, beginning with the question that I had been most eager to ask him. “Were you interested in journalism as a child? Where did your story begin?” I asked. “As a child, I had never dreamed of journalism. I had a paper rack when I was twelve years old, and that was the closest I came to journalism,” said Drummond. “At that age, it was very difficult to think about anything seriously. When I came to UC Berkeley in 1961, I first majored in Communications and Public Policy. This major doesn’t exist anymore, back then it was a broader Social Science thing. Along the way, I also took a journalism course called Journalism 21 and that’s when I realized that this was actually a lot of fun. So I changed my major and graduated with a degree in journalism,” he said. As I hear about Drummond’s ties to Berkeley, I’m reminded of an article that I had read about him in The Daily Californian where he says that “he had to go to the best school that was the nearest to him, and it was either Berkeley or nothing.” Drawing on this, I asked Drummond to talk a little more about his early years, and shine some light on the path that first led him to UC Berkeley over six decades ago.
“I had never dreamed of journalism. I had a paper rack when I was twelve years old, and that was the closest I came to journalism.” – William J. Drummond
“I don’t remember my parents emphasizing education per se. I didn’t really know what else to do with myself at that age. I grew up in a middle-class working community in West Oakland that was so much more different than the Oakland that exists today. Now, it’s a lot more fragmented and does not have the kind of cohesion that it did back then,” he said. “People encouraged you to stay in school, and teachers were very supportive. They did the best that they could. I was attentive to their efforts and got a lot of praise,” he said, pausing to show me a plaque from his high school that honored him as one of their most famous graduates. There is a glow of boyish pride in his grin that reflects the golden shimmer of this cherished award. But his journey to such phenomenal recognition wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed to be. “When I was in Junior High School, in seventh grade, the building got damaged. For about a month, we had no school and just showed up and played basketball until they brought in the portable buildings. Eventually I caught up. I fit in pretty well in my high school and had a lot of friends. I participated in a lot of sports such as tennis and basketball, was one of the co-valedictorians and was also very popular,” he said laughing softly, his schoolboy innocence still intact.
For Drummond, the road that led to Cal was unidirectional and almost unquestioned. “When I graduated in 1961 and got admitted to Berkeley, there was no question of me making any other choice. Berkeley was a bus ride away, and it was free. I had received the California State Scholarship which made the cost extremely minimal, less than a hundred dollars. Most of it was health insurance, and you had to pay a ten dollar fee to the ASUC. Other than this, I just had to pay for my books and living expenses,” he said.
For a modern-day student like me who is paying thousands of dollars to attend UC Berkeley, the opportunity to attend this prestigious institution in less than a hundred dollars was an almost utopian thought. I widened my eyes in amazement. “Before coming to Berkeley, I had always been the smartest guy in high school,” began Drummond. Before he moves onto his next sentence, I know what he’s going to say. Berkeley, for first-semester freshmen, can be a very humbling experience, especially if they’ve enjoyed academic superiority in a previous institution. “But when I came to Berkeley, I realized that everybody here was actually very smart,” he said, as the relatability of his words makes me smile as I remember the almost overwhelming omnipresence of brilliance that filled the air when I first came to UC Berkeley. This shared experience, which is unique to Cal students, connects Drummond to the students that he teaches. He continues to narrate his story.
“When I graduated in 1965, there was a dearth of jobs. So I went to the AP (Associated Press) office in San Francisco and took a writing test. The guy (hiring manager) over there told me that I don’t have it, and I thought, to hell with that. When I graduated from Berkeley, I tried a wide variety of things that never came through such as joining the Air Force. But then I was accepted to Columbia University for Graduate School. They also gave me a loan and a fellowship. At Columbia, I realized I was really enjoying what I was doing,” he said. I was all set to ask a follow-up question. But Drummond wasn’t finished yet. “Just by luck, I was then interviewed by an editor at The Louisville-Courier Journal. I didn’t have much experience, so everything I did was mostly instinctive. They liked the work I was doing and hired me. So when I graduated, I went off to Louisville. By that time, I was married and had kids, so I never thought of doing anything else,” he said.
Just Another Day at My Job, a Very Important Man and a Reason to Show Up
Through my research about Drummond’s life, I knew that he had interviewed eminent personalities such as Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, and, throughout my life, I had spent a lot of time analyzing these individuals from a spectator’s distance. My interaction with Drummond was an exciting opportunity for me to witness these personalities up close, and possibly even hear their voices through his.
“So I know you’ve spoken to Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King. For someone like me, that’s like a dream as I learned about them in middle school. What was that like for you?” I asked.
“My job led me to these experiences. It was just another day at my job, and I would say that the experience with Martin Luther King was sort of imposed on me,” he said. “Just by accident, I landed in Louisville where they were going through a civil rights struggle on open housing which was a very open and divisive issue at that time. Martin Luther King had a younger brother called A.D. King who was the pastor of a large and influential church that was the center of the civil rights struggle. When the civil rights struggle was going on, part of my job was to cover it locally,” he explained.
When I came to UC Berkeley for the first time in August 2022, I learned that our MLK (Martin Luther King) Building was named after the revolutionary leader because he actually stood on its steps and spoke to large gatherings of people. Since then, my experience of stepping into the building has never been the same, and I’ve always felt overcome by a sense of surreal caution, almost as though I was treading on something historically fragile. As Drummond describes his experiences with Martin Luther King, I find myself reliving those emotions, and my fingers type as fast as they can, anxious to capture every word.
“In order to keep the movement going, the revolutionaries had to give people a reason to show up, and Martin Luther King was their reason. He was an international figure at the time. During the year I was in Louisville, he showed up about four to five times, and each time he did, it was a big event. I wrote stories about it,” he said.
This is my first meeting with Drummond, but, through his posts, I’ve known him to be a journalist who respects each individual who contributes not only to his life, but also to the field of journalism as a whole.
“These interviews were set up by John Hebrew,” acknowledges Drummond, his eyes flickering with an underlying sense of warmth for the man who had made these interactions possible.
“I was around Martin Luther King a lot. I was in the church when he was speaking, and I was walking behind him when he was leading. I was deeply aware that this was a very important man, and I was a small fish in a very large pond,” he said. There was a certain rhythm in Drummond’s sentences, and I could envision him as a young reporter—covering Martin Luther King as he was speaking and leading.
Despite the journalistic gravity of his experiences, Drummond shrugs his shoulders and, yet again, attributes it to the seemingly serendipitous nature of his life. “I was a young person, and also happened to be the only black reporter on the journal staff, which is why I ended up covering the civil rights movement. This gave me access to the biggest story in town. Ideally, with my lack of experience, I don’t think I qualified. I just showed up, did my story and my editors were pleased with my work. As a twenty-three-year old reporter, this was one of the most exciting things to happen to me and I think I was just fortunate,” he chuckled.
Excitement and the journalistic life seem to be interchangeable words, and, after four successful decades, Drummond’s enthusiasm for the field has only increased. “And it happened again,” he said, drawing me into his narrative with this very cinematic sentence. “When the Student Radical Movement took off at college campuses across the country including Berkeley, I got a call to go and help cover the story. Since I had been a student at Berkeley a few years before that, I knew my way around the East Bay and San Francisco as well. I had a lot of friends on campus, and was able to spend a lot of time covering the student campuses and movements,” he said. In 1976, Drummond was designated a White House Fellow.
“At the White House Press, I met President Carter and worked with a lot of people who were very distinguished in their own right,” he said. “But when my fellowship was expiring, they still wanted me to stay. That’s when I decided that enough was enough, and decided to go back to the Washington Bureau of the Los Angeles Times and that too, without a portfolio,” he said with a smile.
As a young reporter, Drummond had clearly done a lot of meaningful work within the United States of America. However, he wanted more.“My bosses at The Los Angeles Times were very pleased with the way I handled the reporting of the Chicano Movement, and I was promoted to Assistant City Editor. But I wanted to go overseas, and had all these visions of going to Mexico. Soon, I was sent to India,” he said, as the mention of my motherland makes my face break into a delighted smile.
