Drummer surely was ‘different’
An item from the Nov. 17 Today in History feature about a couple of young reporters for an underground Little Rock newspaper sent us marching after A Different Drummer.
Fifty years ago, charges of resisting arrest against Larry Burton and Gary Woods were dropped. Burton, 22, and Woods, 20, were writers for Little Rock-based paper A Different Drummer.
The charges stemmed from an encounter between the pair and two Little Rock police officers at MacArthur Park on Aug. 24, 1969. Woods and Burton had been copying police car license plate numbers when the officers confronted them. A related charge against Woods for interfering with an officer was also dropped.
Burton was a Little Rock Central High School graduate; Woods, who grew up in Bossier City, La., dropped out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Woods founded A Different Drummer in 1969 after the dissolution of the Arkansas Peace Information Center, an anti-war group that was around from 1966-68, according to a May 17, 1970, Arkansas Gazette article.
The Drummer had more than 15 on staff, and the first issue included pieces about the welfare program, local Vietnam War protest planning, the “hair policy” of Central High School and Black Panther leader Bobby Seale.
There are a handful of Drummer issues from 1970 on microfilm at the State Archives.
Issue 6 from February features a Q&A on the draft and a teaser for a coming series on drugs in Arkansas. Other editions include a long article on a strike by Little Rock waterworks employees; an interview with John Kay of Steppenwolf; stories and columns about the ecology, peace rallies and opposition to the Vietnam War; Gilbert Shelton’s counterculture comic, “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers,” and a review of Frederick Exley’s book, “A Fan’s Notes.”
Naturally, money was tight and issues contained pleas for cash.
“With difficulty,” is how Woods responded in the Democrat when asked how the tabloid, copies of which sold for 15 cents, was being funded. He told the Gazette in 1970 that the paper hadn’t been paid for any of the ads it had run.
By late 1970, it seems A Different Drummer was no more. A Nov. 7 Gazette article from that year quoted someone who said that the last issue had been printed in August or September.