"You are only good as your last haircut-Fran Lebowitz-
by Eric D. Graham
For 41 years Becton's Barber Shop in Magnolia has been the place where Black men have gathered to get their hair cut and their beards trimmed. But it has also been the meeting place where they could openly and honestly debate and argue about race and politics, God and religion, and even women and sports.
Becton's Barber Shop, in fact, is simply a place where you can "lie a little" and laugh a whole lot.
And still get a good hair cut.
"In order to run a successful barber shop, you must have entertainment," said owner Rudolph Becton of Magnolia. "Over the years, we have had some wonderful characters come through that door. Customers like 'Mr. Woody Pearsall, Marvin Lee, George Henry Lee and Ernest Price, who would come almost every day to make everybody laugh. With their conversation and insight, time would go by so fast."
Becton, 78, who occasionally still cuts hair on Friday and Saturday, is in excellent health and spirit, and can be seen riding his bicycle along the highway from Magnolia to Wallace any day of the week for exercise.
Becton stated that the key to living a long and prosperous life is to treat people right and treat yourself better by not smoking, drinking, and staying out too late at night.
"Yes, I was born in Eureka, North Carolina, before moving to a place called Shine's Crossroad out on Highway 13 in Snow Hill in 1950," he explained. "Later, my father, who was a sharecropper, migrated back to Sampson County to work on another farm."
After the Civil War and during the Reconstruction period of the United States, sharecropping became a system of agricultural production in which a landowner allowed a sharecropper to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land.
Around the age of 14, however, Becton, after working from "can't see morning to can't see night" for six days a week, realized that farming was not for him.
"I remember kneeling down at my father's bedside and saying this white man is going to kill us and we won't have nothing to show for it," laughed Becton.
Through back-breaking labor as a sharecropper's son, Becton began developing his entrepreneurial spirit that would lead him to become one of the most successful Black businessmen in the history of Magnolia.
"I told myself if I can make $1 for another man then I could make $2 for myself," said Becton.
With that type of revolutionary thinking, Becton migrated "up north" to improve his quality of life
like many Blacks during that time.
"Honestly, I never wanted to go "up North" but no one here would loan me any money to start a business and nobody would sell me any land," confessed Becton. "Therefore, I moved up north..."
After moving to Arlington, Va., in 1956, Becton obtained success as a barber but still had a desire to return back home and work for himself.
"I felt that if I could come back to North Carolina and make $55-70 a week....then my wife (Annie) and I could make it and then elevate ourselves from there," he commented.
Ann Becton, Becton's wife of 49 years, however, was not too thrilled about his decision to move back to NC, especially not the "little" town of Magnolia.
"I remember my wife saying to me: "'If we go back home, we will go hungry'," reminisced Becton.
Becton, however, finally convinced his wife to migrate back to the south to NC in 1967, where they were warmly embraced by the community of Magnolia.
Neighbors like Bruce Dixon, Hattie Carr, Florence Ross, Phoebe Moore, Tom Hussey and Ethel Robinson, as well as many more, made sure the Becton family did not go hungry as once feared by Ann, Becton's wife."Good Lord!!! There were really some good people here in Magnolia at that time," Becton said with a smile on his face. "I mean, these people didn't know us but yet they would leave bags of vegetables and collards on our doorsteps. And Mrs. Ethel Robinson would cook us dinner every Saturday..."
Despite being embraced by his community, Becton also faced opposition, intimidation, and racism when he started building his barber shop.
"When I purchased this land on 310 S.Monk St. on Highway 117, I had a little difficulty with a particular white family, who would refer to me as a boy in conversation even though I was a 35 year old man at the time," he explained.
Culturally, the term "boy" was used by Southern whites at that time to demean Black men and make them feel inferior and less of a man.
"Boy, you are doing the wrong thing .....he told me," emphasized Becton. "I simply replied, 'I own this land'."
Stereotypically, the white family that kept harassing Becton thought he was building a "juke joint" instead of a barber shop. A juke joint was a Southern expression for a club, which specialized in dancing, drinking and gambling.
After several face-to-face verbal altercations, the white family continued to give Becton problems
After several other encounters, Becton finally had his barber shop built but every Monday morning he would find broken whiskey bottles and beer cans outside of his shop.
"I didn't get angry. I just threw the beer cans and broken bottles in the trash can...and eventually they stopped," he said.
Even though some tried to break Becton's spirit of owning his own business, he endured but admitted it was a struggle in the beginning.
"In the beginning, business was not great at the barber shop. I, in fact, worked night and day. I actually took a job at Duplin General Hospital (DGH) as an orderly from 11 to 7," explained Becton. "I would get off work at 7 a.m. in the morning and my wife would have breakfast for me. I would eat and then go to the barber shop to cut hair."
" I would actually hide in the rest room in a law chair in the shower area and lay down there until someone came in the shop and my wife would call me and I would wake up......and people would think I was coming out of the rest room," he added.
At the time, Becton said he was earning only 98 cents an hour at the hospital while charging $1.25 for haircuts at his barber shop, but his business continued to grow.
In 1970, Becton event
ually quit working for DGH after adopting a little girl that he and his wife named Karen. Becton said his daughter Karen gave his family lots of love and enjoyment and as time went by, his clientele
increased. As a result, he went from one chair to two chairs then three chairs to four chairs. All of sudden, the legacy of Becton's Barber Shop was born.
As customers walk into Becton's Barber Shop today, they notice hundreds of photographs of children of the past that have had their first haircut in Becton's chair.
Many of those children have grown up to have children of their own but they bring them back to Becton's Barber Shop just to meet Becton and pay honor to him.
Becton said he is extremely thankful for his customers because it was through them that he was able to provide for his family throughout the years.
After 41 years of cutting hair, Becton said the keys to a successful business are having a nice personality, which makes people feel like they are amongst friends, and producing a clean atmosphere for them to sit in.
"Some people say you must treat everybody the same but I don't agree with that," Becton explained.
"You can't treat everybody the same but you can treat everybody fairly because I don't care if he has been working in a ditch all day-he is just as important as a doctor while in Becton's Barber Shop."
Eric D. Graham, a former reporter for the Warsaw-Faison & Wallace Enterprise newspaper, who is now a reporter at the Black Athlete Sports Network utilized this article that he wrote in 2008 about hometown Hero Rudolph Becton and transformed it into a documentary called BECTON THE BARBER, which he wrote and directed as well as providing the soundtrack for the film
