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CHAPTER TWO

Vietnam and the Politics of Dissent

The Right to Dissent

In 1964 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds v. Sims that state legislative districts must be relatively equal in population. The ruling shifted power away from disproportionately represented rural areas, and in Georgia the reapportionment entailed the creation of new urban districts, one of which was the 136th District in Atlanta, whose population was mostly black. Because the district was new, it had no incumbent. Bond’s friends, including John Lewis and Ivanhoe Donaldson, were well aware of his popularity, appeal, and pro-SNCC politics, and they urged him to run. His friend Ben Brown, who was running for a nearby state house seat, was arguably the most persistent. In his own telling, Bond was reluctant at first and even unsure about which party to represent. “But I thought to myself, ‘He’s doing it,’” Bond later recalled, referring to Brown. “‘He and I are the same age, and I have had the same experiences. If he can do it, I can do it.’ So I did it.”36

With modest funding from his Republican father, Bond ran as a Democrat and enlisted the support of a strong team of SNCC volunteers for a door-to-door campaign that tapped into the organization’s strength in grassroots organizing. “We’d get a case of Coke and give it to someone, and they’d invite their neighbors over . . . and I’d make a speech,” Bond recalled. “Then I’d say, ‘If I do get elected, what is it you want me to do?’ They would say. Then I would make that into my platform. The more and more of these parties that we had, the more refined the platform became. So I could honestly say that I was a people’s candidate.”37 Bond’s platform called for increasing the minimum wage, repealing right-to-work laws, and ending literacy tests for voters.

On June 16, 1965, Bond won 82 percent of the votes in his district. He and Alice left for a Quaker-sponsored speaking tour in England, and upon his return home, Bond faced a crisis that resulted in national attention to his politics and personality.

At a January 6, 1966, news conference, SNCC chair John Lewis read and distributed a SNCC statement detailing the organization’s opposition to US involvement in the Vietnam War. “We recoil with horror at the inconsistency of a supposedly ‘free’ society where responsibility to freedom is equated with the responsibility to lend oneself to military aggression,” Lewis read. “We take note of the fact that 16 percent of the draftees from this country are Negroes called on to stifle the liberation of Viet Nam, to preserve a ‘democracy’ which does not exist for them at home. We ask: Where is the draft for the freedom fight in the United States?”38

Bond had played no role in writing the statement, and he was not present for Lewis’s news conference. Ed Spiva, a reporter from radio station WGST, called him to ask whether he endorsed the SNCC statement. “Yes, I do,” Bond replied. When pressed for his reasons, Bond said: “Why, I endorse it, first, because I like to think of myself as a pacifist and one who opposes that war and any other war and am anxious to encourage people not to participate in it for any reason that they choose. And secondly, I agree with this statement because of the reasons set forth in it—because I think it is sort of hypocritical for us to maintain that we are fighting for liberty in other places and we are not guaranteeing liberty to citizens inside the continental United States.”39 Spiva then asked Bond if he believed he could both endorse the SNCC statement and fulfill the duties of elected office, and Bond replied that it was possible for one to express dissent from US foreign policy while at the same time upholding state and federal constitutions.

Bond’s position did not sit well with members of the Georgia House of Representatives, and 75 of them, who characterized his stance on Vietnam as subversive and treasonous, filed petitions challenging his right to be seated. On January 10, 1966, the House clerk asked Bond to stand aside in light of the petitions while all other House members were sworn into office. As his colleagues, including those on either side of him, stood and swore their allegiance to the Georgia Constitution and the US Constitution, Bond remained in his chair. After the swearing-in ceremony, he then walked to a pool of reporters and offered them the statement that appears below.

Before I begin my remarks I want to thank my friends and associates who have guided me toward a position.

After a thorough search of my conscience, and with understanding for those who have counseled me, I must say that I sincerely feel that I have done no wrong, but I am right in expressing my views on whatever subject I wish to speak.

My first obligation is to my constituents, and I have released a statement to them. I wish to read it:

A Message to My Constituents

There has been, during the past few days, a great deal of public discussion about me, my right to serve in the Georgia House of Representatives, and my right to speak my mind.

I stand here as a citizen, elected by other citizens, to a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives.

I stand before you today, charged with entering into public discussion of matters of national interest.

I hesitate to offer explanations for my actions or deeds, for no charge has been leveled other than the charge that I have chosen to speak my mind, and no explanation is called for, for no member of the House has ever, to my knowledge, been called upon to explain his public statements or public postures as a prerequisite to admission to that body.

I therefore offer to my constituents a statement of my views. I have not counseled burning draft cards, nor have I burned mine. I have suggested that congressionally outlined alternatives to military service be extended to include building democracy at home.

The posture of my life for the past five years has been calculated to give Negroes the ability to participate in the formulation of public policies. The fact of my election to public office does not lessen my duty or desire to express my opinions, even when they differ from those held by others.

As to the current controversy, because of convictions that I have arrived at through examination of my conscience, I have decided that I personally cannot participate in war.

I stand here with intentions to take an oath that will dispel any doubts about my convictions and loyalties.

Ladies and gentlemen, the fundamental issue involved here is the right of any person in our country to dissent and to criticize governmental policy, be it national, state, or local. I reaffirm my right to do this. I hope that throughout my life I shall always have the courage to dissent. Morality in politics shall always guide me in making decisions, regardless of the voices that wish to stifle protest.

I know that the attacks on my integrity result from the fact that I work as the information director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and that I am dedicated to the cause of human rights. I have worked on voter registration in many parts of this state, along with my fellow workers. Many of you sitting here will recall that four years ago I attempted to sit in the galleries of this chamber. I was refused the right to watch the deliberation of my state government. People within the civil rights movement, especially the Atlanta student movement, were deeply involved in attempts to integrate the seating facilities of the gallery of this chamber where I now stand. Moreover, many of you know that a man reported to be a representative of the State of Georgia pushed myself and James Forman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and then ran into the chambers of the House where we could not pursue him. Because of this incident and the many other acts of terror I have seen inflicted upon Negroes in Georgia and throughout the South, I was very apprehensive about my personal safety this morning as I approached the capitol and sat in my seat.

This feeling was accentuated because one of my fellow workers, Sammy Younge Jr., was recently killed in Alabama as he sought to exercise his constitutional rights. Other civil rights workers have been beaten in our own state, and people have been killed in Georgia in the process of exercising their rights.

I am black and I feel these injustices. I am black and I remember my treatment in this House. I know there are Negroes still in Georgia who are afraid to register to vote. I know there are public accommodations in the state of Georgia which are still segregated. I know that veterans and soldiers are still fearful for their lives as they ride down our highways.

Therefore I ran for election in the 136 Assembly District because I want to fight racial injustice in the state of Georgia and in the United States. I know that this body has the power to change the course of race relations in Georgia and thereby in the United States.

I intend to do this within and without the legislature, seated or unseated. I have promised my constituents that I shall not relinquish the struggle for human dignity. I intend to keep that promise.

There are those who would say civil rights is one thing and politics another. I reject that concept. I contend that we must build a new politics in Georgia, a humanistic politics concerned with the needs of the people. This approach must transcend race, creed, or status in life.

While I personally know that many of my opponents would deny those of my race their constitutional rights and have aligned themselves with racist politicians, I do not wish to dignify their attacks. In a telegram of support for my position to the governor and the speaker of the House, Dr. Martin Luther King said:

“It is interesting also to note that many of Mr. Bond’s political colleagues and critics do not feel that they were violating the U.S. Constitution when they sought to perpetuate racial segregation from their vaunted positions, or at the very least, turned a deaf ear when their friends and colleagues supported segregation and blatant racial discrimination.”

Dr. King also said:

“I can vividly recall back in 1954, when the same Georgia legislature resounded with criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court and its decision on school segregation, but there was no such question of loyalty then.”

I do not wish to open the past. I am willing to look forward to the future. But I must assert, assert with passion, that Georgia has the opportunity to lead the movement for humanitarian politics. I also assert that history will prove that segregation and discrimination will vanish from this state. My opponents cannot stop that development.

Let us remember that Negroes have died for the right to vote in Georgia. They are now saying what good does it do us to get the right to vote, to elect representatives, only if those elected must face “attitude tests” or loyalty oaths.

I further assert this body has no basis to expel me or to censure me. It has the duty to me and to my constituents and to the State of Georgia to quit making a mockery of democracy. This body must recognize the right to dissent. This body must realize that the only just course it can take is to seat.

For at this moment this House decides not just on Julian Bond and his constituents but on whether Georgia will take steps toward a totalitarian state by curbing the right to free speech. This must not occur. It is on these principles I stand. I welcome your support.

The Rules Committee met shortly after the swearing-in ceremony to debate the petitions challenging Bond’s right to be seated. Bond’s lawyers, Howard Moore and Charles Morgan, claimed that their client had a constitutional right of dissent and that the exercise of this right did not disqualify him from taking his seat. Under interrogation, Bond affirmed that he supported the SNCC statement opposing the war, and he denied that he had ever encouraged war dissenters to break US laws: “I have never suggested or counseled or advocated that any one other person burn their draft card. In fact, I have mine in my pocket and will produce it if you wish. I do not advocate that people should break laws.”40 Following the committee’s recommendation, the full House voted 184-12 to refuse Bond his seat.

The entire day in the House rattled Bond, as he recalled two years later:

I had been there [in the House] two or three times before. But on one occasion I’d been with a group of students, led by Dr. Howard Zinn, that had been expelled from the legislature. The man who is now speaker of the House, George L. Smith, was speaker then. One of the members arose on the floor and said to him, ‘Mr. Speaker, Mr. Doorkeeper, get those niggers out of the white folks’ section.’ The speaker ordered the doorkeeper to clear the gallery, to put us out of what was then the white section of the gallery.

The second occasion I’d been up there was one day I went there with James Forman. While standing outside the door of the chamber, a white fellow came out and said to Forman—I don’t know if this guy was a legislator or not—but he said to Forman, “I’m the meanest man in Merriweather County. My daddy and me used to snatch niggers off the train and kill them.” And he swung at Forman. Forman pulled back, and he just sort of brushed his chest.

Those two incidents really put the fear of God in me. I thought that members of the legislature and all of the hangers-on who are always running around the hall chewing tobacco and spitting on the floor, I thought that these men, and I still think some of them are capable of murder and mayhem. I didn’t know if I would be physically assaulted or what. I was very glad I wasn’t.41

I Consider Myself a Pacifist

Now a figure of national repute, Bond appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press on January 30, 1966, to discuss the House’s refusal to seat him as the elected member of the 136th District. Excerpts from the interview—conducted by journalists Robert Novak, Max Robinson, Tom Wicker, Herbert Kaplow, and Ray Scherer—appear below.

Mr. Novak: Mr. Bond, there have been a great number of explanations of just why the Georgia House of Representatives refused to seat you.

In your own words, what is your explanation for this?

Mr. Bond: I think the people involved in the fight to deny me my seat had different reasons for acting. They charged me with misconduct and questioned my credulity and said that if I took the oath of office, which requires you to swear allegiance to the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the State of Georgia, I would not be credible, I could not be believed, and therefore should not be allowed to take the oath.

Mr. Novak: You don’t feel there were any racist overtones to this?

Mr. Bond: Oh, certainly I do. I don’t think that race was the sole factor involved, but I think—

Mr. Novak: You do think it was a factor?

Mr. Bond: Yes, I do.

Mr. Novak: Do you think a white man taking your position would have been seated?

Mr. Bond: I don’t know if a white man took my position whether he would be seated, but I think my employment with what some people consider a militant civil rights group, my race, the statement itself, were all factors in the eventual outcome.

Mr. Novak: Do you feel that your subscribing to the SNCC statement in any way did compromise your loyalty to the United States?

Mr. Bond: No, not at all.

Mr. Novak: Would you fight for your country under any conditions?

Mr. Bond: I consider myself a pacifist, if you mean would I bear arms.

Mr. Novak: Would you have borne arms in World War II, for example?

Mr. Bond: That is sort of a hypothetical question. I don’t believe I would.

Mr. Novak: Then you are not a selective pacifist? There are no conditions under which you would bear arms for your country?

Mr. Bond: No.

Mr. Novak: Would you fight to save your family, your household?

Mr. Bond: That again is another hypothetical situation. You know, the usual question put to pacifists is “What would you do if someone began beating your wife?” But no one is beating my wife right now. I think of myself as a pacifist. I believe in nonviolence.

Mr. Novak: Let me ask you a non-hypothetical question: Do you approve of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, which is a Negro group which does bear arms and has had close ties with civil rights groups in the South?

Mr. Bond: No, I don’t approve of anyone anywhere under any circumstances engaging in violence.

Mr. Novak: When did you become a pacifist, Mr. Bond?

Mr. Bond: I began thinking about pacifism and about nonviolence in 1957, when I was a student at a Quaker school in Pennsylvania, and since then, since my involvement in the civil rights movement has become deeper and deeper, the feeling has just increased.

Mr. Novak: When you first applied for the draft, did you list yourself as a pacifist?

Mr. Bond: No, I didn’t. The army told me that they weren’t interested in my serving with them. . . .

After I took my physical examination and after I had taken the mental examination, I was given a status of 1-Y, which I understand means not to be called except in case of national emergency, and I never believed that my service in the military would be an issue.

Mr. Robinson: You have been a pacifist for some time, but why didn’t you make your position known, as a pacifist, when you were running for office in Georgia, and why didn’t you make your views on Vietnam known during the campaign?

Mr. Bond: My views on nonviolence were known during the campaign. The question of Vietnam is not a question that the Georgia House of Representatives, the office that I was aspiring to, addresses itself. I didn’t think it was an issue. . . .

Mr. Wicker: To be specific, would you see any striking similarity between the civil rights struggle in the United States in which you have been such an active participant and a revolutionary movement like that of the Viet Cong?

Mr. Bond: No, I don’t see that sort of similarity. I see a similarity between people—in one case, Negroes in the United States, in other cases people who live in Vietnam—who are struggling. That is one parallel. The other parallel is that Negroes in the United States are struggling against a system of segregation and discrimination and oppression, and the same sort of parallel has been suggested, not by me, as going on in Viet Nam, today. . . .

The feeling that I have is that people who live in Vietnam, North and South, are struggling to determine their own destiny in some way or another. The impression I get is that they would like very much to be left alone, not only by the United States but by the Viet Cong as well. . . .

Mr. Kaplow: How else do you equate civil rights with Vietnam? A lot of the other civil rights groups—for instance, the head of the Atlanta Chapter of NAACP—say that you shouldn’t equate the two.

Mr. Bond: I equate it. I think the opposition to the war in Vietnam in this country among a great many people is moral opposition. That is, it is not political opposition; it is opposition of people who feel that war is wrong. It is opposition of people who feel that that particular war is wrong on a moral ground. I think that is the same sort of opposition that the civil rights movement has been engaged in against segregation. It has been moral opposition to segregation as well as political and physical opposition to segregation. . . .

Mr. Scherer: Mr. Bond, I am wondering what you and your friends see as a central issue here in your difficulties with the legislature. Is it perhaps the right to dissent?

Mr. Bond: I think it is two important issues. First, it is certainly the right to free speech, the right of dissent, the right to voice an opinion that may be unpopular, but I think a second and equally as important an issue is the right of people—in this case, my constituents—to be represented by someone they chose, their right to make a free choice in a free election, to choose someone to represent them. I think in this instance that the Georgia House of Representatives has denied them that right. . . .

Mr. Robinson: Just one more thing. You indicated that you admired those individuals who burned their draft cards. Yet you said you wouldn’t burn yours. Why wouldn’t you?

Mr. Bond: Let me say what I said first. I said I admired the courage of people who burned their draft cards, because I understand, I think, why they do it, and I admire them for doing it, knowing that they face very heavy penalties, five years in jail, a fine of $5,000 and if they are in public office, they might be expelled. I wouldn’t burn mine, because it is against the law to burn mine.

Two days before the taping of Meet the Press, a federal district court held a hearing on the suit that Bond had filed against his most outspoken critic, House member Sloppy Floyd, and other state representatives. The court’s three judges—Elbert Tuttle, Griffin Bell, and Lewis Morgan—ruled 2-1 that Bond’s support of the SNCC statement provided rational grounds for the House’s conclusion that he could not faithfully swear to uphold the state and federal Constitutions. Bond appealed the ruling to the US Supreme Court, and on December 5, 1966, the Court unanimously ruled that Georgia had violated Bond’s right to free speech.

In the meantime, Bond had stayed in the race for the open seat in his district. He won the special election that was called shortly after the House had denied him his seat, and he also won the regular election held after that. Finally, on January 9, 1967, Bond took the oath of office and was seated in the House as the elected member of the 136th District. The House paid him $2,000 in back pay for service wrongfully denied.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Vietnam

Bond’s House colleagues were not openly hostile, but they were inclined to ignore him except when his vote was needed. He arranged for another legislator to introduce a bill that called for increasing the minimum wage to two dollars per hour. The bill failed to get out of committee, and Bond believed the same thing would happen to a bill seeking to repeal the right-to-work law, as well as to any bill introduced by a black House member.

Frustrated by his thwarted efforts in the House, Bond continued to comment on foreign policy matters, especially ones directly tied to the civil rights movement. As the letter below shows, Bond came to the defense of Martin Luther King Jr. after his now-famous April 4, 1967, speech against the Vietnam War received significant backlash. The letter echoes Bond’s earlier defense of the right to free speech and expounds on his stance on the war.

Dear Sir:

Articles and editorials appearing in the last two issues of the Atlanta Inquirer concerning Dr. Martin Luther King and his opposition to the war in Vietnam have disturbed me greatly.

I respect the Inquirer’s right to disagree with Dr. King’s position and with mine; I wonder, however, if the Atlanta Inquirer ought to align dissent with disloyalty as it has done in the last two issues.

To suggest, as the Inquirer has done, that American Negroes have a special responsibility to support this country’s foreign policy or that dissenting from that policy equals disloyalty is simply not true.

Neither Negroes nor Jews nor Italian-Americans nor any other group of Americans has any special responsibility to support any policy— domestic or foreign—of the American government.

It is rather the highest duty of a citizen to seek to correct his government when he thinks it is mistaken.

If anything, the callous treatment Negroes have received from this country for the last 400 years indicates our first concern ought to be with making democracy work here instead of in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia.

If Negroes seek the same treatment accorded other Americans, then can we not be allowed the equal right of dissent? If Senators Wayne Morris and William Fulbright can suggest that this country is wrong in Vietnam, then cannot Dr. King be given the same right?

Those who criticize the war are now being told that we are somehow responsible for American deaths in Southeast Asia, when in fact if we had our way, not another American boy would die there.

We who oppose the war are told that Ho Chi Minh will next attack California if we do not stop him in Vietnam, when in fact he only wishes to rid his country of foreign troops. The only foreign troops in Vietnam are those of America and her allies. The Vietnamese have been fighting against outsiders for 25 years. Could we not let them have the right we grant to most other countries, the right to determine what form of government they shall have?

We who oppose the war are reminded of some “commitment” our government has to Vietnam, when in fact that “commitment,” made years ago to the puppet dictatorship of Diem, called for 450 military advisers. We now, several other dictatorships later, have 400,000 American troops there; and President Johnson wants 200,000 more.

We who oppose the war are told that the United States has treaties that require our presence there, when in fact we are refusing to uphold the Geneva Convention which calls for prohibition of foreign troops in Vietnam.

We support a man there who says his greatest hero is Adolf Hitler; we have denied a chance for elections in Vietnam until recently, even though former president Eisenhower said in 1956 that had an election been held, 80% of the people of South Vietnam would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. Do we only support democracy and free elections when the results please America?

Congress now spends over $27 billion dollars a year in Vietnam, while Atlanta’s War on Poverty goes begging.

President Johnson has declared that we can have “guns and butter” both, when in fact Sargent Shriver, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, said a year ago that “because of Vietnam, we cannot do all that we should or all that we would like to do.”

Of the major civil rights groups, CORE, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Southern Conference Educational Fund have all stated their opposition to the war.

The list of Negro leaders who oppose the war is nearly as long as those on record in favor of it. The Atlanta Inquirer is correct in calling for other Negroes to make their positions known, but incorrect in attacking those who oppose this war as disloyal.

I was one of many Americans who voted for President Johnson in 1964 because he said then, “We seek no wider war.” He said then that American boys would never fight a land war in Asia.

Nearly four years later, a great many Americans wonder if the difference we perceived, on this issue, between Johnson and Goldwater was so great.

Finally, the Inquirer should remember that Congress has made provisions in law for those young men who are opposed to war and military service. To young men morally or religiously opposed to the war to register their convictions under the law, as have 78 students at Morehouse College, is to ask that Americans act on their consciences.

Although the Inquirer did not contact me for its story of what Negro elected officials think about the war, I would like to make my position clear.

I oppose the war. It is wrong. My country has made a mistake. It can correct that mistake by arranging, as soon as possible, to disengage itself from Vietnam. I urge every young man—and the mothers of young men facing military service—to search their hearts to see whether they are willing to lend themselves to this war. If they find themselves unable to do so, then they certainly must in good faith seek the congressionally outlined alternatives to military service.

I would urge all Americans, black or white, to remember that your country is pledged to support your right and your duty to criticize it.

There are those like Georgia’s senior senator, Richard Russell, who maintain that we should not have gone to Vietnam in the first place but must remain now that we are there. If I found myself in a house on fire and knew I should never have entered the house, I would not stay simply because I was there. I would get the hell out as fast as I could.

Sincerely,

Julian Bond

Elijah Muhammad and the 1968 Democratic National Convention

In this column, published in the Chicago Tribune in 1996, Bond implicitly challenges the standard narrative that Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad was anti-political, opposed to participation in electoral politics because of its domination by white men. In recounting Muhammad’s support, Bond refers to his good friend Taylor Branch, whose chronicle of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and history of the modern civil rights movement was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. Bond also makes reference to the Georgia Loyal National Democrats, an integrated group that challenged the delegation led by segregationist Governor Lester Maddox at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Bond co-chaired the Loyalists as they won the right to be seated on the convention floor.

Taylor Branch and I were walking despondently down a hot street in Chicago’s Loop in August of 1968, a week before the Democratic convention began. With three others, we were the advance guard of the 60-plus member Georgia Loyal National Democratic Delegation to the 1968 Democratic convention. The Loyalists were a rump group set up to challenge the handpicked, overwhelmingly white, segregationist, and overwhelmingly pro–George Wallace official Georgia delegation.

There had been no election of delegates in our state—Georgia’s party chair had simply handpicked them. Georgia’s rank-and-file Democrats— even then heavily black—had no say in who would represent them at the convention to write a platform and choose their party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees.

Our group was integrated and loyally Democratic. While delegations from other states could look forward to open arms, hotel rooms, Chicago hospitality and transportation from hotel to convention hall, we had none of these things. And we had no money. We could not even afford to bring our delegation to Chicago.

A large black man, Walter Turner, recognizing me, stopped us and asked if he could help. We explained our dilemma, and Turner said he could get us rooms at a nearby hotel. When we answered that we had already been turned away from that place, he insisted on trying, and after a moment of secret conversation with the manager, told us we had the required rooms.

But how could we pay for them? How could we pay to bring the delegates who were to occupy those rooms to Chicago?

Turner suggested we ask his employer, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, popularly known as the Black Muslims. Taylor and I were incredulous. Why would the leader of America’s most prominent black separatist group, a man who forbade his followers to register and vote and who regularly castigated whites as “blue-eyed devils,” pay to bring a group made up of a majority of those devils to a meeting whose whole point was voting and political participation?

Nevertheless, Turner arranged for me to meet Mr. Muhammad in his Hyde Park mansion. I told my sad tale to him and an audience of Muslim men and women. He listened politely and asked me to return for a meal the following day.

At the next evening’s dinner, men and women sat at separate tables. He surveyed them before giving me an answer, asking the women first if he should give me a donation. Each one emphatically said no. “We don’t know this young man,” one said. “He’ll give all the money to the devils,” said another.

The men were less negative, but many said no as well.

Mr. Muhammad heard them out, and then said to me, “Mr. Bond, in the Nation of Islam, we listen to the women, but we do what the men say to do.” He gave me $3,000 in crisp $100 bills.

That money brought our delegation to Chicago and helped pay our bills.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad helped the Georgia Loyal National Democrats force the Democratic Party to make good on promises it made in 1964—the delegate selection would be democratic, fair, and open.

He literally changed the face of the Democratic Party, and I have wondered, from that day to this, why he did it.

Did he envision the eventual entry of the Black Muslims into politics? Could he have imagined that his successor, Louis Farrakhan, would register to vote in 1983 and place the nation in the service of a black candidate for the presidency of the United States? Was this gift the small opening wedge signaling a transition within the Nation? Or did he simply harbor fond memories of the Georgia he had left in the 1920s, the Georgia where he’d been born Elijah Poole? Or did he long for a Georgia—and an America—that might have been?

Only 3 percent of the delegates to this year’s Republican convention in San Diego were black, a figure which says much about the party’s politics and their programs. Twenty percent were millionaires.

The Democrats who gather in Chicago in 1996 look much more like America, and in part, they have the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to thank for it.

Eugene McCarthy and a New Politics

As the co-chair of the Loyalists, Bond seconded the nomination of Eugene McCarthy as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 1968. But the majority of delegates selected Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the party’s nominee. When Humphrey failed to choose a solidly antiwar running mate—he selected US Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine—he angered delegates who had supported the candidacies of Robert F. Kennedy, McCarthy, and George McGovern. So Richard Goodwin, a former speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy, approached Bond, whose antiwar and pro–civil rights politics were well-known, about the possibility of being nominated for vice president. Bond agreed, and Wisconsin delegate Ted Warhafsky rose to nominate him. Standing before the microphone, the liberal Warhafsky stated that because he and other Wisconsin delegates were interested in making “the American dream a reality not only for affluent delegates but for the young people who march in the parks looking for quality in life,” the Wisconsin Democrats “wish to offer in nomination the wave of the future. It may be a symbolic nomination tonight, but it may not be symbolic four years hence. We offer in nomination with the greatest pleasure the name of Julian Bond.” As many delegates cheered the nomination, CBS reporter Dan Rather asked Bond how old he was. “I’m 28,” Bond replied, adding that he was well aware that the Constitution required vice presidential candidates to be 35. When asked about Wisconsin’s reasons for nominating him, Bond said: “Well, I would hope it’s because they think I would make a good vice president. I think it’s also to get an opportunity to address this body and— through the medium of television—other people in the nation about some of the issues that are not being discussed here.” The issues, Bond said, were “poverty, racism, war. There really has not been a great deal of free discussion about them.”42 Convention leaders did not allow Bond to speak as a nominee for vice president, and he later withdrew his name because he did not meet the age requirement. Below is the speech Bond gave when seconding the nomination of Eugene McCarthy.

Fellow delegates, fellow Democrats, fellow Americans—

We are here in the midst of trying and difficult times—times which challenge our party, our country, and the future of democracy itself.

I am here today to second the nomination of the man who has spoken out most clearly and strongly about the challenge of 1968, the man who has spelled out for all Americans the changes we need to meet that challenge, the man who has begun already to lead us toward a new day in American politics—Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota.

If it were not for Senator McCarthy we would be meeting here under very different circumstances today.

We would not have an open convention—we would have merely an echo of 1964.

We would not be testing our own procedures—because the new forces of American politics, the people who are demanding full democracy in every aspect of American life, would not be here and they are here, tonight.

We would not be considering our national priorities—we would be rubberstamping the policies of the past four years.

And above all, we would not have had a national judgment on the war in Vietnam—an overwhelming rejection of a war the American people never chose and supported—a rejection of the way we have carried on that war, a rejection of the role of the military in our foreign policy, a rejection of empty slogans and misleading propaganda.

The American people are demanding a fundamental change—that, I think, is the great lesson of the campaign of 1968. They are demanding an end to the politics of unfulfilled promises and exaggeration, an end to the politics of manipulation and control.

They know they will not get that change from the Republican Party. The Miami convention made that very clear. The question now—the great question of 1968—is whether this party—the party which has always claimed to be the party of the people—can now respond to the will of the people. The question is whether we will give them the one man whose name is synonymous with a new politics of 1968 and a new hope for America.

All over the world, 1968 is a year in which people have been raising up and demanding freedom—from Biafra to Georgia, from Czechoslovakia to Chicago.

It is a year of people—students and teachers, black and white, workers and housewives. All over the world people want to be free to speak and to move about, free to protest and to be heard, free to live honorable lives, and most of all, free to participate in the politics which affect their lives.

That is the freedom we seek tonight through the Democratic Party in 1968.

When others held back, our McCarthy argued that there could be dialogue in America—that there could be talk between young and old, black and white, rich and poor. And there was talk, there was debate, there was full and free discussion in our land.

When others held back, our McCarthy argued that the American people could hear the truth—they were hungry for truth, starving for frankness and honesty, and hoping and praying for a candidate who would speak freely and openly.

When others held back, our McCarthy argued that the American people could pass a judgment. And we have seen that judgment passed.

We have seen all that is best in America demanding an end to the immoral war in Vietnam and a full commitment to all those who are ridiculed in our country, to all those who are injured and insulted, to all who go hungry and powerless in the midst of affluence and luxury.

Americans of good faith now realize there is one candidate who has never spoken on the side of repression and violence, one candidate who has never promised more than he could fulfill, one candidate who has spoken quietly and steadily of bringing together black people and white people to make a new start in their country, one candidate who has stood for generosity and humanity toward the smaller nations of the world.

And that candidate is Gene McCarthy.

Fellow delegates, the people of America are watching us now—and indeed the whole world is watching us. They are looking to the Democratic Party to honor their faith in democracy. They are waiting and watching for a new kind of honesty in American politics.

After all that has happened in 1968, after all we have done and all we have learned—can we afford to abandon Gene McCarthy? Can we deny the American people the chance to vote for the one man who has made a difference—in our party, in our politics, and in the direction of our country?

The choice we make will be long remembered. It is not too late to look once more within ourselves. It is not too late to give the best we have.

It is not too late to get ourselves together and to nominate a man who is already one of our greatest leaders—a man who will become in time one of our greatest presidents.

I am proud to second the nomination of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy.

The Warfare State

Bond was not a fiery orator. He was not inclined to raise his fist, and he refused to shut down his opponents. But his measured style of speaking did not mean he wasn’t delivering a strong, clear message—especially during the run-up to the 1968 presidential election.

In 1968 the United States finds itself moving toward destruction.

This nation has imposed 500,000 soldiers on a small faraway country. It has tried to impose American values and American ways on the people of that country, and has nearly destroyed them in the process. It has interfered with a legitimate, localized revolution in that nation, and is destroying that nation in the process.

At home, white and black young people battle policemen for control of the streets, for control of schools, for control of lives, for control of property.

Our Congress, which without difficulty raises more than 80 billions of dollars for war every year, providing guaranteed annual incomes for munitions merchants, cannot bring itself to consider guaranteed annual incomes for the poor.

We black people find ourselves in the curious position of being better off now than we were thirty years ago, but being worse off in every way—economically, educationally, politically—in comparison with white America than ever before.

Black people make less money in relation to white people than ever before; there are more black people out of work—in comparison to white people—than ever before—and there are more black people fighting and dying in America’s armed services in comparison with white people than ever before.

We are paying a heavy price for integration.

Our housing is probably more segregated now than ever before. The United States Commission on Civil Rights has said that if all Americans lived in conditions as crowded as do the black people in some sections of Harlem, then all 200 million Americans could live in three of the five boroughs of New York, leaving the other two and all of the rest of the United States totally unpopulated.

We see the leaders of our nation condemning the Russians for having done what we have done in Vietnam.

“The fact that a small nation lives within reach of a large nation does not mean that that large nation is entitled to move in on it to reorganize its internal affairs.”

That was Secretary of State Dean Rusk speaking, and oddly enough, the large nation was not the United States reorganizing Vietnam, but Russia reorganizing Czechoslovakia.

Four out of every five Americans are more affluent than any other people in history. They have reached that affluence by degrading the fifth person, the poor black Americans, brown Americans and white Americans who have neither the power nor the resources to complain about their lot.

Our welfare system taxes the poor more than our tax system taxes the rich. A poor man on welfare must pay the government 70 cents on every dollar he earns above $30 a month; a rich man pays the government only 25 cents on every dollar he wins on the stock market.

Half of the farmers in the United States—the half who have incomes of less than $2,500 a year—received 5% of the farm subsidies provided by the government; 10% of the farmers in the United States received 60% of the subsidies.

Some Americans of thirty years ago were afraid that we might become a welfare state. Instead, we have become a warfare state. Our nation gives 80% of its wealth to the Pentagon, and 10% to health, education, and welfare.

We have come gradually, I think, to this point in our history because of several factors. Over the years the United States has strengthened, rather than relinquished, its role as policemen of the world.

Over the years racism in the United States has remained, rather than weakened. And most importantly for us, over the years liberals and radicals have continued to argue rather than cooperate, to the detriment of both liberal, radical and reformist movements in the United States.

A good example of the divisiveness and the lack of stick-to-it-ness on the left can be found in the South. Those who began a student revolution there eight years ago—a revolution that spread to Berkeley and to Columbia—are no longer there.

Those who directed the movement from lunch counters to bus stations to voting booths to electoral politics are no longer there.

Those northerners whose concern and whose money helped finance that movement are no longer concerned or financial.

The government we once thought sympathetic to our goals is either no longer the government or is no longer sympathetic.

Instead, there are a few workers plodding the cotton fields of Mississippi and the bayous of Louisiana and the red hills of Georgia trying to organize a movement. Instead, there is scattered student concern at this school or that one, while the millions in the ghetto go uncared for, unheeded and unattended except by policemen and occasionally National Guardsmen.

Instead, a battle some thought was won at the lunch counter is being lost at the ballot box and in the county courthouse.

The battle for the integrated schoolroom seat is being lost, not by the devious legal action or oppressive night riders, but by the cotton picking machine, the runaway textile mill, the right-to-work laws which keep poor men poor, and make children go so hungry they cannot learn, and so naked they cannot attend school.

We are passing now through the annual American political season. The road shows are on tour. There are two main attractions, produced by two companies, but they speak from the same script.

The title of this year’s extravaganza is “Law and Action” or “How to Sell Out to the South Without Once Saying Nigger.”

One play is directed by Strom Thurmond, the other by Richard Daley. In one play Mr. Thurmond also acts to remind the hero of his lines; in the other, a prompter from Texas is always standing in the wings to remind the leading man if he forgets his part.

In some parts of the country there will be alternatives for both the left and the right, but the right is the winner in this year’s election because it has three candidates to choose from.

Those on the left can choose or, of course, make no choice at all. To do the latter will make one feel purer, of course, but to opt out altogether leaves something to be desired.

There is an obvious longing in America for change, and that longing is shared not just by blacks in the cities and students on the campus but by millions of housewives and farmers and laborers and others.

The job of the liberal and the job of the radical is to put those people and their longing together.

When Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy, some of us cringed. He’s ruthless, we said, or he was a bad attorney general, we said, or it’s a plot by President Johnson, we said.

But no one who saw black people in Watts scrambling for his hand or who saw white farmers in Alabama smiling at his jokes could believe that for long, and no one who saw the miles and miles of mourners from New York to Washington could remember old tales or harbor old grudges.

When Eugene McCarthy, months before Kennedy, announced his candidacy, we said it’s only a trick. We said he just wants to get us off the streets and into the system. We said he wants to kill the student movement.

But no one who saw the students in New Hampshire could believe that student movements are dead, and no one who saw the battle of the Conrad Hilton in Chicago can believe McCarthy got the students off the streets.

These two campaigns, for all their failures and their tragic losses, brought to America the fervor and the feeling that had not existed since the Freedom Rides of 1961; that had not existed since the sit-in demonstrations of 1960; that had not existed since the March on Washington in 1963.

These moments in history, representing no accomplishment but only people in motion, signified a beginning.

That beginning is best told in a poem by a woman named Margaret Rigg:

Face possible end of business as usual stop white silence in America stop kidding stop killing stop mace stop foam stop police arms race stop napalm stop bombing stop bloodletting stop Nixon stop sleeping stop dreaming stop crying stop mumbling stop now begin again begin beginning begin hearing begin seeing begin trying begin doing begin working begin working hard begin organizing begin being human begin living begin being possible begin facing the possible surprise of your own voice begin.

Beginning again reads nicely as a poem; for our lives it requires something more than reading nicely. It requires a realization that we have not overcome, that our enemies are not against the wall, and that tomorrow will not be a better day.

It requires constant attention to the problems of today, to racism, to hunger and to war.

It requires some form of unity among those who insist on a better day, rather than one hundred different drummers beating different tunes.

It requires that those least affected and least involved—the great mass of middle-class Americans, white and black—involve themselves.

It requires that action replace slogan, and it requires that rhetoric be replaced with reality.

It requires finally a commitment—the commitment that might have kept the South in ferment; the commitment that would have kept Chicago’s police force busy; a commitment that might have insured a choice and not an echo on the top of the ballot in November.

And it will require that each of us keep in mind a prophecy written by the late Langston Hughes—that dreams deferred do explode.

For if this dream is deferred much longer, then an explosion will come—and in the words of the old song, it will be like God giving Noah the rainbow sign; now more water, the fire next time.

Fighting Nixon

In this November 1969 speech—arguably the most militant speech he had given up to this point—Bond calls for the need to defeat the police state, build community socialism, and demand reparations to “the tune of $15 a nigger.”43

Now that America has had a change of leaders and the new set has had a chance to operate for some 22 months, one has had time to consider exactly what will be the attitude of the new faces in Washington toward tired old faces of the poor, the hungry, and the black.

It does not present a pretty picture.

The long fingers of American might are still sticking in other people’s pies. More than 300,000 American soldiers are still engaged in trying to tell the Vietnamese people what kind of government they can have and under what circumstances.

Here at home, the campuses of America have barely quieted down from last semester, and the upcoming ones promise to be just as long and may be just as hot.

On the campus, attempts at reform are refuted, and attempts at revolution are suppressed. Young people have discovered that our finest universities hold investments in slave mines, or research the best ways to defoliate jungles and people.

All Americans have learned over the past several years that the machinery that we were told was built to protect us—college deans and the machinery, American presidents and their machinery—were in fact bent on suppressing those with whom they dealt. . . .

For some Americans in the 1960s, politics failed completely. One potential candidate in 1968 fell victim to an assassin’s bullet; another was stilled by parliamentary democracy.

But some lessons didn’t have to be learned.

It didn’t take a Kerner Report for black people to discover that white people were our problem, and not we theirs.