“The basic thing I want you to see is that while this period (the protest phase of the Civil Rights Movement) represented a frontal attack on the doctrine and practice of White supremacy, it did not defeat the monster of racism …” —Martin Luther King, 1968
As the not so new millennium drones onward, and this country continues to be a cauldron of intolerance, this milestone suggests that the venerated memories of the Civil Rights era are not merely dusty entries to be pondered during a history lesson. The passing of active participants of this struggle only serves to highlight the lessons that may be applied to the continued specter of intolerance.
Julian Bond, who died from heart disease at 75 on Aug. 15, was groomed from birth to assume the mantel of action. Born the son of prominent educators on Jan. 14, 1940, he spent his childhood on the campus of Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University where his father served as that college’s president. Among the celebrities visiting the Bond home during young Julian’s formative years were physicist Albert Einstein, and activist and academic W.E.B. Du Bois. A photograph from this era also shows a young Bond in the company of iconic activist and entertainer Paul Robeson.
While still an undergrad at Morehouse College (where one of his philosophy professors was an obscure young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr.), he became one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “SNICK”), and was a relative moderate compared to other organizing firebrands within that organization like H. “Rap” Brown and Stokely Carmichael.
Leaving school in 1961 (he came back to finish his degree in 1971) to join in the protests and sit-ins throughout the south, he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives at the age of 25 (and was the first African American), an immediate result of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Anti-war rhetoric
“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?” —SNCC statement on American policy in Vietnam, Jan. 6, 1966
Bond quickly became a lightning rod of controversy, because his fellow state house members refused to seat him because of his open opposition to the Vietnam War. He sued, and was given his seat after the Supreme Court determined he had been denied his freedom of speech. Bond served in that position until 1975.
Continuing his anti-war resistance, Bond articulated his views into comic book form in collaboration with artist T.G. Lewis, in a 1967 publication simply titled “Vietnam.”
“One out of every 10 young men in America is a Negro,” he explained in its text, “… but two out of every five men killed in Vietnam is a Negro.”
The text, long out of print, may be accessed at the University of Virginia website: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Exhibits/Bond/Bond.html
With his even features and silky baritone voice, Bond’s persona cast a shadow far beyond the Georgia constituency he represented. At the historic-and anarchic-Democratic National Convention of 1968, he was nominated for vice president, a candidacy he declined because at 28 he was too young to meet the minimum age requirement of 35. For years afterwards, he was considered a possible choice for this office and a leading choice as the first African American President of the United States.
By 1977, Bond attained perhaps the pinnacle of the pop culture hierarchy, when he hosted “Saturday Night Live,” the long-running television comedy show satirizing contemporary politics and society. In it, he showcased his ability to poke fun at himself in an opening monolog.
Pondering the reasons why he’d been invited on this high-profile show, he surmised that, “… these people had me come all the way up here from Atlanta … to be their Chocolate Easter Bunny.”
Bond and series regular Garrett Morris later preformed an amusing parody over the relative merits of I.Q. test results for light and dark-skinned Blacks.
Unfulfilled destiny
“Julian Bond was once a golden boy, so to speak, among Black politicians. But it has come to the point now of being painfully obvious that he hit his peak early and has been descending ever since.” —Atlanta political analyst Claibourne Darden Jr.
Within the lives of the best of us comes the inevitability of blemish and innuendo. Accusations by his former wife (Alice Clopton, who divorced him in 1989) of cocaine use smeared an already bitter campaign for the United States House of Representatives against his old friend and civil rights comrade-in-arms, John Lewis. The two men eventually reconciled and his wife recanted her accusations, but his reputation was tarnished. Lewis, a man with little of Bond’s charisma and polish, handily beat his old friend and still holds that office today.
Along with this defeat came the conclusion that Bond had peaked politically, and squandered the promise that had marked his early career. Part of this involved rumblings in government that he was ineffective as a legislator, because he passed only one bill in his 12 years as a representative.
A standard bearer for equality and dignity
“Civil rights are positive legal prerogatives—the right to equal treatment before the law. These are rights shared by all. There is no one in the United States who does not—or should not—share in these rights.” —Julian Bond, 2013.
Political achievement notwithstanding, Bond continued to make his mark on the national stage by helping to found the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971, and serving as the president of that organization from 1971 through 1979. He eventually ascended to the chairmanship of the National Association for Colored People in 1998.
Perhaps lacking the discipline to be an effective politician, his courage as a spokesperson was never in question, however. A darling of the Black Atlanta political establishment, he was never afraid to criticize his traditional allies and break ranks for what he believed would be the greater good. In 1971, he (along with other prominent Black politicians John Conyers and Shirley Chisholm) refused to support African American Patricia Roberts Harris (later Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Jimmy Carter) over a White man in her bid for a high-profile position at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, because of her ties to the labor movement.
Bond grasped the concept that the struggle for human rights transcended the victories African Americans secured over the Jim Crow South. He also saw a commonality in the grievances his race had fighting segregation, and the push for equality within the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community and other groups through the turn of the century.
A teacher at several colleges and universities across the United States awarded 25 honorary degrees, Horace Julian Bond is survived by his wife, the former Pamela Sue Horowitz, five children, eight grandchildren, and a brother and a sister.
