Julian Bond

"When I began my campaign, people told me two things: Don't bring in a lot of SNCC's with their beards and long hair, and don't try to educate your voters." Julian Bond sat slouched in the backseat of a car driving back from an unsuccessful trip to see a group of Negro prisoners in a state farm at Reidsville, Georgia, and talked about his campaign for the Georgia House.

"But I did both," Julian continued. "People were only interested in things which affected them. Everybody was worried about employment." He stopped and grinned, and then said, "My slogan was 'vote for the man who'll vote for you.'"

Julian was elected from the 136th Legislative district, a predominantly Negro area in Atlanta. Although it touches on the campus of Atlanta University and includes some of the middle-class residential neighborhood surrounding the school, the bulk of the 136th is a slum, known locally as Vine City. Visiting door-to-door, checking in at all the churches, bars, restaurants, and grocery stores, Julian discussed with his constituents his campaign issues: a $2 minimum wage law, a "liberalized urban renewal program," repeal of "right-to-work" laws, abolition of the death penalty and removal of all voter requirements except age and residence. (The election was held June 16, 1965, before the passage of the voting rights bill.)

Many of the people in Vine City can't read or write, but they know that the streets in front of their shacks and one-story apartment houses are unpaved, that the schools their children go to aren't very good, and that it's hard to get jobs. Julian and the SNCC workers who campaigned for him spent hours giving the voters in the district some idea of how they could improve their lives through the vote.

"One day I went to a meeting one of my opponents held and sat in the back. He told the people there 'what is Julian Bond doing talking about a $2 minimum wage when his father doesn't pay his maid that much.' My father's the dean of education at Atlanta University, and he has a maid. So I got up and told the group that if I was elected my father would have to pay his maid two dollars an hour."

There are 400 white voters in the 136th. (All the candidates were Negroes.) Julian had them canvassed by white Southerners in SNCC. When the voting was finished, the 26 year-old press secretary had won 2,305 to 486 to become one of eight Negroes elected, the first in the Georgia House since 1907.

After the election Julian sent around a questionnaire to all his constituents asking about schools, jobs, housing, and asking for suggestions. "There are several organizations working in the area, but they people these organizations are trying to serve had any ideas about how things might work out better."

Julian has been involved with SNCC from the beginning in April, 1960, when it was founded in Raleigh, N.C., at a meeting of students who had participated in the sit-ins.

As Julian got more involved in civil rights activities, he decided to quit More houses, though he had but one semester to complete. After joining the SNCC staff, he worked first on voter registration and then took over communications and public information for the group. He started the Student Voice, the SNCC newspaper, and used his own poetry to break up news of conferences and activities.

I too, hear America singing

But from where I stand

I can only hear Little Richard

And Fats Domino.

But sometimes,

I hear Ray Charles

Drowning in his own tears

or Bird

Relaxing at Camarillo

or Herace Silver doodling,

Then I don't mind standing a little longer.

(quoted in Zinn's book p. 35)

As press secretary, he spent lots of time with the newspapermen who covered civil rights in the South. Two of them, Claude Sitton of the New York Times and Karl Fleming of Newsweek, have become his culture heroes. That he would admire these men, that he would speak so openly of his reservations about making a career in politics, and talk longingly of running a newspaper (he was the first managing editor of the militant Atlanta weekly, the Inquirer), set Julian off from SNCC.

SNCC is an in-group. The kids that make it up work hard, take on awesome tasks, and "don't respond well to criticism." Their discussions may be termed "philosophic," their songs are warm and strong, but SNCC workers haven't much time for jokes. Julian is different; he takes things less seriously. When talking to the Harvard kids running the SOUTHERN COURIER, an Alabama weekly, he suggested they run a box on their front page with a picture of a bird, any bird, entitled "Wise Old Bird." Then underneath the bird any three-digit lottery number.

SNCC kids don't, in general, waste time on outsiders. Not so much the result of any peculiar zenophobia, their gruffness is rather an end product of being constantly harried. Julian is more politic, more expansive. When running his campaign he used all the help he could get and took an interest in the people who worked for him.

During the long trip back from the prison last summer, he talked not only about sit-ins and campaigns, but also about movies and books. He babbled on about Susan Hayward in "I Want To Live"; about "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"; and noted that if Golden Gloves boxing hadn't been segregated, George Wallace (who at one point won the title) would have had to face Joe Louis.

Julian's commitment, his SNCC militancy, emerges in a quiet way. Towards the end of the journey, riding along in the dark, Julian spoke out, addressing no one in particular. "Funny, there's not lots of pressure to sell out, just pressure to keep quiet."

He was picking up the thread on an earlier discussion about the problems of grassroots politics. How do you make time to keep in close touch with the people as you get more and more important? It seemed right that Julian keep going on and up, to prove as another boy in the car said that the "hundreds of others like you, Julian," could make it. But how do you maintain your integrity, the honest responsiveness to your constituency and to your own conscience, while wheeling and dealing in the world of power politics?

Julian understood that he would not "sell out." He wouldn't promise on thing and do another. But he was afraid that when he felt he should speak out although it wasn't necessary that he'd choose the easy way out and remain silent.

The events of the last two weeks have shown that Julian won't "keep quiet." He believes in his right to speak out on Vietnam. The danger of losing his seat in the Houses seems less important than his conviction that the war in Vietnam is wrong.