Julian Bond

STRIDING ACROSS the auditorium stage at Babson Institute several weeks ago, Julian Bond appeared almost embarrassed by the standing ovation of almost two thousand people who had flocked to hear him. "It's him...I don't believe it, it's really him," exclaimed an ecstatic co-ed in the front row, a tweedy, horn-rimmed middle-aged man atoned to his wife, "God, he looks worn." The introductory applause kept Bond on his feet for almost five minutes. The air was hot and tense with excitement as people recovered the seats that many of them had come two hours earlier to claim.

Bond sat calmly, with an air of detachment as a nervous student gave a brief biographical sketch of Julian Bond: "Charter member of SNCC...major tactician for the civil rights movement in the early sixties...hero of the new left...rebel in the bastion of southern politics...member of the Georgia legislature...controversal figure in the Democratic Convention...."

Another wave of applause carried Bond to the podium. Pulling a folded manuscript from his pocket, he casually looked out over the audience and remarked, in what sounded like a whisper, "Well, that's the obituary...now for the post mortem." The audience could relax now--Bond had acknowledged their presence.

Bond's speech was brief, almost cursory. But it sat well with the audience which had come to see Julian Bond in the flesh more than anything else. In terse language and with an economy of emotion--now a Bond trademark--he stated matter-of-factly: "With 4 out of 5 people in this country better off today than any others in the rest of the world, we still have black people in this country not only hungry but getting hungrier, and a welfare system that taxes the poor more heavily than the rich."

HE CONDEMNED the "action rhetoric and slogan-oriented realities of American politics," but added sardonically, "of course in the South, we don't even have that." His discussion of the present frustration and alienation of youth, intellectuals and the oppressed and their disillusionment with politics was a poignant memoir of his own frustrations:

"When those little black girls walked even amidst turmoil into those schools in Little Rock and Birmingham, we all thought that it was a new day. We built our hope out of protest: in the movement in the early sixties, in protesting the war, in rallying around McCarthy."

Even as Bond stood at the podium silently pausing for an instant, many in the packed room were already aware of what he would say next. "Our victories and our hope," he reflected, "have promised much and produced little."

But Bond's reflections and summary were not a terminal prognosis; they were a point of departure. he began to talk about what had to be done from this point on; and he sounded like a Julian Bond of the Movement's best and worst times--the tactician, plotting new directions, tackling the problem head-on.

"We have to have not only protest but alternatives, at every level of politics," Bond said. "It's going to take everyone that can be enlisted, everyone that's sick of the politics of today--the politics that has kept us looking over our shoulders instead of at the road ahead." He spoke of organizing people at the local level, on campuses and in communities, of mobilizing old forms of political power and looking for new ones.

"Many of the ideas that I'm talking about aren't new--it's just that we haven't had the power to institutionalize them. I think we've got the ideas and objectives already; we defined them through protest. But we can't rely on hope any more. The next job is getting political power behind them--this is the job of today and the next four years."

BOND left the platform before his standing ovation was over. Several days later, returning from speaking engagements at other colleges, he laid over in Boston between flights, before returning to Atlanta. He was anxious to get home to his wife and four children and to talk with his colleagues about a black caucus of southern politicians coming up. Bond's seriousness is in sharp contrast to his youthful appearance. He talks about the South as if it is his family; and with a conviction and familiarity not in keeping with his age.

"Even before the convention," Bond says, "people were trying to get me to leave the South, to move North and go into national politics. But the South is my home--it's my life, I love it. I know the people and their politics and what it's going to take to move mountains, even the little ones, down there. That's my battlefield, and those are my people. I can't and won't let them down, particularly now when the real political work has to be done."

Bond is one of the 11 black members of the Georgia legislature (out of 270 seats). He feels that there is still a great deal of work to do as Representative of Georgia's 136th district, located in Atlanta. At the moment he is trying to get foundation money to do voter education and registration work in Atlanta and also set up a communications network among black southern politicians throughout the South. Bond believes that a great deal of progress can be made rapidly since, as he says, "as opposed to the North, we can see far more clearly what has to be done and exactly who and what stands between black folk and political power."

But that's only half the battle, as Bond readily admits. He must also do the same thing that he described to the audience at Babson: devise new alternatives coupled with political power. "This involves politicizing poor whites as well as blacks," Bond says. "In the main, the poor white and most blacks in the South are facing the same kinds of political and economic oppression. This is why building alliances between economic strata of whites and blacks is going to be so crucial to cracking the oppressive syndrome of southern politics. Something that won't change as quickly in the South as in the North is the simple fact that a white person won't vote for a black political candidate."

JULIAN BOND has proved himself capable of overcoming the most formidable political opposition in dramatizing the political problems peculiar to the South--from sit-ins in Atlanta to seating at the national Democratic Convention. It is not surprising that people concerned with a "new politics," like those at Babson, will increasingly urge him toward a role in national politics. One development which may reconcile the dilemma between a national audience and a more narrowly southern one for Bond is the probability that Atlanta, through state reapportionment in 1970, will emerge as a predominantly black congressional constituency. Julian Bond would obviously be a prime contender for the Congressional seat and if elected would have national political influence while remaining still a major force in the politics of his home. Until this probability becomes a political reality, however, Julian Bond will most likely be found in Atlanta, doing what he does best--bringing southern blacks and southern politics closer together.