The Beauty of Julian Bond’s Voice
Steven Carter – Bloomberg View
Bond often riled the black establishment that had birthed him. In 1969, the influential Jet magazine columnist Simeon Booker dismissed Bond’s supporters as “wayout political cats.” In 1971, Bond made enemies when he supported Sen. Harold Hughes, who was white, over Patricia Roberts Harris, who was black, for credentials chair at the Democratic National Convention. Bond’s explanation? Harris, he said, “did not deserve the support of black people” because she was backed by “the forces determined to keep black people from participating” in the party’s raucous and divided 1968 convention.
Julian Bond and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. cast ballots to fill Bond’s vacant seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in Atlanta, Ga. on Feb. 23, 1966. (AP)
And in the 1990s, looking back on a career spent fighting racism, Bond was able to articulate the downside of integration: “People who are poor who are living on the edge of poverty or who are living under poverty are tucked away someplace else. I don’t see them; they don’t see me; we don’t interact; we have no relation one to the other; no physical relation.”
He often criticized the black leadership for “shooting ourselves” rather than “directing our energies outward.” But that didn’t mean he shied from internal battle when he thought it necessary. In the 1990s, Bond condemned the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan, who fired back, “That’s a slave talking.”
No One Worked Harder for America than Julian Bond
Rochelle Riley – Detroit Free Press
When you look at early photos of him, it is clear just how young Julian Bond was when he began fighting for change….
He was 25 when he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives after passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts he fought for helped send many black Americans to the polls.
When he died late Saturday, he still seemed young, ageless, always on the job. His death, even at 75, was too soon. He was too young because he and the other civil rights lions who shouldered this nation’s vital work toward equality are still needed. He was too young because, until recently, he was still fighting as an emeritus board member of the law center, traveling, speaking, making a difference.
Julian Bond of Georgia, 26, watches as people stream into the St. Mark’s Church-on-the-Bouwerie to hear him speak in New York, Feb. 10, 1966. (AP)
The Courage of Julian Bond
Garrett Epps – The Atlantic
I saw Julian Bond standing outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 28 of this year, the day the Court heard argument in Obergefell v. Hodges, the historic same-sex marriage case. My usual practice is to leave celebrities alone in public.
Yet for some reason I felt I had to speak… I wanted to tell him how much some words that I remember him uttering nearly half a century ago meant to me.
The words were, “Maybe they’ll change the law.”
At the chaotic Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, the name of Bond, then a 28-year-old Georgia state representative, was placed in nomination, making him the first African American to be nominated for vice president at a major-party convention. The problem, of course, is that a 28-year-old cannot serve as Vice President. When a TV reporter posed this conundrum to Bond, as I recall the scene, he answered, “Maybe they’ll change the law.”
Julian Bond was the keynote speaker at the 99th NAACP convention in Ohio on July 13, 2008. (AP)
The Julian Bond I Remember and Pay Homage to
Earl Ofari Hutchinson – EurPublisher
I can’t tell you how many times I sparred with former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond on TV shows and in print during the years he headed the NAACP over the policy and direction of the NAACP. No matter how fierce our debate, I was always struck by the dignity and passion that Bond brought to the table in hammering home his positions….
He particularly bristled at the notion that the NAACP had sold its soul for corporate dollars and had become comfortable and safe in protecting the interests of the black middle-class, businesspersons and professionals as opposed to the black poor.
But Bond stuck to his guns and reminded me that when an African-American in some small out of the way backwater town complained of police misconduct, or charged that they were discriminated against in a hire or promotion, or they believed they were refused a rental because of race, they would complain to the local chapter of the NAACP and it would respond.