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