The feeling that I have is that people who live in Vietnam, North and South, are struggling to determine their own destiny in some way or another. The impression I get is that they would like very much to be left alone, not only by the United States but by the Viet Cong as well. . . .
Mr. Kaplow: How else do you equate civil rights with Vietnam? A lot of the other civil rights groups—for instance, the head of the Atlanta Chapter of NAACP—say that you shouldn’t equate the two.
Mr. Bond: I equate it. I think the opposition to the war in Vietnam in this country among a great many people is moral opposition. That is, it is not political opposition; it is opposition of people who feel that war is wrong. It is opposition of people who feel that that particular war is wrong on a moral ground. I think that is the same sort of opposition that the civil rights movement has been engaged in against segregation. It has been moral opposition to segregation as well as political and physical opposition to segregation. . . .
Mr. Scherer: Mr. Bond, I am wondering what you and your friends see as a central issue here in your difficulties with the legislature. Is it perhaps the right to dissent?
Mr. Bond: I think it is two important issues. First, it is certainly the right to free speech, the right of dissent, the right to voice an opinion that may be unpopular, but I think a second and equally as important an issue is the right of people—in this case, my constituents—to be represented by someone they chose, their right to make a free choice in a free election, to choose someone to represent them. I think in this instance that the Georgia House of Representatives has denied them that right. . . .
Mr. Robinson: Just one more thing. You indicated that you admired those individuals who burned their draft cards. Yet you said you wouldn’t burn yours. Why wouldn’t you?
Mr. Bond: Let me say what I said first. I said I admired the courage of people who burned their draft cards, because I understand, I think, why they do it, and I admire them for doing it, knowing that they face very heavy penalties, five years in jail, a fine of $5,000 and if they are in public office, they might be expelled. I wouldn’t burn mine, because it is against the law to burn mine.
Two days before the taping of Meet the Press, a federal district court held a hearing on the suit that Bond had filed against his most outspoken critic, House member Sloppy Floyd, and other state representatives. The court’s three judges—Elbert Tuttle, Griffin Bell, and Lewis Morgan—ruled 2-1 that Bond’s support of the SNCC statement provided rational grounds for the House’s conclusion that he could not faithfully swear to uphold the state and federal Constitutions. Bond appealed the ruling to the US Supreme Court, and on December 5, 1966, the Court unanimously ruled that Georgia had violated Bond’s right to free speech.
In the meantime, Bond had stayed in the race for the open seat in his district. He won the special election that was called shortly after the House had denied him his seat, and he also won the regular election held after that. Finally, on January 9, 1967, Bond took the oath of office and was seated in the House as the elected member of the 136th District. The House paid him $2,000 in back pay for service wrongfully denied.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Vietnam
Bond’s House colleagues were not openly hostile, but they were inclined to ignore him except when his vote was needed. He arranged for another legislator to introduce a bill that called for increasing the minimum wage to two dollars per hour. The bill failed to get out of committee, and Bond believed the same thing would happen to a bill seeking to repeal the right-to-work law, as well as to any bill introduced by a black House member.
Frustrated by his thwarted efforts in the House, Bond continued to comment on foreign policy matters, especially ones directly tied to the civil rights movement. As the letter below shows, Bond came to the defense of Martin Luther King Jr. after his now-famous April 4, 1967, speech against the Vietnam War received significant backlash. The letter echoes Bond’s earlier defense of the right to free speech and expounds on his stance on the war.
Dear Sir:
Articles and editorials appearing in the last two issues of the Atlanta Inquirer concerning Dr. Martin Luther King and his opposition to the war in Vietnam have disturbed me greatly.
I respect the Inquirer’s right to disagree with Dr. King’s position and with mine; I wonder, however, if the Atlanta Inquirer ought to align dissent with disloyalty as it has done in the last two issues.
To suggest, as the Inquirer has done, that American Negroes have a special responsibility to support this country’s foreign policy or that dissenting from that policy equals disloyalty is simply not true.
Neither Negroes nor Jews nor Italian-Americans nor any other group of Americans has any special responsibility to support any policy— domestic or foreign—of the American government.
It is rather the highest duty of a citizen to seek to correct his government when he thinks it is mistaken.
If anything, the callous treatment Negroes have received from this country for the last 400 years indicates our first concern ought to be with making democracy work here instead of in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia.
If Negroes seek the same treatment accorded other Americans, then can we not be allowed the equal right of dissent? If Senators Wayne Morris and William Fulbright can suggest that this country is wrong in Vietnam, then cannot Dr. King be given the same right?
Those who criticize the war are now being told that we are somehow responsible for American deaths in Southeast Asia, when in fact if we had our way, not another American boy would die there.
We who oppose the war are told that Ho Chi Minh will next attack California if we do not stop him in Vietnam, when in fact he only wishes to rid his country of foreign troops. The only foreign troops in Vietnam are those of America and her allies. The Vietnamese have been fighting against outsiders for 25 years. Could we not let them have the right we grant to most other countries, the right to determine what form of government they shall have?
We who oppose the war are reminded of some “commitment” our government has to Vietnam, when in fact that “commitment,” made years ago to the puppet dictatorship of Diem, called for 450 military advisers. We now, several other dictatorships later, have 400,000 American troops there; and President Johnson wants 200,000 more.
We who oppose the war are told that the United States has treaties that require our presence there, when in fact we are refusing to uphold the Geneva Convention which calls for prohibition of foreign troops in Vietnam.
We support a man there who says his greatest hero is Adolf Hitler; we have denied a chance for elections in Vietnam until recently, even though former president Eisenhower said in 1956 that had an election been held, 80% of the people of South Vietnam would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. Do we only support democracy and free elections when the results please America?
Congress now spends over $27 billion dollars a year in Vietnam, while Atlanta’s War on Poverty goes begging.
President Johnson has declared that we can have “guns and butter” both, when in fact Sargent Shriver, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, said a year ago that “because of Vietnam, we cannot do all that we should or all that we would like to do.”
Of the major civil rights groups, CORE, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Southern Conference