I was one of many Americans who voted for President Johnson in 1964 because he said then, “We seek no wider war.” He said then that American boys would never fight a land war in Asia.
Nearly four years later, a great many Americans wonder if the difference we perceived, on this issue, between Johnson and Goldwater was so great.
Finally, the Inquirer should remember that Congress has made provisions in law for those young men who are opposed to war and military service. To young men morally or religiously opposed to the war to register their convictions under the law, as have 78 students at Morehouse College, is to ask that Americans act on their consciences.
Although the Inquirer did not contact me for its story of what Negro elected officials think about the war, I would like to make my position clear.
I oppose the war. It is wrong. My country has made a mistake. It can correct that mistake by arranging, as soon as possible, to disengage itself from Vietnam. I urge every young man—and the mothers of young men facing military service—to search their hearts to see whether they are willing to lend themselves to this war. If they find themselves unable to do so, then they certainly must in good faith seek the congressionally outlined alternatives to military service.
I would urge all Americans, black or white, to remember that your country is pledged to support your right and your duty to criticize it.
There are those like Georgia’s senior senator, Richard Russell, who maintain that we should not have gone to Vietnam in the first place but must remain now that we are there. If I found myself in a house on fire and knew I should never have entered the house, I would not stay simply because I was there. I would get the hell out as fast as I could.
Sincerely,
Julian Bond
Elijah Muhammad and the 1968 Democratic National Convention
In this column, published in the Chicago Tribune in 1996, Bond implicitly challenges the standard narrative that Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad was anti-political, opposed to participation in electoral politics because of its domination by white men. In recounting Muhammad’s support, Bond refers to his good friend Taylor Branch, whose chronicle of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and history of the modern civil rights movement was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. Bond also makes reference to the Georgia Loyal National Democrats, an integrated group that challenged the delegation led by segregationist Governor Lester Maddox at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Bond co-chaired the Loyalists as they won the right to be seated on the convention floor.
Taylor Branch and I were walking despondently down a hot street in Chicago’s Loop in August of 1968, a week before the Democratic convention began. With three others, we were the advance guard of the 60-plus member Georgia Loyal National Democratic Delegation to the 1968 Democratic convention. The Loyalists were a rump group set up to challenge the handpicked, overwhelmingly white, segregationist, and overwhelmingly pro–George Wallace official Georgia delegation.
There had been no election of delegates in our state—Georgia’s party chair had simply handpicked them. Georgia’s rank-and-file Democrats— even then heavily black—had no say in who would represent them at the convention to write a platform and choose their party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees.
Our group was integrated and loyally Democratic. While delegations from other states could look forward to open arms, hotel rooms, Chicago hospitality and transportation from hotel to convention hall, we had none of these things. And we had no money. We could not even afford to bring our delegation to Chicago.
A large black man, Walter Turner, recognizing me, stopped us and asked if he could help. We explained our dilemma, and Turner said he could get us rooms at a nearby hotel. When we answered that we had already been turned away from that place, he insisted on trying, and after a moment of secret conversation with the manager, told us we had the required rooms.
But how could we pay for them? How could we pay to bring the delegates who were to occupy those rooms to Chicago?
Turner suggested we ask his employer, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, popularly known as the Black Muslims. Taylor and I were incredulous. Why would the leader of America’s most prominent black separatist group, a man who forbade his followers to register and vote and who regularly castigated whites as “blue-eyed devils,” pay to bring a group made up of a majority of those devils to a meeting whose whole point was voting and political participation?
Nevertheless, Turner arranged for me to meet Mr. Muhammad in his Hyde Park mansion. I told my sad tale to him and an audience of Muslim men and women. He listened politely and asked me to return for a meal the following day.
At the next evening’s dinner, men and women sat at separate tables. He surveyed them before giving me an answer, asking the women first if he should give me a donation. Each one emphatically said no. “We don’t know this young man,” one said. “He’ll give all the money to the devils,” said another.
The men were less negative, but many said no as well.
Mr. Muhammad heard them out, and then said to me, “Mr. Bond, in the Nation of Islam, we listen to the women, but we do what the men say to do.” He gave me $3,000 in crisp $100 bills.
That money brought our delegation to Chicago and helped pay our bills.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad helped the Georgia Loyal National Democrats force the Democratic Party to make good on promises it made in 1964—the delegate selection would be democratic, fair, and open.
He literally changed the face of the Democratic Party, and I have wondered, from that day to this, why he did it.
Did he envision the eventual entry of the Black Muslims into politics? Could he have imagined that his successor, Louis Farrakhan, would register to vote in 1983 and place the nation in the service of a black candidate for the presidency of the United States? Was this gift the small opening wedge signaling a transition within the Nation? Or did he simply harbor fond memories of the Georgia he had left in the 1920s, the Georgia where he’d been born Elijah Poole? Or did he long for a Georgia—and an America—that might have been?
Only 3 percent of the delegates to this year’s Republican convention in San Diego were black, a figure which says much about the party’s politics and their programs. Twenty percent were millionaires.
The Democrats who gather in Chicago in 1996 look much more like America, and in part, they have the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to thank for it.
Eugene McCarthy and a New Politics
As the co-chair of the Loyalists, Bond seconded the nomination of Eugene McCarthy as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 1968. But the majority of delegates selected Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the party’s nominee. When Humphrey failed to choose a solidly antiwar running mate—he selected US Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine—he angered delegates who had supported the candidacies of Robert F. Kennedy, McCarthy, and George McGovern. So Richard Goodwin, a former speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy, approached Bond, whose antiwar and pro–civil rights politics were well-known, about the possibility of being nominated for vice president. Bond agreed, and Wisconsin delegate Ted Warhafsky rose to nominate him. Standing before the microphone, the liberal Warhafsky stated that because he and other Wisconsin delegates were interested in making “the American dream a reality not only for affluent delegates but for the young people who march in the parks looking for quality in life,” the Wisconsin Democrats “wish to offer in nomination the wave of the future. It may be a symbolic nomination tonight, but it may not