After Lonnie King had recruited him, Bond joined forces with King and Pierce to invite their peers at Morehouse and other schools in the Atlanta University Center (Atlanta University, the Interdenominational Theological Center, and Clark, Morehouse, Morris Brown, and Spelman Colleges) to organize a series of sit-ins targeting segregated lunch counters and restaurants in the downtown area. Reports of the plans spread quickly, and the various school presidents asked the young activists to begin their efforts by first seeking cooperation from the wider community with a public appeal. The students agreed, and Bond and Spelman student Roslyn Pope penned “An Appeal for Human Rights,” a statement protesting racial discrimination in Atlanta that concluded with a promise to act. “We must say in all candor,” Pope and Bond wrote, “that we plan to use every legal and nonviolent means at our disposal to secure full citizenship rights as members of this great democracy of ours.”
The Appeal was published in city newspapers on March 9. The sit-ins began on March 15 at taxpayer-supported lunch counters, restaurants, and cafeterias. Although Bond was frightened by the prospect of landing in jail—Emmett Till was front and center in his thoughts—he led his assigned group of student protesters to the Atlanta City Hall cafeteria. A cafeteria worker called the police, and they soon transported the students to jail. It was Bond’s first arrest.
A Student Voice
While Lonnie King served as chairman of the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR), the organization that directed the Atlanta student movement, Bond worked on publicity, writing and editing a publication called The Student Movement and You.
In April 1960 Bond and other COAHR delegates attended a conference for student activists on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Called together by Ella Baker, the students eventually agreed to establish a permanent organization that would coordinate their various protests in the South. Heeding Baker’s advice that they not align themselves with already established civil rights groups, the students created the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as an independent entity committed to nonviolent direct action, especially grassroots campaigns to empower local black communities. In June 1960, SNCC issued its first publication, the Student Voice, and Bond contributed the following two pieces, the first of which reveals his early passion for writing poetry.
I, too, hear America singing
But from where I stand
I can only hear Little Richard
And Fats Domino.
But sometimes,
I hear Ray Charles
Drowning in his own tears
Or Bird
Relaxing at Camarillo
Or Horace Silver doodling,
Then I don’t mind standing
a little longer.
———
Students from Clark, Morehouse, Morris Brown, Spelman College, the Blayton School of Accounting, Atlanta University, and the Interdenominational Theological Center have come together in a united effort to break the shackles of immorality, archaic traditions, and complacency in an energetic struggle for human rights.
On Wednesday, March 9th, students from six of the institutions published an “Appeal for Human Rights” in three of Atlanta’s leading newspapers. The “Appeal for Human Rights” is an expression of the students’ dissatisfaction with the treatment of Negroes in Atlanta and Georgia in particular, and discrimination and segregation wherever they may exist. The students of the Atlanta University Center hoped that an appeal of this nature would be successful in provoking the consciences of the people of Atlanta, Georgia, the nation, and the world to refrain from the immoral practices of refusing to grant to some those guaranteed rights which are due every member of the human race.
Tuesday, March 15th, prompted by the same spirit which produced the “Appeal for Human Rights,” while requesting service in nine different eating establishments housed in publicly supported buildings, seventy-seven students were arrested in seven of the restaurants. The two establishments where no arrests were made were located in federal buildings. One of the students, a minor, has been banned from Georgia.
On April 15th, five of the six signers of the “Appeal for Human Rights,” and two students who were not originally arrested for their request for service, were also indicted. The eighty-three students are now awaiting adjudication for violation of Georgia laws. They face possible maximum sentences and fines of forty years in jail and twenty-seven thousand dollars per person.
At this time, students have initiated a program of “selective buying” aimed at large food store chains in an effort to secure equal job opportunities.
On May 17th, in observance of the sixth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision regarding desegregation of public schools, three thousand students from the Atlanta University Center began a peaceful march to the Capitol of the State of Georgia. They were defiantly met by one hundred armed state troopers, sporting three-foot cudgels, tear gas bombs and fire hoses. Upon orders from the chief of the Atlanta Police Department, the students were rerouted.
The Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights is constantly seeking opportunities to negotiate with governmental and private business officials to help secure equal rights through understanding.
The struggle for human rights is a constant fight, and one which the students do not plan to relinquish until full equality is won for all men.
Let Freedom Ring
The Atlanta Daily World, a conservative African American newspaper, did not enthusiastically support COAHR and its desegregation campaigns. To counter the publication’s conservative voice, Bond and his friends joined with progressive black business leaders to found a new newspaper, the Atlanta Inquirer, in August 1960. Bond served as a reporter and then as an assistant and associate editor for the fledgling newspaper. He also ghost-wrote a column for Lonnie King. Three excerpts from the column, “Let Freedom Ring,” including a reflection on a SNCC conference held in Atlanta in October 1960, are below.
It is a special thrill these days to be a Negro and in the South. Perhaps more than any other Americans, we can fully understand the “Spirit of ’76” which began the greatest dream of freedom the world has ever known.
Our struggle today is to make this dream a reality for all Americans.
Negro students this year have written one of the most illustrious chapters of American history. By courageously and uncompromisingly embracing the cause of dignity and freedom, the students have made the American people aware of their un-American treatment of Negroes, and at the same time, have made Negro Americans realize that their just desires are within their grasp. The students’ protests have been the rallying point from which entire Negro communities have moved forward together to achieve their long-awaited and long-withheld rights.
The students’ struggle is, in effect, the struggle of all men who wish to be free. The students, through their parents, teachers, and ministers, have learned that America believes in the principle of equality. The students intend to make sure that this principle is not ignored anywhere in America.
In keeping with the struggle for human dignity, it would seem that it would be good sense for Negroes to spend their money in places where they know they will be treated in a dignified manner. If Negro Atlantans know of businesses downtown where they will be treated with the dignity and respect that is due paying customers and if they can be assured that their job applications will be received with the same willingness as their money presently is, then they should by all means patronize only these stores. If not, Negroes should give their money exclusively to establishments within the Negro community where they know from past experience