Private: Reflections on Julian Bond

by Theodore M. Shaw, Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights, University of North Carolina School of Law

Julian Bond’s passing left me with a great sense of sadness. In my mind’s eye, Julian Bond always had a dual identity. I always saw the young Julian Bond ― barely twenty, incredibly handsome, eloquent, and fearless ― who was a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and one of the young Turks of the Civil Rights Movement. He was a contemporary of Martin Luther King, Jr., Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Bob Moses, Andy Young, Ralph Abernathy, Whitney Young, Stokely Carmichael, and the other Movement leaders. Yet, with John Lewis and others, he bridged generations. He was courageous. Bond was in his twenties when he ran for a seat in the Georgia legislature. His fellow legislators despised him for his civil rights activism and his opposition to the Vietnam War. Their attempt to deny him his seat failed only because he took his legal battle to the U.S. Supreme Court, vindicating constitutional principle.

I remember when I became aware of Julian Bond. I was a boy, and I saw him in Jet and Ebony magazines, which seemingly were read in every black household. We were collectively proud of Julian as a young leader in the struggle for our collective liberation from racial oppression and subordination. He was the complete package. The first time I saw Julian Bond in person was at Wesleyan University as a college student when he came to speak to an intimate gathering at the black cultural center, known as the Malcolm X House. He was dynamic, charismatic, and powerful. Over the years Bond spent a good deal of time speaking to college students, with whom he would always remain connected. That evening stayed with me over the many years that followed. He talked about the role of young people in the Civil Rights Movement and reminded us that he and the other members of SNCC, the sit-in demonstrators, the freedom riders, and many of the marchers in Birmingham and Selma to Montgomery, were the ages we were as college students, or younger. He spoke of the importance of activism and the power of protest. Looking back to that evening, I am struck by the fact that he was still in his thirties. His life was not yet half over, and he had been a national figure for more than a dozen years. He had been nominated for vice president of the United States at the age of 26, even before he was constitutionally eligible. Julian Bond was a meteor.

I recall how Bond ended his talk that evening. He read the great W.E.B. DuBois’ Credo, a tribute to a downtrodden people and a powerfully poetic statement of hope in their potential and belief in their humanity. While I knew many of the writings of DuBois, I did not know Credo before that evening. Now, I look back and understand with even more clarity what DuBois’ words must have meant to Bond, who, like Martin Luther King, Jr., suffered barbs and criticism even from some within the Civil Rights Movement for his opposition to the war in Vietnam:

“I believe in the Prince of Peace. I believe that war is murder. I believe that armies and navies at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong; and I believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength.”

And I remember Bond concluded with DuBois’ transcendently soaring conclusion:

“Finally, I believe in Patience―patience with the weakness of the weak, and the strength of the strong, the prejudice of the ignorant and the ignorance of the blind; patience with the tardy triumph of joy and the mad chastening of sorrow―patience with God!”

DuBois’ Credo remains with me, and for that I thank Julian Bond.

Years later, I would come to know Julian Bond. I can’t say that we were personally close, but as actors in the continuing struggle for civil and human rights, we were fellow travelers. We were on panels and at conferences together, and I was Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund when he was Chairman of the Board of the NAACP. We strategized, met, advocated, and marched together. We were at social events from time to time. In his later years, Julian Bond continued to speak out against discrimination against African Americans, but he also sought equality for gays and lesbians. He addressed the continuing chasm between the rich and the poor.

Even as I watched Julian Bond change with time, I was always conscious of his duality. There always remained for me the handsome, young, courageous, and fearless Julian Bond, at whom I marveled and whom I wanted to emulate. And there was the Julian Bond who, even as time passed, became the elder statesman and the old warrior who reminded us that the fire and passion for justice need not dim with the passage of time. I was blessed to come to know him, but I cannot claim that we were close. He was the great Julian Bond, and I always stood back a little in awe of who and what he was.