University of Virginia Library

Robert Gillmore

A Matter Of Muscle

"It is violent and criminal,"
Georgia state legislator Julian Bond
told a local audience Sunday night,
"for black children to get a poor
education and 'criminal' for blacks
to compose a disproportionate
share of the Vietnam casualties,
making blacks first in war, last in
peace, and seldom in the hearts of
our countrymen."

"But it is even more violent,"
he continued (according to an
excellent account by Cavalier Daily
reporter Barry Levine) "to show
more interest in music, in drugs, in
the romantic rhetoric of revolution,
the ennobling sacrifice of
self-enforced poverty, than in the
very real problems of human
existence that afflicts so many poor
people in this country."

"The rhetoric of the last 20
years of black struggle has to be
transformed into action."

***

The last time I talked to Bond
was in the back of a car on the way
from Albany airport to
Williamstown, where he was to
make another speech. I was struck
then by the modesty of the man,
the understatement in his voice, his
dress and even in his ideas. His talk
in its lack of passion was almost
chilly and it seemed to match the
frozen February morning as the car
winded over the snow-and-ice
covered Hoosac Range.

He remarked casually that if
Massachusetts' black senator,
Edward Brooke, were nominated
for the vice presidency, the
Republicans would get most of the
black vote for the first time since
1928 - even though Brooke only
had the number-two spot, even
though he was Republican and, as
Washington Post columnist William
Raspberry noted the other day, a
liberal Republican first and a black
man second.

Had Not Changed

So it seemed that,
fundamentally, Bond had not
changed at all. Yes, the hair was
longer, the coat was shinier and the
rhetoric was fierce. But, unlike
much of the utter silliness which
passes for politics today, Bond's
approach to the amelioration of
inequality - both black and white
- remains impeccably realistic.

And I would suggest to all those
who would advance opportunities
with all possible speed would do
very well to heed Bond's criticisms
of "the romantic rhetoric of
revolution" and, more, to follow
his career as a model.

Yes, there is only one black
senator and twelve black
congressmen. But do liberals owe
their presence to either the
Panthers or the Weatherman?

Spirit of Moderation

There is coming, I think for
good, a new and growing spirit of
moderation in Southern politics.
Witness both the rhetoric and the
reforms of Florida's Reuben
Askew, Georgia's Jimmy Carter and
South Carolina's John West,
Arkansas' Dale Bumpers and
Virginia's Linwood Holton. Is this
moderation due to the newly-found
goodness of Southern Democrats?
Not at all. In the past, even when
there was such amity, the voters
punished it.

Rather, the black congressmen
and the reemerging new deal for
southern blacks is the result solely
of the oldest, most fundamental,
most enduring and most potent
black power - black vote power.

And that power is not increased
with "black studies," berets and
silly talk - or even serious talk. It's
not a matter, really, of speculative
thought.

It's a matter of political muscle,
the same muscle, for example, that
Mayor Daley knows so well, the
muscle of voter organization.

And when SNCC and the
NAACP first went into the South,
it was to build political muscle.
Medgar Evers, his brother Charles,
Julian Bond and countless nameless
others led this effort at its
beginning.

And today the long and
violent hours of educating and
organizing are finally bearing fruit.
Southern blacks have forged for
themselves a political sword.

And the power of that sword
will be directly proportional to the
number of hours - to the sum total
of human effort - that is expended
in increasing the Southern black
electoral power.

Legislative Seats

The few Southern legislative
seats and mayoralties can be
increased to Congressional seats; in
time, blacks could have even more
than the strength of organized labor
in state-wide votes - but it is all a
matter of muscle.

And the larger point here is that
effective political action begins
with (1) a clear knowledge of what
is possible - what is truly the
shortest and fastest distance
between two points and - and even
more important - (2) the desire,
the commitment to spend enough
of one's life to making the possible
real.

Julian Bond is the master of
both.