Primary tabs

KVOS Special: Julian Bond Interview

Collection Search

My Bookmark Lists

Transcript

Two Negro senators before that.
OK.
This is Julian Bond, the 27-year-old legislator
from the state of Georgia, who was denied
his seat by his colleagues.
And finally, after about two years of battling,
only this January managed to, through the US Supreme Court,
gain his seat in the Georgia legislature.
I'm Duane Trecker.
With me is Dr. Manfred Vernon, Chairman
of the Political Science Department at Western
Washington State College.
We are very happy to have you with us here Mr. Bond.
I know that you are the spokesman of many,
for many causes and concerns.
Your interests are manifold in that they
touch foreign affairs, as well as domestic affairs.
And since you are very clearly identified with certain ideas
as far as Vietnam is concerned, with your kind permission,
let us start first on this.
And perhaps very briefly might you
suggest how you feel about the matter of Vietnam.
Well, my position is that the things that the United
States does overseas are related to its behavior towards people
inside the country, and that there's
a relationship between what I consider
our aggressive behavior in Vietnam
and the treatment of minority groups inside the United
States.
But taken separately, both are wrong.
And taken together, they're even wronger.
I imagine that, or rather I'm of the opinion
that our involvement in Vietnam is wrong.
It's illegal, it's immoral, it's un-Christian, it's un-Buddist,
it's un-Jewish, it's un-Catholic.
We ought not be there.
We ought to disengage ourselves.
And that there will never be decent treatment for minority
peoples in this country until we begin
to concentrate on freedom and justice and equality
for those at home, and stop worrying
about puppet dictatorships and despotic governments
in Southeast Asia.
In other words, you make it a special point
of identifying yourself as a Negro
with the stand against Vietnam.
Right, right.
I think you can be white and be against the war in Vietnam.
That's right, but I mean, you make
it a special point as a Negro.
Similar observations, of course, have been made by others.
And I think one of the last ones would have been the Reverend
Martin Luther King.
Right.
Who has come out in such a fashion.
On the other hand, you would also
probably say that there are also many Negroes who
would not share your view.
No, certainly there are a great many who don't hold my position
and who don't hold Dr. King's position.
Part of what I try to do is convince them
that they're wrong and I'm right.
Yes.
No, as you can see in the United States,
there are certain people for, I would think probably
that's a majority of the people of the United States
are in support of the United States government.
And a minority probably opposed to it.
Would you say that that sort of observation
also would hold true for the American Negroes?
Well, I'm not so sure that's correct.
I think there are a majority of people
in this country who just have no feelings toward it one way
or the other.
They're apathetic toward their government.
They're apathetic toward what their government does
domestically, as well as in foreign affairs.
They feel no relationship to what their government does.
They feel they have no control over it.
And that a small minority of people in this country
favor a vigorous prosecution of the war.
And a small majority favors a withdrawal, a deescalation,
a phasing out of the war.
And in between these two groups, there's
a large body of Americans who are completely apolitical.
They have no feelings about the war one way or the other.
Unless they've been touched by it personally.
Unless they have a son fighting there.
Unless they have a father, a husband.
Unless it touches them in some personal way,
they have no feelings toward it one way or the other.
Are you saying that you don't advocate
just an immediate unilateral pullout,
but you said phasing down of the war?
No, I'm saying that there are among the anti-war people,
there are different positions about the way to end the war.
Mine is to get out, to leave.
We should have left yesterday.
And lacking that, we should leave tomorrow.
But how would you answer to the people you leave behind?
Leave behind?
Well, which people?
The Marshall Ky?
Ky.
I don't think he's due an answer.
I mean, the man has, is a puppet, is a dictator.
If he's worried, if he's in fear of his life,
I think we could take him with us.
Perhaps we could set him up in some other country all his own.
But I don't feel we have the responsibility to him
that we have to the hundreds and thousands of ordinary citizens
in Vietnam who are victims of both sides in this war, who
are being killed and murdered on every occasion by both sides
in this war.
I think our responsibility is to them and not to the Marshall
Ky's.
Now when you say that we should pull out first to begin with,
you call Ky a puppet, an American puppet.
You say that.
Then you talk about pulling out.
And since you just mentioned there's also
many people, victims on both sides,
would you then suggest the same to happen
that the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong also pull out?
Well, they can't pull out of their own country.
See, we're in two different situations.
We are the outsiders.
The Americans are the invaders.
We are the ones who have come from another part of the globe
into their part of the globe.
You can't, by any stretch of the imagination,
make a correlation between our position there
and the position of the forces of the National Liberation
Front, who are largely Southerners.
Or the position of the regular army
forces of North Vietnam, who are after all, Vietnamese people.
They speak, they have a common language.
But they've crossed the national border though, haven't they?
What sort of national border is drawn
at Michigan State University?
I mean, there's no national border.
That's one country.
Now we have a similar situation, however,
in North and South Korea.
Exactly.
And East and West Germany.
Right.
How about that?
Well, there's again, a difference
between a Chinese soldier coming from China
into North Korea and an American soldier coming from the United
States of America, or rather than a South Korean
coming from South Korea into North Korea.
I see a tremendous difference in that.
In other words, you wouldn't.
I see one as a citizen of one part of this divided
country saying, I want unification
or I want a togetherness, I don't
like a political situation, and the other part,
I want to change it.
And the other situation is an outsider, an invader,
an aggressor coming in and saying,
I don't like what goes on here and I want to change it.
I don't think the two situations are exactly alike.
The Chinese invaded North Korea.
The United States has invaded Vietnam.
And what about the Russians in East Germany?
Right, the Russians did in Hungary exactly the same thing
that we are doing in Vietnam.
They are trying to put down.
They put down a legitimate revolt
on behalf of the people of Hungary.
And we are trying to put down a legitimate revolt on the part
of the people of Vietnam.
Did the Russians do that at the request
of the constitutive government?
Well, such as it was.
And I can imagine you could say that we are doing it
as a result at the request of one
of the constitutive governments.
I say, I'm saying the Russians were wrong.
Just as we are wrong in this instance.
That the Russians having done it is no excuse for us doing it.
But you see the coming back to the example,
you would then tolerate if the North Vietnamese would today
invade South, the North Koreans would invade South Korea?
No, I don't, I don't tolerate invasions by,
or violent uprising by any group of people
against any other group of people for any means.
But I'm more tolerable, if you can not
tolerate and be more tolerable.
I'd be much more tolerable of a citizen
of one part of a divided country going to another part
than I would be a person who is completely an outsider.
The Chinese in that equation were completely without right,
without correctness, to enter themselves into that situation.
Just as the Americans find themselves
in the Chinese position in Vietnam.
I do not know whether you have just read last night
and this morning's paper, but there
is a report that 16 senators, to wit Senator Fulbright
and Senator Morse and Senator McGovern
and whoever they may be have been described
as adopting the war, and have come out with a statement
to Ho Chi Minh suggesting that he better
reconsider the whole matter and give in
to the concept of a negotiated peace.
Otherwise, America will not move out
and that they will back this sort of concept.
How do you feel about this development?
Well, I think their phrase was that the United States would
not leave until there's an honorable peace.
Every end of a war is a negotiated settlement.
If you and I fight and I defeat you,
we negotiate the terms of the cessation of hostilities.
If we fight to a stalemate, we still
negotiate a settlement of hostilities.
If the United States withdraws, I
imagine there's got to be some negotiation of how it's
going to take place, at one rate under, what conditions
and so forth.
My position is a little advanced of those men in the Senate
and the House of Representatives,
that I'm saying that the United States ought to leave.
But I think it's really ridiculous
to ask Ho Chi Minh to negotiate with the United
States of America.
I mean, it's as though I came into your home
and beat you up, and then asked you to negotiate with me.
You shouldn't negotiate with me, you should throw me out.
Of course, then you stay home.
Then I see if they accept your idea, that Vietnam is a house.
Then at best, Ho Chi Minh lives in one apartment
and I'm entering another apartment.
And so all I would suggest I'm here
because somebody's asked me, why don't you
stay in your apartment also.
I don't know whether that's what makes sense to you.
It makes a little bit of sense, but not a great deal.
And the reason that it doesn't is
because first, I don't hold that there are two apartments.
I hold that there's one big living room
and that we're all in it.
That are both Ho Chi Minh and Marshall Ky in it.
In fact, Marshall Ky is from Hanoi,
and probably he ought to go back up there.
He's probably afraid for his life if he did.
But what I hold, is that it's one country.
That a group of people who lived in the south,
who were indigenous to the south, who were southerners,
began a revolt against what they considered
to be an undemocratic and despotic government
in the south.
They began to receive aid from people in the north,
and that aid is still fairly minute in comparison
to the amounts of aid that come from the other side.
And then it still retains a great many
of the characteristics of a civil war.
It's exactly the same characteristics
of our Revolutionary War when the French gave us
a great deal of help.
Without whose help, we would not have won.
Like our civil war, when the northern part of this country
invaded the southern part, it's a dispute
between two forces within one geophysical area,
and ought to be settled, I think, by them,
without interference from those on the outside.
Now war, of course, has been with mankind.
All of us hope that in your time,
mankind can live without war.
So I have been wondering, because obviously, you're
not the only one in this country to have a stand that you just
have developed.
I am wondering as to the selectivity with which
some people speak about war, there
seem to be a heavy concern with some of the injustices done
as the United States.
People in the case of Vietnam, we
don't talk so much about Korea, even in retrospect.
But we do not talk actually about other wars.
For instance, today when you feel
indignant about the American presence
in the case of South Vietnam, do you
feel indignant, for instance, as to the presence of the United
Arab Republic or Saudi Arabia in a country of a third nation,
namely Yemen?
Does that bother you?
Certainly it does.
But let me make this one point.
I live in the United States of America.
And I feel when my country does something,
if it does something I approve of or disagree with,
it nevertheless does it in my name,
because I'm one of the citizens of this country.
And I feel a greater responsibility
toward setting my country straight
than I do toward setting the North Vietnamese straight.
Now no one can deny that the North Vietnamese
engage in acts of terror.
I mean, that's a matter of public record.
But is it my place to say it's OK for the US
to do the same sort of thing just because they do it?
No, I think my place is to say they commit acts of terror.
I realize it, I don't like it, it's wrong.
But my country does things that are wrong and it's my country,
it's my job to set my country straight.
Now of course, there are again, as I have suggested before,
a number of people talking against the injustice
of their country.
You, as a spokesman, people feel quite emphatic that
because of the involvement of this country in Vietnam,
the problems of the Negro cannot be solved.
In other words, the solution of that problem
will depend on the moving out of the United States forces
and government from Vietnam.
Do you sincerely feel that as far as the United
States is concerned, I'm talking now
about the federal government.
I'm talking about the government in other words,
the country at large.
I'm not talking about your home state
Georgia or Alabama in the deep south.
Would you say that progress has been made or not?
Certainly progress has been made.
But I look at the figures of expenditures for;
how many people are there in South Vietnam?
13 million?
There are 15 million Negroes in this country.
Certainly not all of them live in poverty.
Some of them live quite well.
But they're certainly more than 15 million poor people
in this country.
Now we spend $27 billion or more a year in Vietnam
for 13 million Vietnamese people with whose condition
I sympathize, but we spend less than 1/12
of that to alleviate the conditions of the more than 15
million poor people in the United States of America.
We have dispatched to Vietnam 350,000 or more federal troops.
Army, members of the armed forces, the Navy, the Air Force
and Marines, and hesitate to send one or two
federal registrars into my state or another part of the Deep
South to encourage American citizens not to be afraid
if they want to register to vote.
I think that's hypocrisy.
I think it's hypocrisy of the worst kind.
I think my government is treating me unfairly,
that it's expressing a concern for people
who are millions of miles, thousands of miles
away from it.
People who have not done any harm to my country
and is not attacking my enemies, who are very much right here
at home.
Now perhaps this sounds too rough a question,
wouldn't you say, for instance, a very thing that we sit here
or that you have been elected by the citizens of the state
of Georgia, that the Supreme Court of the United States
rightly, I emphasize, got you into the possession
of your rights and powers, namely
to be rightful representative in the state
legislature of your state, wouldn't you
see that sort of this would be indicative of a rather generous
attitude of this country?
No, I don't think it was generous,
I think it was correct.
Listen, if I, if you do something that's correct to me,
if you do something that's decent and honest and right
to me, I don't think you do it because you're being generous.
I think you're doing it because you know that it's right.
And you're not being generous to me, you're being decent.
You're being honest, you're being correct,
and you're being fair.
That's what I want my country to be, not generous.
I won my case in the Supreme Court
because my position was the correct one,
not because the Supreme Court was generous to me.
Certainly, things are better for Negroes in this country
today than they were a few years ago.
The fact remains that Negroes have been in the United States
for 400 years.
And we are still not treated as are other people who
come to this country from European countries who step off
the boat, and as they step off the boat, they're given a job.
It's very irritating to me that a large population.
When you're not.
Mr. Bond, it's pretty well known that you
oppose the conscription of young American men
to fight in Vietnam, and I guess oppose conscription
of young American men.
How do you feel about the new administration's proposal
on the draft?
Well, I oppose conscription not just for Vietnam,
but for the military generally for a couple of reasons.
First, because it's just obviously unfair.
It sounds laughable, but it's unfair to men,
because it discriminates against men in favor of women.
I don't see any reason why women should not
be drafted into the United States
Army or the Marines, the Air Force
and the other military agencies in this country.
They're certainly capable.
Some of them are much larger than I
am, and certainly much stronger, and probably a great deal more
warlike.
Additionally, it obviously discriminates
against the poorer educated members of our society,
against Negroes and other members of minority groups,
against poor young white men who don't
have the educational qualifications to escape
the draft.
Secondly, because of the nature of the needs of the armed
forces, it always will discriminate.
There are more young men in this country who are
eligible than there are needed.
So that in a typical town, Jon Jones will have to go
and his neighbor Bobby Smith, who lives across the street,
will not.
That's unfair.
It's unfair to place that burden on John Jones and not
to place it on Bobby Smith.
I'd like to see the draft eliminated
completely and replaced with a volunteer army.
A highly paid army, an army that would
be attractive to a young man as a career.
An army that I think, and I think the Pentagon thinks so
also, could function if not as well, if not better,
than the present one that we have now.
But if there would be an end to discrimination in the draft,
for instance, the college student
would be as draftable as anyone else.
Would that make more sense to you?
It'd make a little more sense, but it wouldn't
make completely good sense.
You see, there's still the discrimination
that comes when a small number is needed
and a large number is available.
Yes.
That's just wrong, and can only be eliminated
by either drafting everybody, which certainly is no answer,
or by stop drafting anybody.
Of course, you imply one way or the other,
that there seemed to be a need for armed forces for the time
being.
Well, no, I don't think so, but I think the country thinks so.
It's not about to get rid of the Army.
So given the fact that you have to have the Army,
it ought to be the best and most decent and fairest army.
I was wondering, since we had talked
about several domestic matters, whether we could talk
about what perhaps some people might
consider a new phenomenon, namely
the development of black power.
I wonder if you wouldn't mind to make some observation on this.
No, it seems to me it's a legitimate desire
on the part of Negroes in this country
to achieve political, economic and social power.
Other groups in this country have had it.
The Irish Americans in Massachusetts for one instance.
Italian-Americans in New York might
be said to have Italian power.
Polish people, descendants of Polish people,
and other Eastern European people who live in Chicago
have an effect, an Eastern European power.
They elect to public office people whose last names
are like theirs.
In the southwestern part of this country,
Spanish and Mexican-Americans are beginning
to have Spanish-American power.
They've elected a couple of Spanish-American congressmen
and other Spanish and Mexican-Americans
to public office.
And what black power speaks for Negroes
is exactly the same thing that these other ethnic and minority
groups have had for themselves.
Yeah, of course, you have had many,
when you mention as an example of the legislative personnel,
on the federal level obviously, you
have had many, like Powell for a long, long time,
representative from the major metropolitan areas of Chicago
or Detroit or.
Right.
Incidentally, that shows one rule,
that white people by and large, will not vote for a Negro.
Senator Brooke is the only one of those Negroes
in office on the national level who was elected
by a white constituency.
All of the others had to exercise
what I call black power, in order
to get into public office.
Powell could not have been elected in any other part
of New York City.
Congressman Dawson could not have been elected
in any other part of Chicago.
John Conyers could not have been elected
in any other part but Detroit.
But still, I mean, since they have
been elected as you suggested, mainly by Negro personnel,
would that be indicative that they are the expression
of something like black power?
They are.
I think in some cases, they're a bad expression of it.
Dawson certainly is no shining example
of how a public figure ought to represent his constituency who
are largely poor welfare recipients.
I don't think he's a very good representation
of their desires.
They apparently think so, because they
keep reelecting him, partly because of the vicious control
he exercises over them through his participation in the Daley
machine.
But they are examples.
They happen to be, some of them happen
to be bad examples of black power.
Yeah.
Of course, there has been some kind of thinking,
perhaps wrong kind of thinking in the United States,
as to the extent of black power.
Black power not just being an expression as you
defined it, but something that might
be building to take over somewhat more than you
seemingly suggest.
Well, if that did happen, first, it
would simply be a reversal of roles in this country.
Negros would begin to be doing what white people have
done all along.
I think the reason people fear the term,
is that they, white people particularly think that Negroes
will do to them what white people have been
doing to us for so many years.
But as I see the term, it's neither negative or positive.
It's neither violent or nonviolent.
But in its use, may be any of those things.
I'm hopeful that will be a positive
or a good, a progressive word.
But it could be a very bad one.
Just as white power, if such exists in this country,
can be a benefit to all people.
Or it can be brutal and oppressive and discriminatory
and filled with bigotry.
Would it then be perhaps necessary to redefine
for the convenience of many, what really the term
black power stands for?
I mean--
Well, I think it--
By persons like you?
Well.
Who think some of [INAUDIBLE].
Those who originate the term, Stokely Carmichael
for instance, has time and time again
defined it, only to be told by others, that's not true.
I think if you were to make up a slogan,
call it say, grass power, and say
grass power means the ability of grass to grow,
it's not my position to come and tell you
that you're correct, because it's your slogan that you've
made it up.
Carmichael says that black power means what
I've just said that it means.
And I believe him.
I take him at his word.
He's done it a great many times and he's always being told,
that's not true, that's not what it really means.
It really means this.
It doesn't help Mr. Carmichael's cause though,
does it, when you get groups like Black Panther groups?
Well, it depends on what these groups do.
There are a great many Black Panther groups in this country.
Most of them are just political organization.
They want some kind of political expression for Negroes.
And I think that's a legitimate request, a legitimate desire.
Now then, let me say, do you expect then
as a result of this, changes in the South
that I personally feel are still quite necessary,
even if integration of one kind or the other
has taken place on the education level, particularly
of the higher education level?
Oh, yeah.
There's got to be a change in the social order.
I mean, it wouldn't do any good if every Negro in Georgia
could go to the University of Georgia,
because not all want to go.
Not all need to go.
Everyone doesn't need a college education.
What people need is a decent life.
They need a home and a job and something to eat.
And they don't get that simply by being allowed
to go to the University of Georgia
or being able to sit down at the lunch counter
and order a hamburger.
They need some economic changes in their lives.
That's what society's got to produce.
They should all be allowed to go.
Right.
This is isn't what you're saying.
Yeah.
Right.
They should be allowed to go, but there's
no need for everybody to go.
I mean, we don't need everybody in Washington
to go to this school either.
What about J. Edgar Hoover and the recent pronouncements
by the House subcommittee on appropriations
about apparent affiliations?
Well, what Mr.--
By Mr. Carmichael.
--Hoover was talking about was a series
of meetings that are supposed to have
taken place between Carmichael and a fellow named
Max Stanford.
I don't know if Carmichael and Max Stanford have ever
met together.
But I have met with Max Stanford.
I don't feel myself a dupe or a tool
or being in the hands of the international communist
conspiracy of the Chinese variety.
I think Mr. Hoover's waving the familiar bugaboo
before Americans that says that communists are bad.
That if someone meets with or associates with a communist,
then he is bad and you should therefore never
listen to any more pronouncements he makes.
The other thing about J. Edgar Hoover, some of the things
he's said, ought to reassure Americans
that things are actually all right with the world.
For instance, he says the civil rights
movement has been infiltrated by the Communist Party.
He additionally says that the FBI has infiltrated
the Communist Party.
So what's really happened, I assume from that,
is that the FBI has infiltrated the civil rights movement.
So perhaps what he means is that Stokely Carmichael
has been having meetings with an FBI agent.
Now to come perhaps back again once more
to matters of accomplishing the perfect development as
far as the Negro movement in this country's concerned,
are you, for instance, opposed also to the concept
as I saw in an article this, in the US New and World Report,
are you opposed to this term, integration?
Do you fear that integration itself is something wrong?
I'm opposed to it as it's defined in this country.
For instance, if you have an all white school
and a Negro goes to it, one Negro child
goes to it, that school becomes an integrated school.
I'm opposed to that.
A school is not integrated.
That's one Negro student.
What I'm in favor of is not integration or segregation,
but Negroes and Mexican-Americans
and other minority groups and other poor people
in this country, having a decent life.
That involves to me, neither integration or segregation.
It involves certain economic changes in this country.
It involves a slight distribution
of the wealth of this country.
It involves a chance for all Americans
a decent and productive life.
Now, I'm quite sure of that of course,
this is the majority opinion of the people of the United
States, who I think have come out very clearly in behalf
of integration and do not consider integration
as a matter of having a few people who go to school.
I think it is a little bit more.
It has to do with matters of housing.
It has to do, it has economics, what have you.
Well, that may be so.
I'm sure that there are Americans
who define it that way.

In collections

KVOS Channel 12 Films

Details

Title: KVOS Special: Julian Bond Interview
Description: Georgia State Legislator and Anti Vietnam War activist Julian Bond is interviewed in front of the Old Main building at Western Washington University, by Political Science Department Chairman Manfred Vernon. Julian Bond is introduced by Duayne F. Trecker. The discussion focuses heavily on the war in Vietnam, and topics include pacifism, the draft and conscription, unilateral withdrawal, poverty, racism, race relations, minorities, civil rights, political activism, and Dr. Martin Luther King. Bond, then a 27 year old African-American, had to fight for two years in the Supreme Court before the State of Georgia would recognize the legitimacy of his victory. At the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, Bond was a key member of the "Georgia Loyalist" faction. He was later chairman of the NAACP. This digital object was digitized from 16mm film and contains some brief gaps (for example at the 16:36 mark) that were present in the archived film. Users are advised that this resource includes use of language and terms now outdated and offensive.
Date issued: 1967-05-18
Type of resource: Moving image
Contributor: KVOS-TV (Television station : Bellingham, Wash.) (broadcaster)
Bond, Julian, 1940-2015 (interviewee)
Vernon, Manfred C.
Genre: television programs
interviews
Media type: video/mp4
Form: 16mm film
Related to: KVOS Channel 12 Films
Related item link: http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv75590
Physical location: WaBeCP
Western Washington University
Repository: Center for Pacific Northwest Studies
Access conditions: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This subject is in copyright (subject to U.S. and international copyright laws) and is displayed for educational purposes. For more information about rights or obtaining copies of this resource, please contact the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Western Libraries Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9103, USA (360-650-7534; heritage.resources@wwu.edu) and refer to the collection name and identifier. Any materials cited must be attributed to the KVOS Channel 12 Films, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Western Libraries Heritage Resources, Western Washington University.
Identifier (local): kvos_special_36_03_s69
Identifier (mabel PID): wwu:31416

Video embed code

Copy the HTML below and paste it where you wish to embed the video.