in the 136 Assembly District because I want to fight racial injustice in the state of Georgia and in the United States. I know that this body has the power to change the course of race relations in Georgia and thereby in the United States.
I intend to do this within and without the legislature, seated or unseated. I have promised my constituents that I shall not relinquish the struggle for human dignity. I intend to keep that promise.
There are those who would say civil rights is one thing and politics another. I reject that concept. I contend that we must build a new politics in Georgia, a humanistic politics concerned with the needs of the people. This approach must transcend race, creed, or status in life.
While I personally know that many of my opponents would deny those of my race their constitutional rights and have aligned themselves with racist politicians, I do not wish to dignify their attacks. In a telegram of support for my position to the governor and the speaker of the House, Dr. Martin Luther King said:
“It is interesting also to note that many of Mr. Bond’s political colleagues and critics do not feel that they were violating the U.S. Constitution when they sought to perpetuate racial segregation from their vaunted positions, or at the very least, turned a deaf ear when their friends and colleagues supported segregation and blatant racial discrimination.”
Dr. King also said:
“I can vividly recall back in 1954, when the same Georgia legislature resounded with criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court and its decision on school segregation, but there was no such question of loyalty then.”
I do not wish to open the past. I am willing to look forward to the future. But I must assert, assert with passion, that Georgia has the opportunity to lead the movement for humanitarian politics. I also assert that history will prove that segregation and discrimination will vanish from this state. My opponents cannot stop that development.
Let us remember that Negroes have died for the right to vote in Georgia. They are now saying what good does it do us to get the right to vote, to elect representatives, only if those elected must face “attitude tests” or loyalty oaths.
I further assert this body has no basis to expel me or to censure me. It has the duty to me and to my constituents and to the State of Georgia to quit making a mockery of democracy. This body must recognize the right to dissent. This body must realize that the only just course it can take is to seat.
For at this moment this House decides not just on Julian Bond and his constituents but on whether Georgia will take steps toward a totalitarian state by curbing the right to free speech. This must not occur. It is on these principles I stand. I welcome your support.
The Rules Committee met shortly after the swearing-in ceremony to debate the petitions challenging Bond’s right to be seated. Bond’s lawyers, Howard Moore and Charles Morgan, claimed that their client had a constitutional right of dissent and that the exercise of this right did not disqualify him from taking his seat. Under interrogation, Bond affirmed that he supported the SNCC statement opposing the war, and he denied that he had ever encouraged war dissenters to break US laws: “I have never suggested or counseled or advocated that any one other person burn their draft card. In fact, I have mine in my pocket and will produce it if you wish. I do not advocate that people should break laws.”40 Following the committee’s recommendation, the full House voted 184-12 to refuse Bond his seat.
The entire day in the House rattled Bond, as he recalled two years later:
I had been there [in the House] two or three times before. But on one occasion I’d been with a group of students, led by Dr. Howard Zinn, that had been expelled from the legislature. The man who is now speaker of the House, George L. Smith, was speaker then. One of the members arose on the floor and said to him, ‘Mr. Speaker, Mr. Doorkeeper, get those niggers out of the white folks’ section.’ The speaker ordered the doorkeeper to clear the gallery, to put us out of what was then the white section of the gallery.
The second occasion I’d been up there was one day I went there with James Forman. While standing outside the door of the chamber, a white fellow came out and said to Forman—I don’t know if this guy was a legislator or not—but he said to Forman, “I’m the meanest man in Merriweather County. My daddy and me used to snatch niggers off the train and kill them.” And he swung at Forman. Forman pulled back, and he just sort of brushed his chest.
Those two incidents really put the fear of God in me. I thought that members of the legislature and all of the hangers-on who are always running around the hall chewing tobacco and spitting on the floor, I thought that these men, and I still think some of them are capable of murder and mayhem. I didn’t know if I would be physically assaulted or what. I was very glad I wasn’t.41
I Consider Myself a Pacifist
Now a figure of national repute, Bond appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press on January 30, 1966, to discuss the House’s refusal to seat him as the elected member of the 136th District. Excerpts from the interview—conducted by journalists Robert Novak, Max Robinson, Tom Wicker, Herbert Kaplow, and Ray Scherer—appear below.
Mr. Novak: Mr. Bond, there have been a great number of explanations of just why the Georgia House of Representatives refused to seat you.
In your own words, what is your explanation for this?
Mr. Bond: I think the people involved in the fight to deny me my seat had different reasons for acting. They charged me with misconduct and questioned my credulity and said that if I took the oath of office, which requires you to swear allegiance to the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the State of Georgia, I would not be credible, I could not be believed, and therefore should not be allowed to take the oath.
Mr. Novak: You don’t feel there were any racist overtones to this?
Mr. Bond: Oh, certainly I do. I don’t think that race was the sole factor involved, but I think—
Mr. Novak: You do think it was a factor?
Mr. Bond: Yes, I do.
Mr. Novak: Do you think a white man taking your position would have been seated?
Mr. Bond: I don’t know if a white man took my position whether he would be seated, but I think my employment with what some people consider a militant civil rights group, my race, the statement itself, were all factors in the eventual outcome.
Mr. Novak: Do you feel that your subscribing to the SNCC statement in any way did compromise your loyalty to the United States?
Mr. Bond: No, not at all.
Mr. Novak: Would you fight for your country under any conditions?
Mr. Bond: I consider myself a pacifist, if you mean would I bear arms.
Mr. Novak: Would you have borne arms in World War II, for example?
Mr. Bond: That is sort of a hypothetical question. I don’t believe I would.
Mr. Novak: Then you are not a selective pacifist? There are no conditions under which you would bear arms
