has done, that American Negroes have a special responsibility to support this country’s foreign policy or that dissenting from that policy equals disloyalty is simply not true.
Neither Negroes nor Jews nor Italian-Americans nor any other group of Americans has any special responsibility to support any policy— domestic or foreign—of the American government.
It is rather the highest duty of a citizen to seek to correct his government when he thinks it is mistaken.
If anything, the callous treatment Negroes have received from this country for the last 400 years indicates our first concern ought to be with making democracy work here instead of in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia.
If Negroes seek the same treatment accorded other Americans, then can we not be allowed the equal right of dissent? If Senators Wayne Morris and William Fulbright can suggest that this country is wrong in Vietnam, then cannot Dr. King be given the same right?
Those who criticize the war are now being told that we are somehow responsible for American deaths in Southeast Asia, when in fact if we had our way, not another American boy would die there.
We who oppose the war are told that Ho Chi Minh will next attack California if we do not stop him in Vietnam, when in fact he only wishes to rid his country of foreign troops. The only foreign troops in Vietnam are those of America and her allies. The Vietnamese have been fighting against outsiders for 25 years. Could we not let them have the right we grant to most other countries, the right to determine what form of government they shall have?
We who oppose the war are reminded of some “commitment” our government has to Vietnam, when in fact that “commitment,” made years ago to the puppet dictatorship of Diem, called for 450 military advisers. We now, several other dictatorships later, have 400,000 American troops there; and President Johnson wants 200,000 more.
We who oppose the war are told that the United States has treaties that require our presence there, when in fact we are refusing to uphold the Geneva Convention which calls for prohibition of foreign troops in Vietnam.
We support a man there who says his greatest hero is Adolf Hitler; we have denied a chance for elections in Vietnam until recently, even though former president Eisenhower said in 1956 that had an election been held, 80% of the people of South Vietnam would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. Do we only support democracy and free elections when the results please America?
Congress now spends over $27 billion dollars a year in Vietnam, while Atlanta’s War on Poverty goes begging.
President Johnson has declared that we can have “guns and butter” both, when in fact Sargent Shriver, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, said a year ago that “because of Vietnam, we cannot do all that we should or all that we would like to do.”
Of the major civil rights groups, CORE, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Southern Conference Educational Fund have all stated their opposition to the war.
The list of Negro leaders who oppose the war is nearly as long as those on record in favor of it. The Atlanta Inquirer is correct in calling for other Negroes to make their positions known, but incorrect in attacking those who oppose this war as disloyal.
I was one of many Americans who voted for President Johnson in 1964 because he said then, “We seek no wider war.” He said then that American boys would never fight a land war in Asia.
Nearly four years later, a great many Americans wonder if the difference we perceived, on this issue, between Johnson and Goldwater was so great.
Finally, the Inquirer should remember that Congress has made provisions in law for those young men who are opposed to war and military service. To young men morally or religiously opposed to the war to register their convictions under the law, as have 78 students at Morehouse College, is to ask that Americans act on their consciences.
Although the Inquirer did not contact me for its story of what Negro elected officials think about the war, I would like to make my position clear.
I oppose the war. It is wrong. My country has made a mistake. It can correct that mistake by arranging, as soon as possible, to disengage itself from Vietnam. I urge every young man—and the mothers of young men facing military service—to search their hearts to see whether they are willing to lend themselves to this war. If they find themselves unable to do so, then they certainly must in good faith seek the congressionally outlined alternatives to military service.
I would urge all Americans, black or white, to remember that your country is pledged to support your right and your duty to criticize it.
There are those like Georgia’s senior senator, Richard Russell, who maintain that we should not have gone to Vietnam in the first place but must remain now that we are there. If I found myself in a house on fire and knew I should never have entered the house, I would not stay simply because I was there. I would get the hell out as fast as I could.
Sincerely,
Julian Bond
Elijah Muhammad and the 1968 Democratic National Convention
In this column, published in the Chicago Tribune in 1996, Bond implicitly challenges the standard narrative that Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad was anti-political, opposed to participation in electoral politics because of its domination by white men. In recounting Muhammad’s support, Bond refers to his good friend Taylor Branch, whose chronicle of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and history of the modern civil rights movement was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. Bond also makes reference to the Georgia Loyal National Democrats, an integrated group that challenged the delegation led by segregationist Governor Lester Maddox at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Bond co-chaired the Loyalists as they won the right to be seated on the convention floor.
Taylor Branch and I were walking despondently down a hot street in Chicago’s Loop in August of 1968, a week before the Democratic convention began. With three others, we were the advance guard of the 60-plus member Georgia Loyal National Democratic Delegation to the 1968 Democratic convention. The Loyalists were a rump group set up to challenge the handpicked, overwhelmingly white, segregationist, and overwhelmingly pro–George Wallace official Georgia delegation.
There had been no election of delegates in our state—Georgia’s party chair had simply handpicked them. Georgia’s rank-and-file Democrats— even then heavily black—had no say in who would represent them at the convention to write a platform and choose their party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees.
Our group was integrated and loyally Democratic. While delegations from other states could look forward to open arms, hotel rooms, Chicago hospitality and transportation from hotel to convention hall, we had none of these things. And we had no money. We could not even afford to bring our delegation to Chicago.
A large black man, Walter Turner, recognizing me, stopped us and asked if he could help. We explained our dilemma, and Turner said he could get us rooms at a nearby hotel. When we answered that we had already been turned away from that place, he insisted on trying, and after a moment of secret conversation with the manager, told us we had the required rooms.
But how could we pay for them? How could we pay to bring the delegates who were to occupy those
