his employer, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, popularly known as the Black Muslims. Taylor and I were incredulous. Why would the leader of America’s most prominent black separatist group, a man who forbade his followers to register and vote and who regularly castigated whites as “blue-eyed devils,” pay to bring a group made up of a majority of those devils to a meeting whose whole point was voting and political participation?
Nevertheless, Turner arranged for me to meet Mr. Muhammad in his Hyde Park mansion. I told my sad tale to him and an audience of Muslim men and women. He listened politely and asked me to return for a meal the following day.
At the next evening’s dinner, men and women sat at separate tables. He surveyed them before giving me an answer, asking the women first if he should give me a donation. Each one emphatically said no. “We don’t know this young man,” one said. “He’ll give all the money to the devils,” said another.
The men were less negative, but many said no as well.
Mr. Muhammad heard them out, and then said to me, “Mr. Bond, in the Nation of Islam, we listen to the women, but we do what the men say to do.” He gave me $3,000 in crisp $100 bills.
That money brought our delegation to Chicago and helped pay our bills.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad helped the Georgia Loyal National Democrats force the Democratic Party to make good on promises it made in 1964—the delegate selection would be democratic, fair, and open.
He literally changed the face of the Democratic Party, and I have wondered, from that day to this, why he did it.
Did he envision the eventual entry of the Black Muslims into politics? Could he have imagined that his successor, Louis Farrakhan, would register to vote in 1983 and place the nation in the service of a black candidate for the presidency of the United States? Was this gift the small opening wedge signaling a transition within the Nation? Or did he simply harbor fond memories of the Georgia he had left in the 1920s, the Georgia where he’d been born Elijah Poole? Or did he long for a Georgia—and an America—that might have been?
Only 3 percent of the delegates to this year’s Republican convention in San Diego were black, a figure which says much about the party’s politics and their programs. Twenty percent were millionaires.
The Democrats who gather in Chicago in 1996 look much more like America, and in part, they have the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to thank for it.
Eugene McCarthy and a New Politics
As the co-chair of the Loyalists, Bond seconded the nomination of Eugene McCarthy as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 1968. But the majority of delegates selected Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the party’s nominee. When Humphrey failed to choose a solidly antiwar running mate—he selected US Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine—he angered delegates who had supported the candidacies of Robert F. Kennedy, McCarthy, and George McGovern. So Richard Goodwin, a former speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy, approached Bond, whose antiwar and pro–civil rights politics were well-known, about the possibility of being nominated for vice president. Bond agreed, and Wisconsin delegate Ted Warhafsky rose to nominate him. Standing before the microphone, the liberal Warhafsky stated that because he and other Wisconsin delegates were interested in making “the American dream a reality not only for affluent delegates but for the young people who march in the parks looking for quality in life,” the Wisconsin Democrats “wish to offer in nomination the wave of the future. It may be a symbolic nomination tonight, but it may not be symbolic four years hence. We offer in nomination with the greatest pleasure the name of Julian Bond.” As many delegates cheered the nomination, CBS reporter Dan Rather asked Bond how old he was. “I’m 28,” Bond replied, adding that he was well aware that the Constitution required vice presidential candidates to be 35. When asked about Wisconsin’s reasons for nominating him, Bond said: “Well, I would hope it’s because they think I would make a good vice president. I think it’s also to get an opportunity to address this body and— through the medium of television—other people in the nation about some of the issues that are not being discussed here.” The issues, Bond said, were “poverty, racism, war. There really has not been a great deal of free discussion about them.”42 Convention leaders did not allow Bond to speak as a nominee for vice president, and he later withdrew his name because he did not meet the age requirement. Below is the speech Bond gave when seconding the nomination of Eugene McCarthy.
Fellow delegates, fellow Democrats, fellow Americans—
We are here in the midst of trying and difficult times—times which challenge our party, our country, and the future of democracy itself.
I am here today to second the nomination of the man who has spoken out most clearly and strongly about the challenge of 1968, the man who has spelled out for all Americans the changes we need to meet that challenge, the man who has begun already to lead us toward a new day in American politics—Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota.
If it were not for Senator McCarthy we would be meeting here under very different circumstances today.
We would not have an open convention—we would have merely an echo of 1964.
We would not be testing our own procedures—because the new forces of American politics, the people who are demanding full democracy in every aspect of American life, would not be here and they are here, tonight.
We would not be considering our national priorities—we would be rubberstamping the policies of the past four years.
And above all, we would not have had a national judgment on the war in Vietnam—an overwhelming rejection of a war the American people never chose and supported—a rejection of the way we have carried on that war, a rejection of the role of the military in our foreign policy, a rejection of empty slogans and misleading propaganda.
The American people are demanding a fundamental change—that, I think, is the great lesson of the campaign of 1968. They are demanding an end to the politics of unfulfilled promises and exaggeration, an end to the politics of manipulation and control.
They know they will not get that change from the Republican Party. The Miami convention made that very clear. The question now—the great question of 1968—is whether this party—the party which has always claimed to be the party of the people—can now respond to the will of the people. The question is whether we will give them the one man whose name is synonymous with a new politics of 1968 and a new hope for America.
All over the world, 1968 is a year in which people have been raising up and demanding freedom—from Biafra to Georgia, from Czechoslovakia to Chicago.
It is a year of people—students and teachers, black and white, workers and housewives. All over the world people want to be free to speak and to move about, free to protest and to be heard, free to live honorable lives, and most of all, free to participate in the politics which affect their lives.
That is the freedom we seek tonight through the Democratic Party in 1968.
When others held back, our McCarthy argued that there could be dialogue in America—that there could be talk between young and old, black and white, rich and poor. And there was talk, there was debate, there was full and free discussion in our land.
When others held back, our McCarthy argued that the American people could hear the truth—they were hungry for truth, starving for frankness and honesty, and hoping and praying
