For the Record; 307; Julian Bond; For the Record With Charley McDowell [Alternate Title]

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and businesses wachovia let's get started and biographer literary foundation cashiers a white woman as you very polite uses our markets are we can't serve you here this just for city hall and i said you got a big sign outside says city hall after that he says we don't mean i said we'll stay here till you do if you called please please from the miller center of the university of virginia a conversation on politics policy and the presidency for the record with charlie mitchell yesterday a civil rights activist author professor and recently elected chair of the handle a cd julian bond thank you for joining us and director world really are going to hit you or take effect real a fairly fast if other iceman bomb was

present college in georgia then that he was president and the country's oldest like private counseling can be interested in some way dean then dean school of education atlanta and so forth and so forth you've mentioned that but that and still stuck with an interesting life love got the houseguests you've known that be ed the boys you talk about like he was down the street this was a remarkable of boyhood won the biggest influences on their own parents and the circumstances they provided for me my father was an educator later current president lee that meant i grew up on black college campuses in these places weren't as many fans still are sort of oases in the middle of whatever and they provided a protective and berman as any college campus to say if you grew up on the campus university of virginia positively surrounded by older people who know your presence on and therefore treat your home

living in just the stimulating intellectually stimulating environment also means that to your home com the bright lights of the day one of my proudest possession says a photograph of their baby boys my father the great sociologist see fracking frazier these three men are dressed in academic regalia and my sister my aunt two and a half and she's four are being dedicated to a lifetime of scholarship now of course i had no idea that i would end up being a teacher but i mean the boys is another picture myself sitting on four recently while he sings to be the foreign surgeon general's al gore said no idea at the time for rosen was or what he meant but the and it was because i lived on these campuses that these figures came into my presence so i had held a before me these models of what i could be what i might be very differently i think the lives of most people black or white so i was i was

lucky as i could be and then you went off to the morehouse college which i gather is that was the quality wasn't a sweaty you know these teachers recover there was and there was this and they're using is like a solidity and now so forth life continue well as its luck or chance i was sitting in a cafe one day about fear were a second or third nineteen sixty this guy comes up to me in studios of this paper paper says greensboro students sit in for third day he said had you seen that's interesting that you say what you think about its greatest wonderful exhibits that are happening in atlanta sentiments scrapping the summer thunder here is that i think we'll make it happen internationally we use educators saw the cafe about eighty other and we'll make it out here and we did it we got bigger and bigger and finally a couple weeks later we had a glamorous first sentence because the newspaper story was really should've been called how to save it it told how these green

virtues were dressed what they did how they comport themselves where they sat how they behave and how they went home with me and they say maybe there is like a group where sweetness for the blueprint we didn't do i have no security ask you what is the truth if you are arrested in the city an er to listen to full time in atlanta city hall or above as a cafeteria the basement and we went through the line you know like a steam tables are these black women serving the food and you can see them looking at us and you knew they had never seen anybody who look like them looking back at them from outside the same table so we come to the cashier was a white woman and she's very polite she says oh i'm awfully sorry we can't serve you here this just for city hall employees i said you got a big sign outside says city hall cafeteria the public as well she said we don't mean it i said we'll stay here till you do and she called the police the police came to us where our go through life you know this was your like to the data to revert to the georgia house in nineteen sixty five and then i gather you were not

seated duty you were a viet nam protester and they didn't want the us each year in the house of delegates are representing yeah they are accused me of being you guilty of treason sedition and all i'd say this that the war was not a good idea that in fact i thought it was a bad idea but anyway they threw me out we follow suit was heard by the supreme court and the court ruled in my favor unanimously in my favorite so almost a year to the day after i was put out i finally get back in and i stayed for the next twenty two years twenty one years will you if you said you what you're in the senate in the house and then in the state senate you also incidentally sports broadcaster at one point in your life in nineteen sixty eight your name was put in nomination for vice president of the united states quote this is the sixty eight convention and if your member was a tumultuous occasion is a really big fights not only in the streets

but inside the convention hall between anti and the pro war forces roughly divided between the hubert humphrey forces of the eugene mccarthy bobby kennedy forces on the other side of that not clearly what happened they wait the mccarthy forces wanted to have the floor and the only way they could get the floor was through the divisive nominating someone for vice president and i was asked if i could do it i said listen i'm too young for this and said we don't care we just want to get the floor and so my name was quick nomination the idea was that every nominee got a nominee he and two seconding speeches and the speeches would be used to argue a point against the war but as it turned out they would allow my second tours to speak and so after one round of balloting i withdrew it and what's interesting is since then i've run into a lot of people are at the convention in each one tells me that they voted for me that was true when it should've been me as the vice president so this god must do

but of course it was a mosque about thirty years ago when you were a young college student leading sit ins in atlanta the reverend martin luther king was assassinated you have special memories inspirations from that day what were over i was over the mythology and i was twenty eight years old i remember well the tv was on and either chet huntley or david brinkley came on and said dr martin luther king has been shot in memphis that shall not kill and the army were being shocked by this but not devastated by and seconds later he came back and said that one of the king is dead and although he and i were in by no means intimate close friends i felt as if a family member had been taken with someone i was intimately associate with a been taken away i just had this feeling of just irreplaceable lost i'm sure that i'll

not take some time that thirty years later and just talk about what you mostly talk about the status of the civil rights movement about the kindle at all what quirk of the positive things about it thirty years later first i think we make a mistake when we compare to day to the king period if you take a nice drawl line of some words activity from the founding of the nation until now the sixties are big blip but the normal period of sort of like there's a lot of doubt a lot of downs us normalcy so comparing today to the sixties really makes today suffer having said that the positives are that the there seems to be a sizable opinion in the united states that number one we have a racial problem number two we got to do something about it we disagree about what to do but i think all of this

generally agree there's a problem it's going to be dealt with their other positives and that there is a large structure of law i don't mean just affirmative action but anti discrimination law that covers not only racial minorities but women other disadvantaged americans other ethnic racial minorities that structure is in place it's not gonna go way it is here for every score remain and that's a great great positive well what now the navy's that is what i get thirty years after king's death that we haven't come as far as i thought we would have added that we'd be in the promised land but i thought we'd be further along with other disappointments and again this is an unfair comparison and talk about the king air and today in the king era hundreds of thousands of americans were engaged in solutions to this problem today it is primarily a leadership fight the leaders of civil rights organizations working with members of congress working again some members of congress working with the president of the united states and the

hundreds of thousands of involve people that were on the scene in nineteen sixty sixty five sixty eight they're not here i don't know where they are but they're not here when you do see some of those people who were the involved people they seem to have a feeling that sets them apart from the ones that are you doing this like a piece of politics and which sets going to dominate the next length fleece made it do that when you do see someone like yourself who really came up out of sit ins and search katie tell him apart from the rest of its some money again but you know i think the condition of racial minorities like a man whose house is burning down and here comes a fall of the bucket how are you gonna say where'd you get that bucket for why you come up here aren't you going to say is i guess a leader is add water and it have water come on and where the sea i don't care where you where you're here which a motive is so i think we're in a position of saying come on we want you three

words i think of the decision and as i look back i have some faulty news about it but i think of the incredible brown versus board of education decision of fifty four and then i think of hell i sort of expected that things are so are we let up by an orderly like my supreme court decision in several places you referred in a speech at the university virginia about that as merrit kennedy and johnson impacts after doctor after the nineteen fifty four decision from fifty to alderman can you do after work rimmer this year is fifty four brown decision says separate but equal has to end and that decision does more than legally end segregation it gives more a license to the movement to challenge segregation around it too but in this period for sugar board eisenhower and eisenhower is a benign races he encourages the

chief justice of the united states to rule against the black plaintiffs in the brown case and this vacillation his refusal to ever endorsed the brown decision while he's president in her endeavor encourages the resistance for itself that he's followed by john f kennedy who's a reluctant source to warrior he only reluctantly comes to endorse the movement before his term in his life or culture but luckily he succeeded by lyndon johnson and lyndon johnson as a champion here is a guy who doesn't want to be a southern politician any more don't wanna be attacks don't wanna be a westerner he was to be an american politician he wants to be to make his mark and he's immensely sensitive to the civil rights questions to get to questions of fairness and justice and he makes all the difference i think and yet the century and had you had no lyndon johnson we'd been pretty relatively bad shape today but because of them were in relatively good shape it's like a sudden i don't think i would have said that i'm one of the people stood outside the warehouse chanting hey lbj how many

kids are killed a day until the war in viet nam game between louis johnson and me indeed but the nih is it was a group or president is your interpretation lyndon baines johnson's role in civil rights generally accepted that your fellow historians are you a little out front with that know i think a reasonable by historians i think it's accepted by people my age and time i don't know if you've seen this wonderful book by michael beschloss called taking power it's the transcripts of the johnson white house tapes this is an amazing and you can see johnson as you read his words twisting are a bending people over backward pleading begging order to get what he wants and what he wants is to make a mark and so we're currently have scrawled and years of affirmative action is under assault to public schools are under funded and particularly the public schools or by kids tend to go to and poor

white kids unemployment persists in in the end the poor are two fifths of the population are some bump or whatnot all wet well where we go it is a hopeful things can either at things on an optimist there are hopeful signs in all those take affirmative action if you live only a california proposition to not only a texas of hopwood decision and you go say affirmative action is in bad shape but look at the thirteen other states where there've been attempts to put a song about referendums they've all failed look at the georgia house of representatives which in february of this year voted to retain affirmative action look at the senate of the united states which in either late for me were early march voted overwhelmingly to retain affirmative action in the first federal test in nineteen ninety eight looked at public opinion polls that show that only one out of every four americans wants to do away absolutely with affirmative action so the news is good or not that

is not to say the two nine had the devastating that hopwood and the devastating in taxes but so far thats it nothing more that that soap operas in this is not so much my professions up i didn't know there was that much busting satellite is it is formed because bad news is known good news is the great need to tell this particular need of getting people fired up i'm not saying that your affirmative action is secure by any means but that the general trend of things as good as possible you said recently that i think it's just what i heard you say on a television programmers aware that a third of all blacks are doing pretty well economically than a third are sort of go along with the lore two thirds of all alone one third but then but it was a lot of black people at jets property you know pretty heavy it's really heavy and

again it's one of these half empty half full glass as you look at that one third of the middle class that's a result of affirmative action that's a result of the program's put into effect over the last thirty years it's a result of the civil rights movement people who now enjoy a middle class lifestyles who are black who have an education and of a job that their mom and dad could not have had these people or debt of thanks to martin luther king and the movement that came before him and around him that one third at the very bottom the bolivian hardscrabble poverty that seen welfare reform are well for repeal just take any chance away from them were crowding into homeless shelters her packing into soup kitchens those people are in desperate straits and the chances that their situation improved isn't really very very bright so it's a half full half empty scenario on the one hand glad that the success and there's no glasses is great isn't news i'm proud of what they've done and then the fighting over the prospects for this question why organizations like bmw succeeding where riders in and thinkers like you're so

we need to do about this well we make this argument and that's the argument i made to is that the problems facing black americans are race based that's not to say that every problem everybody has is based on race but that the problems black people as a group have are based on race in the based on racial discrimination why why people at the bottom of the economic order is it because they don't have good education don't have very good training why don't they have those things i believe that we do at the end the police ep believe it's because of racial discrimination so we believe that as we diminish racial discrimination we increase opportunity we make it possible for more than girls who don't go to good schools to go that would make it possible for men and women who don't get job training to get job training and we make it possible for people who got everything they have to have but we're locked out a job because of their race to have those locks for the doors and have them walk through and get a decent job so what we're doing about it is where fighting racial discrimination and as that discrimination

diminishes prospects for the people we represent go up a look at the increasing expenditures on politics in america so and so increasingly boggles my mom not disappoint report and that so far as a steady decline in voter turnout then let's them and bachelor what your particular we know if you and are rarely gets easier for some off as i can attack you viciously and it's gonna drive down the percentage of voters who vote for both of us i'm hoping that enough or be left to vote for me but i know it's going to have the effect of not only driving down her voters is gone dr mine down to so no wonder the numbers are small one almost mystical islam have heard you say in a bed again maybe now that you seem to agree with your friend of presidents do many of the oven and the lacy the who i believe has said economic rights our civil rights as of like we're ready for it well that we

will remember that king died in not a civil rights fight he died in the garbage workers strike season sanitation minimum for striking for better pay and there were conditions but right to a decent job is basic is as crazy as the right to vote if you i can vote but with your work what difference does it make who gets to be president or who gets to be mayor so that's absolutely basic right to a job the right to be able to develop a business to have their business grow and flourish because of basic rights that that's the american dream and we want nothing more than the realization of the american dream and racism today out a young person who assisted in all this was hope in the summit there said that she keeps here and that that racism is more underground today than it was twenty thirty years ago that it's therefore more dangerous these sense that we use i think use a bully right you know when i was coming up there besides white and colored and you knew that that was that was a that was a

writer at and you can march against that you would file a lawsuit against that you could do a number of things to make that go away now the signs ago but the attitude behind the signs are gone they're still in people's minds which can look in people's minds you know apply for a job or i do and they say gee the job just fill five minutes ago is a true or it just saying because it was army i don't know how to find out what i do find out what we would do about it suggested more difficult seeing today than in the past a little harder to pinpoint exactly who the bad guys and good guys are but we know there are bad guys and good guys out there and as soon as we determine who's who then we can do something about that's only with louis thirteenth the million man march had tremendous impact in the country much more than i thought it would have thousand prepared low and while praising the marchers you've been quoted as saying i've heard about say a prayer candles quote an anti semite a homophone and

really an anti democrat little bitty unquote the cia operative and so what a well you know i guess one is half full half of the things you know the older i get the more i know you can't answer questions yes or no they're things farrakhan say is that everybody listening to this show would say hey i'm for that i agree with that that's wonderful raise your family out educate your kids don't drink don't smoke live a clean life worshipped god we all believed that but the other part of his message is so her prophetic anti semitic homophobic anti catholic and you know just awful that a grounds out the good part of his message so what you do with it you cannot associate i don't think with a man who carries such a message of hate and that kept me away from the march but as i said in the aftermath of the march i talk to a lot of men who told me that they had gone on for louis farrakhan before themselves they wanted to show america they there was a new picture

of themselves they're not gang bangers their fathers or business manager scores a family man they described in many of them as a mystical experience and so i think the thing itself was wonderful but i just couldn't go there to be whether this was settling controversy about that persistent report growing in its support supported family band ms king the james earl ray the convicted assassin was not alone in the crime indeed that j edgar hoover and the fbi were part of a conspiracy within the government or somethin etc jesse jackson himself said recently there is quote a haunting question whether the government was involved in that were oh you have spoken to live before we well there is no doubt in my mind and i don't think they should be done anybody else's mind the james earl ray pull the trigger than fried the gun that killed martin luther king he bought the gun his for bridger on the gun is fired runs on the winter so from which the gun was fired he rented a room down the hall from the bathroom where when

the cell is where the gun was fired he was seen running away he dropped the gun as he went away he drove to atlanta car in which a map was found in which dr king's home and office were outlined in red every single piece of evidence a nine country points to james earl ray and most importantly james earl ray confessed to this crime now were there others involved with them i have no idea i suspect that they were quite probably his brothers he had two brothers who were his partners in crime and others reason to suspect that they might well have been involved and if they were who can tell us about this generated howls about this we don't need to have a trial his brother jerry to tell us about this yacht i'm not saying it's beyond the realm of the most fantastic possibility the j edgar hoover heads of handedness but i have seen no evidence that that's the case and the capable warrior representing mr ray bill pepper known for thirty four five years if you're wearing a lawyer does many defense applied in the passion of your client is guilty blame somebody

else we have heard a lot of that a remarkable people at this time in america here talking for a half hour on what we haven't brought up is that he a professor of american university and the university of virginia a marvelous lecturer he has written books he has written all kinds of articles he has written poetry he's been a tv commentator and his best guest thank you this is neat

production funding for four the record is provided by your new financial partner in virginia we are wachovia and we're here to build on this spring's student loan provider investing in banking services for individuals and businesses wachovia let's get started and by a grant from the prairie foundation to bridge's a vhs copy of this program sent a check for twenty one ninety five to the address on the screen or call for three four to nine five seven six seven one please reference the program number fb on the next for the record from the miller center at the university of

indianapolis and civil rights activist those family and the holy city oh eight it's

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