Eyes Still on the Prize: 15 Minutes with Julian Bond

Since he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Julian Bond has lived much of his life at the center of the Civil Rights Movement. As a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960, Bond was a key player who organized lunch counter sit-ins while also serving as the organization's communications director from 1961 to 1966.

A student of Dr. Martin Luther King -- Bond was one of eight students who took the class -- he went on to serve as a Georgia state representative in 1965, which took him on a journey to the Supreme Court in Bond v. Floyd as he fought for the right to take his elected seat. Bond was also a co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

He has taught at a variety of universities, including American, Drexel, Harvard, and the University of Virginia. And, most recently, he served as the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from November 1998 to February 2010. And, in 2008, the Library of Congress named him a "Living Legend."

Bond was in Baltimore last Thursday as part of PNC's speaker series honoring Black History Month. In its fifth year, the series welcomes American icons from the Civil Rights movements to share their experiences.

"PNC developed the "Conversation in Courage" forum. Diversity is such a huge cornerstone of our belief system that we felt it was important across all of our markets to have these conversations. This is the third year, we've done this in Baltimore and we're blessed to have Dr. Bond because what we try to do is be graced with presence of someone who has been really influential and on the front lines. We want to make sure that no one forgets where we've been. Everyone celebrates where we are and that's a fantastic thing with Barack Obama and everything that's happened in the country, but we have so much farther to go," explains Lou Cestello, regional president, PNC Bank.

We had 15 minutes to ask Bond about his life, the world and how we can continue to make progress.

Q. How can the NAACP engage with young people and keep the organization relevant for young people given that there are so many things trying to attract their attention now?

A. Well let me tell you, the NAACP is the only civil rights organization that reserves seats on our board of directors for people under 25. I've had people in high school on my board of directors. No other civil rights organization can make that claim. No other civil rights organization does this. These young people are elected to our board only by other young people, so old people like me are not voting for these people, their peers are selecting them.

Our new chairman of the board, Rosslyn Brock, while a young woman at 44 years old is an old woman in the NAACP service, she was on the board since she was in college.Young people are our fastest growing group and are rushing to join the NAACP.

Q. Large metropolitan areas are increasingly faced by a long litany of challenges that have begun to impact not just the poor but middle class families as well. What are some ways that we can address these problems.

A. First, you have to think of these problems, at least some of them, as the fruits of the Civil Rights Movement. There is an opportunity for middle class people to leave center city Baltimore for the suburbs because the Civil Rights Movement made it possible for them to live in places they couldn't live in before. It made it possible for them to have jobs and professions they could not have enjoyed before.

So, in other words it is a peculiar quandry we are in where we are experiencing these difficulties as a result of the successes we've won. Now, you can't just snap your fingers, say do this and the problems will just go away. It's obviously a complicated problem that presidents and deep thinkers have pondered for years and years. And I can't tell you in the time we have now what to do. But, we know what takes people from poverty into comfortable lives -- education. Typically, opportunity and education are not found in great abundance in most parts of urban America. Cities in America are under siege, the suburbs are growing, so it takes a combination of factors to create opportunity and education opportunity. If that's done, things can get better and if it's not done, then things will get worse.

Q. In this morning's talk, you mentioned that Rev. Jesse Jackson's two runs for president led to an increase in the number of African-Americans seeking elected office and that you hoped President Obama's election would have a similar impact. With more African-Americans holding elected office, do you think we'll see changes that will help improve the lives of African-Americans whose lives have not as of yet improved?

A. Well, it does, and it doesn't. On the one hand, you know that African-American politicians are more likely than their white counterparts to be interested in poverty and discrimination because that's the world in which they come from. That doesn't mean that white politicians don't think about these things, they do. But for black politicians, they may be more pressing problems.

These things don't happen just because the color of the people in charge change. They happen because the people down at the grassroots demand that they change and put pressure on the people in power to make things change. So, it has to be a combination of a proliferation of newly elected officials and pressures from below to make these things happen, because again if these things don't happen nothing will happen. People aren't elected mayor of a city and say, "let's change everything." Somebody has to push them to make them do it.

Q. Given the dynamics of today's world, if a high school or college student is as passionate about helping create change as you were at the age, how would you recommend they seize the moment and become involved?

A. I would do what I understand high school students are already doing in Baltimore. They're challenging the school board, they're challenging the leadership in Baltimore to do something about the school system. They're challenging Gov. O'Malley to take the money he's thought about spending on prisons to instead spend it on schools. They're challenging the school to prison pipeline that exists all over the country and challenging people in charge to do something about it. That's what I would do if we were both 15 or 16 years old.

Q. Has the Civil Rights Movement lost some of the passion and drive that has propelled it for more than 50 years?

A. I think in some ways the Civil Rights Movement suffered because we think of it as something that happened in the 1960s, which was the movement at its greatest apex. We compare the 1960s to today and we say, nothing is happening now, but of course things are happening all over the country. We just don't all know about them. So, if you compare the movement today to the 1960s, you'll probably say, "jeez, it's in terrible, terrible shape."

I think there are people all over the United States in the towns and cities and the rural countryside doing all they can do to improve situations. But, just as was true in the 1960s, there aren't enough people doing this. When Martin Luther King was marching from Selma to Montgomery [Alabama], there weren't enough people marching with him. There're not enough people marching today. There're not enough people doing whatever it is that needs to be done. There're not enough people in NAACP, not enough people in the PTA. Not enough people doing all of the things that need to be done anywhere. There has always been a need for people. And, part of the media's responsibility is to tell us about it and share the opportunities people have to get involved.

Walaika Haskins is managing editor of Bmore Media and a Baltimore-based freelance writer.

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Photos by Steve Ruark