Julian Bond at Princeton

If you give a short speech of 10 or 15 minutes people feel cheated and if you speak for a number of hours to agree then they feel some sort of gratification sort of masochistic urge exists in a American speaking audience. But I'm not prepared to speak for several hours but I do want to do some of the usual speakers things to prolong the thing. OK even the most common one which you hear from ministers and other politicians and an 80 to the most common is to began with a series of hilarious jokes. Oh and the difficulty is of course that they're supposed to be only

seven basic jokes. And although I tried to vary the speech I get from place to place I pretty much tell the same old you know now because there's a lot of mobility among college students the possibility exist of course that someone here has already heard it. If they have it would be appreciated if they'd say nothing except to join in on the general Larry at the end. The AOA this and Larry is a joke. It is about the city of Cleveland Ohio Iowa ATL. Guy that's not it. The OAS. It is about the highway which stretches from the Cleveland municipal

airport to downtown Cleveland and converses leave from downtown Cleveland and it is allowed the outdoor advertising signs which appear by the side of this highway as they do at the side of just about every highway in this country. And it's about three of these times and the tickets are although there are many out of them. Now you make this drive from airport to town you pass many many of these signs but the first one which catches your eye does so I think because it has a really dramatic and eye catching message. It says one out of every 50 people in Cleveland has been areal disease and. Then you drive on a little more and pass many many other kinds of signs advertising cigarettes and

automobiles and then a second sign jumps out from this multitude of signs at you. This one will capture attention because it is psychedelic in appearance it is multi colored. It is a sign left over from last November's elections. A sign promoting the candidacy of the man who is now the young a senator from Ohio in a pretty fine man of yours who I guess is a Republican his name is William Saxby and his son said it ought to be Saxby and then I am. Then you keep on driving down the highway and finally the third sign in this series jumps out at you and this one.

Well hold your attention because it is the opposite of the other two it's not romantic it's not brightly colored. It's rather plain and rather some boy and I'm sophisticated. It's a large sign with a dark blue background and it says in very simple white light. But next time I want to thank goodness. Now the Irish would like to do one thing more before I begin to speak and this is not intended in a humorous vein but an oddly shaped room is it on our own or no me to this

it is something intended with a bit more seriousness and it has to do with an occasion which occurs in the United States all over the United States during the second week in February of each year. That is an occasion and predominantly black high schools and college is called The Negro History Week and for those of you who had the flu during that week in your high school or college it is a week during which the achievements and accomplishments and successes and failures and trials and tribulations of black people in this country are mentioned and studied now because you cannot compress They history of a whole race of people into one week out of the year. I'd like to spend a few moments reading from three speeches. Deliberate and the United States

by three black men over 100 years ago. Now these three excerpts are interesting to me. But is it because of the quality of the language you heard in them is much above that heard from the usual public platform in this country. And secondly because even though each of them is over 100 years old they each read as though they had been written just this morning demonstrating I think that although some things have changed radically and drastically for black people in the United States a great many things are exactly the same. Now the first of these comes from a man named Frederick Douglass. For those of you who were absent during the time when Frederick Douglass was discussed in American history he was born a slave in Maryland near Baltimore and

escaped from slavery after delivering up a particularly vicious beating to a slave master. You ran away to New York State and taught himself to read and write and became a newspaper editor and publisher and a very famous abolitionist and rose to great prominence and was in the period just before during and after. But the Civil War was during that period probably the most respected and loved black man in the United States. He settled in Rochester New York and on the 4th of July in 1952 was asked by the Rochester New York ladies Anti-Slavery Society if he wouldn't come down and deliver their annual Fourth of July travel. Now history has not reported how this request was put to him.

But you can imagine I probably went like this they probably said Fred won't you come down and deliver the Fourth of July grass and tell us how happy and proud and cleaves and overwound and overjoyed and the static and hilarious and delirious and typical probably not typical paing that night. Nice that you and all of your people will feel to be living in the Land Of The Brave and the home of the freedom I am to freedom justice equality democracy turning to Christianity justice and fair play. Now Frederick Douglass was reluctant but in a odd but he agreed

not in the last to make the speech. And this is a small part of what he said. He said what to the American slave is your fourth of July arriving by answer a day that reveals to him more than all the other days of the year the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim to him. Your celebration is a sham. Your boasted liberty in an unholy life and your knight tional greatness is swelling vanity your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless. Your denunciation of tyrants says Branscombe to them he gives your shouts of liberty and equality are hollow mockery. Your prayers your AMS with all your religious parade and solemnity are to him mere bombast fraud deception and piety hypocrisy.

Then bailed to cover up crimes which would do scrapes a nation of savages. There is not a nation on earth guilty of the crimes of more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour. Go where you may search where you will run through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world of travel with them South America search out every abuse and when you have found the last lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation and you will say with me that horrible voting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy. America reigns without a rival. Now history does not record whether or not the Rochester New York lady exam time slavery society. Ask Frederick Douglass to deliver the Fourth of July address on the following evening.

Now on the second of these comes from another the man who is well remembered in history a man who would different times in his life was a soldier and a politician and a religious leader. He died a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. But this comes from a period when he was one of 27 black state legislator tours and the Georgia House of Representatives. One hundred and one years ago in 1868 another indication of how much progress we have made. Because that is nearly twice as many as of the noun. But Mr. Turner I discovered there was a move on foot to unseat him and to throw all of the Black Legislative words out of the house.

He became sure grand. He asked for permission to make a speech and this was a part of what he said. He said While we are not white we have accomplished much. We have pioneered a civilization here. We have built up this country. We gathered your harvest for two hundred and fifty years. And what do we ask in return. Do we ask you for compensation for the sweat of our fathers or were you for the tears you have caused the hearts you have broken the blood you have this bill. Do we ask retaliation. We ask it not but we ask you now for our rights. You have all the elements of superiority on your side. You have your money and ours. You have your

education and ours. You have you in my hand and ours. We are strangers in the land of our birth. Without money without education without aid without a roof. To come with us while we live or the plane to cover us when we die it is extraordinary that a race such as yours professing gallantry and chivalry and education and superiority living in a land where Bibles are read and gospel truths are spoken and where the courts of justice are presumed to exist. It is extraordinary to say that with all those advantages on your side you can still make war on the day and its most black man. If I should die in the struggle let me say this to be young men of George or the black man

cannot protect a country that doesn't protect him. And if tomorrow a war should arrive I would not let the anger or raise a musket to defend a country where my manhood is denied. Now both the defender and defense of George are unless George or acknowledges that you are men and invest you with all of the rights pertaining to manhood. Now the bird in my ass comes from a man who has no. Claim it on the history. There are only one of two unusual things about him. The first being that he practiced to perfection. He was both a doctor and a lawyer probably allowing him to bamboozle twice as many people at the same time. He was the first black man admitted to practice law

before the United States Supreme Court and he has the same name. By coincidence because I don't think there's any blood relationship. As the man who invented or discovered the greatest of badness and medical science in the last 20 years his name is Dr John S. rock. He delivered this speech in 1858 following and now the speaker of the first bigot was white and he said that on all American black people were cowards because if they weren't cowards they wouldn't be slaves. That made Dr Rock angry and this is what he said. He said white Americans take great pains to prove that we are cowards. Courage of the Anglo-Saxon is best shown by his treatment of the next school one or two of them

will pounce on one poor Nigro tie em up beat him and call him a coward because he submitted so many of their most brilliant victories have been won in this fashion. White men have no room to taunt us with tamely submitting if they were a black man they say they would work wonders. But as white men they can do nothing. Consistency about aren't you. The white men may despise us ridicule us slander us abuse us they may see it as they always am done to divide us. And make us feel degraded. But no man show cause me to turn my back upon my rage with it. I think wars where the prejudice which some

white men have against my CO gives me no pain. If any man does not fancy my Kobo that is his business and I shall not meddle with it I shall give myself no trouble because he lacks good taste. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. He goes on to say I count on the nod that I do with Myra the talent and the character of many many white men but I cannot say I am pleased with the visible Arabs. If the O who had a mother nature had held out as well as she began we should

probably have if you were a pariah he was among the wasted. When I contrasts the fine and tough muscular system. The beautiful dark rich color of the photo abroad the Jews and the gracefully as old hair of the neck go with the delicate physical organisation but wan and washed out color the sharp features and the lanky hair of the dog. A I am inclined to believe that when the white man was created Mother Nature was pretty well exhausted. Nor am I. Me

neither. No although the day before yesterday was moratorium day one does not need to discuss the war or against the people of it now at any great length. I sense every right to know and educated person knows that it is all illegal in morrow and on jobs. Everyone knows that it is not for them to ensure freedom of choice for the Vietnamese but rather to stifle a legitimate homegrown revolution that is a part of me would marry every man to control his own destiny.

The United States is no respecter of this whether it exist in the Vietnamese spasms or Cuban McCain cut or an Alabama sharecropper or American college students the United States instead refers to a liberty as a virtue to be enjoyed by the few at the expense of the many. The United States believes that democracy is too good for the masses. So the war against the people doesn't have to be discussed at great length. There is another possible topic for discussion and that is the question of violence and the United States today a particularly award question among young and black violence might be said to be for black

people going to school for 12 years and receiving five years of education. Violence might be said to be 30 million hungry stomachs in the most of that nation on the earth. Violence is having black young men represent a discipline proportionate share of the inductees and casualties in Vietnam. Violence is an economy like ours which believes in socialism for rich people and capitalism for the poor. Violence is a nation which spends $900 per second to stifle the Vietnamese but only seventy seven dollars a year per person to feed the hungry people your own violence who's the little man who runs the UN. Ya i listening to your telephone.

The thing violence is the assistant attorney general suggesting that concentration camps be constructed for the young and the blind. Violence is sixty two hundred American farmers receiving welfare payments of $25000 a year each for not working at all. Violence and the lives of the Maoism is Richard Nixon. An eyewitness. Nt and Spyro ain't offends me important my captains of foreign and domestic violence have been dispensed with. We could then discuss a very very broad and

very vague subject called Life in the United States. It would appear toward the end of the 1969 that life in the United States for some people is getting progress of only worse. For black people the statistics the facts of life the figures that reflect and mortality and unemployment and median family income and life expectancy Arnie's reveal that while the historical position of black people in this country has improved vastly the relative position that is relative to white America the relative position of black people in this country has worsened over the last 20 years. Now that is not just for black people but for poor people both

black and white as well. It is true of other groups of people in this country that life for them is about to get much worse. It is true for example of a college student who many years were going said it a privileged class. Great many of them are discovering. Schools come back into four year those for that over 25 states are passive aggressive and anti student legislation aimed at keeping college students and their top of the state of West Virginia. As has been the law our measure of which is that a policeman can impress and the police duty any person at the scene of some disorder and that if a policeman kilos or injures any person at the scene of a disorder then he bears no guilt but that if any person at the scene of the

disorder kills or injures a policeman then on all of the people on the scene shared equally and that the state of Louisiana has passed into law a measure which defines a riot as any disturbance caused by three or more people. But despite that despite that it is black people who have suffered the most in this country and who are likely to suffer a great deal more. Recent events in Chicago and Pittsburgh and Seattle have demonstrated exactly how determined the people are traditionally have called themselves the black man's friend. How determined they are to ensure that black people stay the last to be

hired and the first to be so that everywhere you look in every section of this country there is concrete and you refutable evidence that black people are facing a second period of time and disappear like that first period the fall of reconstruction. In both the period following the first reconstruction and then following the last decade when many black people believed a second reconstruction was underway the result was exactly the same. Black people began both periods by believing that democracy racially quality could be achieved through litigation or negotiation or on occasion direct action through strong alliances with liberal white group. But in both the period the white allies of black people became tired and interested in other concerns. But to get our

early black people who were no longer considered just the subject of them in both areas the result of the abandonment and frustrate and powerlessness of the black people developed those with your own bitterness and despair. Now when that first reconstruction and the decades that followed resulted in the culmination of institutionalized racism the enactment and the inverse ment of laws either permitting or requiring racial segregation in all aspects of American life. Bars which were imposed by races but with the why they accept them so white moderates are white of the bros. They're by beginning the necessary accessory. The similarity between the first reconstruction period and this one is rather frightening.

Following that urban areas when armed federal troops patrol the phone when black and white children went to school together peacefully when entering the state legislatures abolishing imprisonment for debt established for e-mail so we organized the south's first republic education following that theory. An American presidential candidate made a deal with the rebellious while the troops were withdrawn. And Jim Crow began to fly over the land. The exact same thing happened in Miami Beach in 1968 nightly. NOAA then Miami Beach an American presidential

candidate entered into an illicit and adult arose political relationship with the Cinderella bride a notorious land speculator from South Carolina. A relationship intended to convince the solid South. But Nixon and not the ability to deliver from Alabama was indeed the one. Now the offspring of that relationship can be seen today the beginnings of it could be seen as long ago as the Johnson administration's persecutions on the spot cases. And the offspring can be seen in Chicago in the next in the administration's persecution under the strong arm and inspired anti-riot of eight people

who are charged with the unlikely events of conspiring to incite a cargo of lease to run on a night and. Anon the ugly end of appeasement can be seen and allowing segregated scooters Gregg's districts that have already had more than 16 September and which to obey the law of the land and giving them still more time in which to integrate with all deliberate speed. But it is simplistic to suggest that the president or the political party in power or the on reconstructed sout

are the only villains there are villains everywhere. Now some of the islands are the cons of the people who would describe themselves as a decent and responsible people of the United States the kind of people who have always known that poverty is just a state of mind or that the unemployed are simply lazy or the black people really don't suffer from discrimination. They are the civil rights and civil liberties and those who do nothing. When groups like the black party are decimated by police with their leaders forced into exile or held and communiqu Otto by the federal police they are the kinds of decent people who laugh at the notion of concentration camps in the United States and will probably continue laughing as

they are just and they are the kinds of people who in attendance at a lynching would stand to the sidelines and not disapprovingly as the length of the nooses grows tighter. It is that combination of those and I want it with our that have brought us to where we are today. Today the center of gravity of what used to be core the civil rights movement has been transported from the shared track to the urban ghetto where it is now immobilized by ambiguity and by an intensified white resistance. So one might say at the end of the 60 that to date neither the successful litigation or strong legislation or free access to public accommodations or

strong pronouns moments on the part of presidents and governors or mayors or even the right to vote and hold public office that all of these have made little or no difference to the overriding fact that the masses of black people in this country are still confined to poverty and the dehumanizing ology of the ghetto. So the black people have been. No other than black people have discovered that no great society is coming their way and that the war on poverty they have been fighting has already been surrendered because of a bad feeling not just among black people. There is a new politics arising in the United States now that this is not the new politics in the Eugene

McCarthy sense with bright clean young people knocking on doors and soliciting votes. It is instead a new political process which began and won in 1964. And move from there to New York and Detroit. It is a new political process which began at Berkeley and moved to Columbia and culminated at war now. And while it is new when strange and lightning to many many people it is a poem about the United States and sorrow and it is a part of the gospel as mentioned in the dock where you have been abandoned which is that when government becomes on representative and on responsible and life intolerable and men have not got just the right but the duty and the responsibility to rise up against it and to

strike it down. Owen. Me I know you cannot draw go up outer world launch a little movement or something leave the activity that will block the bill and watch or white students at Columbia. But this new little office to what it was extreme would and hundreds of thousands of other kinds of people who are equally ignorant bent that no one cares now. Could be true not just for black people in the cities and down on the far more

nonwhite people of this country whose lives are daily but also must be true for high school students who want to determine how long their own hair or small farmers who cannot compete with the larger agricultural machines and their word should dump milk or housewives who cannot control the prices they pick at the A and B. And that's probably true. Even the members of labor unions sat down and seized control of a General Motors plant in Flint Michigan in 1937. Why their sons and daughters are doing the same thing on the college campus in 1969. What is true for all of these people and the hundred thousand and opposing the way the United States has

failed as failed in spite of its great success its ability to spend 30 billion dollars a year and struggling 14 million South Vietnamese and the virtues of American democracy at the point of a new year for these people is likely to continue to fail as long as the war was sour. As long as men on the worth of the men. Now someone once asked to describe the way Dr. Martin Luther King wrote it from Genesis and behold it was the dream about that slave and we shall see what will become of those dreaming those who refused to take some any kind of

action. Kill those who drink it while the black abolitionist Frederick Douglas speaking 100 years ago only about the kinds of people who wanted to abolish slavery in this country but it was a word that might apply equally as well that we attempted to describe the political position of the people who want to abolish racism and militarism and the new American imperialism and the impending rise of bikes as I'm in this thang. We are here and we are likely to be. To imagine that we shall be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We may be reminded chain

or assimilated but existing. We hear that this is our country we show me that die out but go with this people either as a testimony against the world as an evidence in their favor through our or with the joy of or with your thinking.