Speech- "Public Intellectuals ", 2002 April 12 (Doc 2 of 2)

Kilson argues that while America has had persons thought of as "public intellectuals" since the 1830s, for black people, the "public" in the title has always meant the black public almost exclusively until fairly recently.

Early black public intellectuals, Kilson says, can be divided into several categories.

Most were either university-based figures ^{such as} like W. E. B. DuBois, St. Clair Drake, Ralph Bunche, John Aubrey Davis and E. Franklin Frazier, journalists, ^including like Monroe Trotter and Ida Wells-Barnett, historian Carter G. Woodson, attorneys Charles Houston and William Hastie.

The black press was their forum; the black college campus was their (platform,)--? and mainstream organizations like^{such as} the National Urban League ^{and black professional, and fraternal and sororal organizations} were outlets for their brand of intellectual activism.

Others directed their activism through Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and similar cultural separatist organizations.

For all, their "public market" was composed almost exclusively of African-Americans. Indeed, due to the small number of black college graduates until the 1960s - only 18,000 out of a population of more than 12 million in 1920 - only a fraction of African-Americans were trained to exercise an intellectual function.

Today the numbers are much greater and the faces familiar to a large body of the general public - Henry Louis Gates; Cornell West; Stephen Carter; Amiri Baraka ^{Lani Guinier} and many, many others.

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While yesterday, figures like^{someone such as} George Schuyler labored in the right-wing vineyards virtually alone, today Glen Loury, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Alan Keyes and many others defend privilege unashamedly^{, and defend the status quo.}

One difference between Schuyler and his modern-day compatriots is that they enjoy a degree of corporate support he could only ^not have imagined. And they enjoy access to editorial pages and foundation payrolls forbidden^{subsidies closed} to him years ago.

To the degree that I fit Mills' or Kilson's definitions of what public intellectuals do and who they are, I belong by virtue of my age and time to a latter group. My cohort^{We were} born during the Second World War, and raised in the segregated South, educated in segregated public schools, ^thenthen attending^{and attended} segregated black public and private colleges, all knowing ^{all the while that} racism would frustrate and cheapen the worth of our college degrees. We were given encouragement by the Supreme Court's decision in Brown in 1954, witnessed^to the murder of Emmett Till as teenagers, thrilled by the marching feet in Montgomery, uplifted by the rhetoric of young Martin Luther King, Jr. We were exposed to the last gasps of colonialism in Africa, led by college-trained Africans only a few years older than were we. We were instructed in a high standard of courage by the brave example of the Little Rock Nine.

The 1960 sit-ins armed us with what had been lacking in our lives. They introduced us to a technique through which ordinary people - not lawyers, not ministers with great oratorical gifts, not university trained social scientists able to chart graphs of difference between black and white life-chances - a means by which college age

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youth could strike a blow against the system that had thwarted our parents' hopes and dreams.

That introduced me to the movement for justice that has been my life from that day to this - and I have tried to fight for justice by offering my body and by offering my mind.

In this role I follow Kilson's dictate - I try to challenge the discrepancy between opportunity and denial.

I come to this naturally - on the wall in my home is a photograph of myself, my sister, and Drs. DuBois, E. Franklin Frazier, and my father, Dr. Horace Mann Bond.

The three men are dressed an academic regalia, in hoods and gowns. My sister and I are three^four and four ^three. In is 1943.

Accompanying the photograph is a certificate, signed by these three, witnessed by my mother.

In somewhat flowery language, the three men dedicate me to be a.................................................. Following the gender imperatives of the day, they dedicate my sister to be "the mother of....................."

With that pedigree, the life I've lived has been inescapable.^{was preordained.}

I grew up in a home of educated parents - my mother a grade school teacher and later a librarian, my father a college dean and president. Their home was filled with books and newspaper^s, and their visitors on the college campuses where we lived were a who's who of black America - Paul Robeson, Walter White, African dignitaries - an almost daily parade of impressive figures, race men and women who had dedicated their professional and private lives to fighting for justice and fair play.

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My first published statement came directly from the movement. With a Spelman College student, I wrote a document called "An Appeal For Human Rights." With help from noted white author Lillian Smith, it was published as a full-page ad in the morning Atlanta Constitution, the afternoon Atlanta Journal, and Atlanta's black daily, the Atlanta Daily World.

In it, we listed the grievances black Atlanta had against the segregation system, and we announced "we had joined our hearts, minds^s and bodies in the cause of gaining those rights which are inherently ours as members of the human race and as citizens of these United States."

The "Appeal" closed with this plea - and a warning^:

"We, therefore, call upon all people in authority - State County and City officials; all leaders in civic life - ministers, teachers and business men; and all people of good will to assert themselves and abolish these injustices. We must say in all candor that we plan to use every legal and nonviolent means at our disposal to secure full citizenship rights as members of this great democracy of ours."

It caused a sensation.

The Governor responded by saying^, "This statement was not written by students; it was not written in Georgia. It sounds as though it was written in Moscow or Peking."

This was early instruction for me in the power of the written word - the power of my words, and it encouraged me to continue to speak truth to power from then until now.

I dropped out of school to work in the movement - and to work on the staff of a small black weekly newspaper that grew out of the

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unwillingness of the conservative black daily newspaper in Atlanta to support the movement's goals and aims.

At the Atlanta Inquirer, I ghostwrote a column for the leader of the Atlanta student movement, wrote a sports column (about which I knew nothing then and know little more now) and covered police and community news.

Again the power of the written word was made plain; the Inquirer offered a progressive alternative to the Atlanta World, and the reading public let us know they appreciated it. And the powerful let us know they did not.

When^After the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded and its office established in Atlanta, I became an early volunteer^.and left college behind to become a full-time worker.

I was the Publicity Director - I wrote, mimeographed, folded, stuffed, stamped and mailed press releases, co-wrote our weekly newsletter, the Student Voice, created a radio-actuality feeding system, answered reporter's^s' questions, called and begged them to report on our activities, patiently explained to them our reasons why.

In 1965 I was elected to the Georgia General Assembly, and the written word threw me out. I endorsed a statement by SNCC opposing the war in Vietnam, and after fighting through two subsequent elections and a Supreme Court case to regain my seat, served in the lower and upper houses for the next 20 years.

^{brought me to national attention/__}

In 19&&^{About 12 years ago,} I started teaching at American University, and then at Virginia, and then at Harvard again, and then at Williams, and now back at Virginia.

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