Speech concerning affirmative action, 2002

NEW APRIL2002 Copyright 2002 by Julian Bond

Let me read you a few words from a commencement address:

"The pessimist from his corner looks out on the world of wickedness and sin and blinded by all that is good and hopeful in the condition and progress of the human race, bewails the present state of affairs and predicts woeful things for the future.

In every cloud he beholds a destructive storm, in every flash of lightning an omen of evil, and in every shadow that falls across his path a lurking foe.

He forgets that the clouds also bring life and hope, that lightning purifies that atmosphere, that shadow and darkness prepare for sunshine and growth, and that hardships and adversity nerve the race, as the individual, for greater efforts and grander victories."ⁱ

That was my slave-born grandfather speaking to us almost exactly 110 years ago.

My grandfather was born in 1863, in Kentucky; freedom didn't come for him until after the 13^th Amendment was ratified in 1865,

He and his mother were property, like a horse or a chair. As a young girl, she had been given away as a wedding present to a new bridge, and when that bride became pregnant, her husband - that's my great -

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grandmother's owner and master - excercised his right to take his wife's slave as his master. That union produced two children -- one of them my grandfather.

As a teenager, barely able to read and write, he hitched his tuition - a steer - to a rope and walked 2100 miles across Kentucky to Berea College, and Berea took him in. Sixteen years later he graduated, and the college asked him to deliver the commencement address, part of which you have just heard.

The Civil War that freed my grandfather was fought over whether blacks and whites shared a common humanity. Less than ten years after it ended, the nation chose sides with the losers and agreed to continue black repression for almost 100 years.

Thus, 75 years after the Civil War, we fought the great world war against fascism with the segregated army. Another family member, my father-in-law, fought in that war, landing on Normandy Beach two days after D-Day.

His name had been the first one called in the draft in Minnesota - newspaper headlines in the Twin Cities announced that Ernest Horowitz's number had come up. Six days after landed in France, he was talking to a comrade in a foxhole near a small French town called Ste. Mere Eglise. He looked away for a second, and in that moment a German shell exploded. His friend was killed and for the Ernie Horowitz, his leg blown apart by the blast, the war was over.

But he had been one of those who saved the world for democracy.

Another was a corporal traveling from an Army camp in Arizona to a camp in Louisiana in 1944:

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"We had to lay over until the next day for our train. We could not purchase a cup of coffee in any of the lunchrooms around there. The only place we could be served was at the railroad station, but, of course, we had to go into the kitchen. As you know, Old Man Jim Crow rules. But that's not all; 11:30 a.m. about two dozen German prisoners of war, with two American guards, came to the station. They sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time. I stood on the outside looking on, and I could not help but ask myself these questions: are we not American soliders, sworn to fight for and die if need be for this our country? Then why are they better than we? Why does the government allow such things to go on?"

The black Americans who had fought that war returned home determined to make democracy safe for America, to fight as fiercely for foreedom here as they had overseas. They had fought for a country that would not fight for them. They joined the movement for civil rights. They found demoracy standing on its head, and they set it right side up.

During the movement - in Mississippi in summer of 1964 - three other American men made the ultimate sacrifice - Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman.

Mickey Schwerner was a full-time civil rights worker. Chaney and Goodman were volunteers. Andy Goodman gave up a summer in New York to come to Mississippi in June 1964 - exactly 20 years after Ernie Horowitz landed on Normandy Beach.

James Chaney was born Mississippi and had already given a year of his of his young life to what we called the Freedom Movement.

The next year, 1965 the March from Selma to Montgomery took place, producing its martyrs, too: James Reeb, clubbed-to death in Selma's

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streets; Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit homemaker slain on the highway by the Ku Klux Klan; Jimmie Lee Jackson, killed by an Alabama State Trooper.

In the end, all sacrifices for freedom.

What a diverse group; a young man from Minnesota wounded in France in 1944, young men from New York and Mississippi killed in 1964, a white man from New England, a mother from Detroit, a young man from Alabama, five white, two black; three dead in a Mississippi grave, three killed in Alabama, one living still; Jews, Christians, male, female, from North and South - all sharing two traits, bravery and optimism, the best aspects of the American spirit.

Then, on September 11 of last year, another diverse group died in freedom's cause. Most were Americans, but they died with people from more than 50 other countries from Chile to Zimbabwe.

That's why they called it the World Trade Center.

Among the Americans were blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, Christians, Muslims and Jews - as diverse in life as we are in death.

One of those who escaped from the World Trade Center said, "If you had seen what it was like in that stairway, you'd be proud. There was no gender, no race, [and] no religion. It was everyone, [unequivocally,] helping each other."ⁱⁱ

But away from that stairway, in America's streets, there is gender, ther is race, there is religion. Since the attacks, people who look like Arabs or Muslims have been harassed assaulted, even killed.

On the Saturday following terrible Tuesday, in Mesa, Arizona, a gunman shot to death the Sikh owner of a gas station and fired on a Lebanese clerk at work and an Afghan family at home. When he was

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arrested, the suspect said, "I'm a patriot. I'm a damn American all the way"ⁱⁱⁱ

What he really is a damn fool.

As Jordan's King Abdullah wisely observed, "The terrorists are trying to break down the fabric of the U.S. They want to break down what America stands for. ... [I]f the American communities start going after each other, if we see America fragment, then you destroy that special thing that America stands for. That's what the terrorists want ... ."^iv

Less than a week after the attacks, President George W. Bush went to the Washington Islamic Center. Standing in his stocking feet, the President vowed to prevent hate crimes and discrimination against Arabs and Muslims in the wake of the attacks. The Administration's two goals - retaliation against terrorists abroad and promotion of tolerance at home - are reminiscent of the Double V campaign during World War II: victory against fascism abroad and racism at home.

With the events of September 11, we relaize we have not yet achieved either victory - not yet against tyranny abroad - not yet against racism here at home.

Just as this enemy - terrorism - is more difficult to identify and punish, so is discrimination a more elusive target today.

No more do signs read "white" and "colored". The law now requires the voters' booth and schoolhouse door to swing wide open for everyone. No longer are they closed to those whose skins are black.

But despite impressive increases in the number of black people holding public office and wearing white collars, depite our ability to sit and eat and ride and vote and go to school in places that uses to bar black faces,

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