Civil rights leader Julian Bond urges next generation to take action, find solutions

Civil rights leader Julian Bond spoke of his life and his work with Martin Luther King Jr., sharing hard-won wisdom and a gracious wit with a packed house Saturday night at the Modesto Junior College 21st annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration.

“The racial picture has improved remarkably in my lifetime,” Bond said, but added much remains to be done. Success came “because the victims became their own best champions.”

“This was a people’s movement. They weren’t the noted, they were the nameless,” he said.

Bond, the grandson of a slave, teaches history of civil rights at American University in Washington, D.C. In 1960, at age 20, he co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, helping organize voting drives and sit-ins.

“He was so young, but he did really incredible things. That’s so inspiring,” said Modesto High student Macy Swenson, 16, one of about two dozen college and high school students who attended a question-and-answer period on Saturday afternoon before a reception at the King-Kennedy Memorial Center in west Modesto.

His message spanned ages, also touching older MJC student Samuel White-Ephraim, who said he protested in the 1960s as well. “I remember the struggles, the water hoses, the police dogs,” he said. Struggles continue today, he said. “But it’s not just one race of people like it was then, it’s whole groups of people.”

Bond urged the group to get engaged, get involved and use their vote to press for change. “We can’t sit at home and say, ‘Gee. I hope somebody does something,’” he said. “We too often think some magical person is going to come down and make everything right. But there never has been such a person. We need to help ourselves.”

Start close to home, he suggested. “There’s an awful lot to be done in our communities, from registering voters to picking up trash in the street,” Bond said. Longtime leaders need to bring in the next generation, he added. “You need to make a place for young people to take your place.”

It was the death of a U.S. Navy veteran, shot for trying to use a whites-only bathroom in the South, that turned him to anti-war activism in the Vietnam era, Bond said. Asked about recent police shootings of blacks, he said protesters brought attention to the issue but fell short of making real change.

“We need to settle on demanding police accountability. They need to just not close ranks and say, ‘We never do that,’ because we know that they do do that. It happens all the time,” Bond said.

History needs to not be rewritten to fit a convenient narrative, he told the crowd, pointing to what he called inaccuracies in the film “Selma,” particularly its portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson. “Johnson was the best civil rights president we’ve ever had,” he said. “This movie treats him badly. He was a partner to Martin Luther King and they worked hand in hand.”

Elected to the Georgia House of Representatives three times, it took the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Bond to take the seat he held for 20 years.

The breadth of his experience was good for young people to hear, said John Ervin III, who brought students with Project Uplift. “Firsthand history – there’s nothing like living history,” he said.

MJC student William Tumblin said he came to hear Bond to learn more about King as a person. “Most of us know Dr. King through history, through reading about him, but he walked with the man,” Tumblin said.

At the event Saturday night, organizers also gave out the 2015 MLK Legacy Award. This year’s honoree is Heather Sherburn, principal at Orville Wright Elementary School, chosen for her advocacy for her students and the families of the airport neighborhood in Modesto.

“She has shined a light on that disenfranchised and often forgotten neighborhood,” said Modesto City Schools Trustee Sue Zwahlen in presenting the award. Sherburn fundraises each year for summer school and, with community groups, created a family resource center at the edge of the campus.

This story was originally published February 7, 2015 at 10:51 PM with the headline "Civil rights leader Julian Bond urges next generation to take action, find solutions."