Bond's fears of southern violence subsided when confronted with a segregated, but sophisticated Atlanta
Prior to his family's move to Atlanta, Bond feared white hostility due to the frequent reports of southern violence against blacks. However, he soon realized the city's cosmopolitan, yet totally segregated nature set it apart from the typical southern racial antagonism.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Julian Bond, November 1 and 22, 1999. Interview R-0345. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JULIAN BOND:
-
In 1957, which was the year I graduated from high school, my father
accepted the job of dean of the School of Education at Atlanta
University. So the family picked up and moved with him. It was traumatic
for me because my home was full of these black newspapers that
circulated all over the country, and they were full of these
atrocity-stories about Negroes being lynched and burned and so on. I
thought, boy, I don't want to go down there. But, of course,
Atlanta is a big, fairly sophisticated city. Even though it was a
segregated city, again I moved into a sort of a cocoon. We
didn't live on the campus. We lived off campus. But we lived
in this black neighborhood. We never, ever saw any white people, unless
they were teachers or administrators of the school. So none of the
black-white tensions that existed in the large world intruded in this
world. So even when we moved to Atlanta, even though I was terrified,
nothing happened.
