Racism embedded in Georgia's politics
Bond uncovers the racist nature of the inner workings of southern politics. In 1968, the Georgia Democratic Party chairman supported the independent candidate, George Wallace, over his party's nominee in order to preserve segregation. Although blacks composed twenty-five percent of the vote, the Georgia chairman selected an all-white delegation to attend the Chicago convention. Bond formed a black counter-delegation and received the support of Democratic presidential candidate, Eugene McCarthy. Refusing to share the delegation with blacks, the majority of the all-white delegation left.
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
- ELIZABETH GRITTER:
-
I'm going to jump ahead because I'm really curious
about 1968 and the Chicago convention and you leading the Georgia
challenge delegation. If you could talk about what that was.
- JULIAN BOND:
-
Well, in 1968, in Georgia, there was no democratic selection of
delegates to go to the convention. All the delegates were picked by the
party chairmen. Nowadays they have primaries where delegates are
elected. Next year, Democrats will elect some Gore delegates and some
Bradley delegates and some uncommitted delegates, but they will be
elected, most of them. Democrats will elect them, and they'll
go to the convention. This didn't happen in Georgia. It
didn't happen in most states. The party chairman picked them.
So he'd say, "You, not you, yeah you," and
so on. He picked a delegation that was almost all white in a state that
was a quarter black, where all the black people were Democrats. He
picked a delegation that was pledged to vote for Alabama governor George
Wallace who was running for president as an independent candidate, not
as a Democrat. So these weren't even Democrats. The McCarthy
campaign, the campaign of Eugene McCarthy, thought it'd be a
good idea to raise some trouble on the edges by putting together a
challenge delegation. So they sent an organizer to Atlanta, and he
talked to me and more people and more people and more people and more
people. We constructed a delegation that was democratically chosen. We
had caucuses in each of the congressional districts in Georgia. They
elected delegates to the state convention held in Macon. I get elected
co-chairman of the delegation with another fellow, and we send our
delegation up to Chicago to the convention. There's a big
argument between ourselves and the regular delegates. The party decides
the dispute by splitting the votes—half for them, half for
us. But most of them walked out. So we took their
seats. I think all but three of them walked out. So we became the
Georgia delegation. We got to cast all of Georgia's votes. I
got nominated for vice president, but I had to refuse because I was too
young.
