Sammy Younge, Jr., an Alabama Navy veteran who became a SNCC organizer, was murdered at a Tuskegee, Ala., gas station for trying to use the station’s “white” toilet on January 3, 1966.  The death prompted SNCC to finally take a public position against the war, despite the unwillingness of other civil rights groups to do so. A poster with the legend, “No Vietnamese Ever Called Me N****r” had hung on a wall at SNCC’s headquarters office for months before the Younge murder and the announcement of the objection to the war.

Julian Bond had been the press officer for SNCC when he was elected in 1965 to represent the neighborhood surrounding Atlanta University, a complex of Black colleges. SNCC’s antiwar statement praised the courage of young men burning their draft cards to resist conscription, which created an instant controversy for the new legislator-elect who handled its distribution to the press.  

When an Atlanta reporter asked Bond if he agreed with it, of course he said he did.  The old, and not-so-old racists took that action as a delayed Christmas gift before the January start of their Session, allowing them to step outside their shroud of “courtesy” to unleash their well-rehearsed hatred for a new Black colleague.  A motion followed by a majority vote of the House denied Julian Bond his new seat as soon as he arrived for the Session of 1967.

When I learned that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading a march on the State Capitol on Saturday, January 14, supporting Julian Bond’s right to his legislative seat, I caught a bus to Atlanta from Covington, near Oxford.  Weather predictions for the day were not good, but I was glad at the chance to go.  On my way from the bus station, I was accosted on the street by a white man in his thirties in work clothes who made a racist remark referring to the demonstration, assuming that I would agree. I brushed him off but looked over my shoulder as I continued to Washington Street, in front of the Capitol.  

The weather led the newspapers to predict a poor turnout, but a surprising crowd of 1,500 people blocked Washington Street in front of the Capitol.  There was a flatbed truck parked near the corner of Hunter Street, in front of the equestrian statue of a Civil War General, later Governor, John B. Gordon. The rostrum on the truck stood before a giant photo of the recently martyred Sammy Young, Jr.  

SNCC’s more secular focus and its members’ youth contrasted with the more staid, preacher-staffed Southern Christian Leadership Conference, tending to make smooth relations regarding decisions and actions of the Civil Rights movement up until that time.  The impatience of the younger people was often reflected by their reference to Dr. King as “De Lawd,” a name taken from the character of God played by the equally eloquent Rex Ingram in The Green Pastures, the popular 1936 movie version of the Old Testament featuring an all-black cast.

It would not be until April 4 of 1967, over a year after the Bond protest in Atlanta, that Dr. King made his famous speech opposing the war at Riverside Church in New York City.  SCLC had held back from talking about the war despite the disproportionate number of Black GI casualties in the growing fighting for fear it would damage relations with the Johnson administration, and it certainly did that. The Bond protest foreshadowed Dr. King’s April ’67 speech in one way I remember from being there.  

I stood in the crowd about 10 feet from where Dr. King spoke from behind a pulpit-like rostrum. His distinctive preacher’s style was familiar, seen and heard him for years on radio and television His physical presence delivering his message to our crowd, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, proved impressively different.  It was impossible not to be swept up in anticipation by the rhythm with which he invoked, “We love America, and because we love America, we want America to do right!” Percussive repetition of three syllables turned his sentence into an unexpected and powerful incantation, a political prayer.

When Marshall McLuhan popularly proclaimed, “the medium is the message,” classifying television a “cool” medium, my understanding of his theory was shaped by the memory of Dr. King that day; if not, by the acceptance of his theory. The “uncool” medium of live address to an audience expressed a personal impact on me and my fellows on that street, an example of his ability to welcome any stranger in deep engagement.  His rhythmic preaching was merely a perfected instrument for sharing his undiminished warmth with many.  

During the foreshortened period between Malcolm X leaving the Nation of Islam and his assassination by members of the NOI, while under FBI surveillance, he actually accompanied  Dr. King in Alabama, during the voter registration organizing campaign that preceded “Black Sunday” at the Pettus Bridge in Selma.  Malcom was stunned by King’s easy personal interactions with rural Black folks, the truly familiar embrace he enjoyed with all the folks he encountered.  

The Black Muslim’s own background in urban Detroit, his awakening during incarceration, and success as a gifted street leader in the Nation of Islam left him unprepared for the deep instant personal impact he witnessed in King’s presence among “his people.” An instant respectful friendship, however short-lived, resulted; one that endured in the subsequent closeness of the families of both men after their assassinations.  

Julian Bond was already officially contesting his expulsion and chose not to attend the rally at the Capitol, although his SNCC allies were out in force. The demonstration served as something of a peace-making reunion for SNCC and SCLC as each was in the process of combining the issues of civil rights and opposition to the war.  The groups sought to revive some of the fellowship of their work together in Selma and Montgomery, however troubled, where they ultimately won passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, following those highly visible events.

Julian Bond ran in a Special Election campaign to reclaim his vacated seat in the legislature in a special election that winter.  I decided to travel to Atlanta to work for him on Election Day, another wet winter day in Atlanta.  From the campaign headquarters near Atlanta University, I was sent to leaflet cars in front of the Amos Drug Store at the intersection of Hunter and Ashby Streets, in Vine City, Julian’s neighborhood. I was supervised by an older student from AU’s female Spellman College, a person more sophisticated than I, whose kindness was a comfort.

All there was steady rain mixed with sleet, but I could not have been any happier with where I was and what I was doing. Julian drove to Amos after the 5 pm rush hour started to taper off to pick us up and drop me off at the Greyhound station downtown. Julian won his reelection over a forgotten opponent to return for a second rejection by the GA House.  

The federal district court upheld the legislature, but in December, after Julian won reelection in his first “regular,” not special, election in November, a unanimous US Supreme Court told the Georgia legislators they could not impose qualifying tests on election winners.  He finally took his seat in the Georgia House. As far as I was concerned, that was the most important thing that happened Day One of the General Assembly in 1967, but it was far from attracting the most public attention. After finally allowing Bond to take his oath, that same Georgia House elected Lester Maddox as Governor.

White racism enjoyed another strong day in Georgia politics. Several of my college friends from Emory at Oxford went to the first day of that 1967 legislature to see the excitement, the final resolution of  the contested election for Governor.  No candidate had received a majority vote, throwing the question into the legislature.  The three contestants were former Governor Ellis Arnall, who was a write-in candidate, Howard “Bo” Callaway, heir to a textile fortune in west Georgia, and Lester Maddox.

Maddox, a rabid Atlanta segregationist who sold fried chicken from his Pickrick Restaurant, challenged the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibited segregation in “public accommodations,” including restaurants and lodging.  All public transportation had been desegregated following the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56.  As he waved a revolver, he blocked customers seeking to enter his store. He led white thugs carrying axe handles, which he called “Maddox drumsticks,” a pun on the nickname for fried chicken legs.  A young Black lawyer named Constance Baker Motley sued him under the new 1964 Civil Rights Act and shut his business.

Readers of the Atlanta newspapers knew Lester from his weekly column in the Saturday Atlanta Journal, the weekly television schedule printed on green newsprint they kept at their sets all week. “Pickrick Says” retailed segregationist politics on every issue, along with praise for various law enforcement people who came to his attention. A perennial local Atlanta office seeker, Maddox jumped into and won a large Democratic Primary field in 1966 but was forced into a rare, meaningful General Election by the first credible Republican candidate for Governor since the 19th Century.

1966 was my first election after I turned 18, and I had voted for Ellis Arnall, a former “progressive Democrat” Governor from the 1940s, over Maddox and other candidates.  A “Write-in Georgia” movement opposed both Maddox and Callaway, which was led by Civil Rights and labor Democrats. That forced the legislature to choose from among the three candidates, repeating a similarly irregular episode from a troubled 1946 election that led to the “Georgia’s Three Governors” controversy.  

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