Oral History Interview with Julian Bond

BOND: I imagine what happened to make SNCC not participate in Kentucky is a combination of things. One would be the strength of the NAACP. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee tried to go to places where it didn't run head up with other organizations that might be carrying on a social justice program. Additionally, I think, Kentucky was viewed as different, and in many ways better than states further south. It's a Border State, it's race relations on a relative scale were better than those in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia. We in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee thought ourselves the Kamikaze troops of the Civil Rights Movement. And so we wanted to go up against the hard cases, and the further south you went the harder the cases got. Kentucky had this reputation as being relatively racially moderate. And therefore, the kind of police dogs, fire hoses, other harder clashes with authority that came to typify the sixties southern civil rights movement, just weren't present there. It's to Kentucky's credit that they weren't. It's probably to our discredit that we didn't see this as a potential site for some of our activism, but Kentucky just wasn't on that--on that scale.

BOND: I imagine that Kentucky stayed off the radar screen not only of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, but in a very real way the radar screen of most of the other organizations, for the--simply because of this reputation, deserved or not, as being more racially moderate than the states further south: deep south states, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, parts of Florida, parts of all of South Carolina, North Carolina to a less degree. Those were the target states. Those were the states with big black populations. Those were the states with a history of civil rights activism, which Kentucky had as well, but they're states that were just hard cases; and they attracted activists like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in a way that Kentucky didn't. It--probably hindsight you know was perfect. It probably was a mistake not to have sent troops to Kentucky, not to have initiated a more vigorous organizing campaign; but resources are limited--you've got to go where the ducks are, and the ducks were further south.

BOND: Well, we know that both in the nineteen twenties and then again in the forties, late thirties, early forties, that there's this tremendous outmigration of southerners, both white and black, all of them seeking opportunity. For blacks it is a slightly different picture. They are pulled out by the prospect of better opportunity elsewhere, particularly in industrial cities in the North and they are pushed out by the harsh conditions they face. So if you are living in Birmingham, life is just bitter, bitter, bitter. You want to get away. And these migratory patterns, of course, follow the railroad lines. You look at Detroit, most of, many not most, but many of the black people now living in Detroit are Alabamans. You look at Chicago, most of or many of the black people living there have their origins in Mississippi. And you can follow the railroad lines straight on up, from Jackson to Chicago, from Birmingham to Detroit. As you come further east, North Carolina, Philadelphia and New York. And Kentucky is not exempt from any of this. People living in Kentucky want a better life. Kentucky doesn't offer them the opportunity, either because of racial barriers or because of the relatively undeveloped economy. And so if you are black or white living in Kentucky, you want to get out. There's a better life someplace. There's a beacon pulling you North and you go.

BOND: Typical way that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee went about organizing could be illustrated if you look at Selma in Alabama. We sent organizers to Selma in 1963. They began by knocking on doors, by walking around, by talking to people already identified as leadership figures. Someone who had been active with the NAACP, somebody who had been active in the local voters league. Someone who had lifted his or head, his or her head up above the mass and said 'let's do this thing. Let's make a better life for ourselves.' So you spent a little while talking to those people to try and get the history. What has happened, what has been done, what has been successful, what has not been successful. Then after you got a real sense of what the community is. We also used to provide our organizers with an economic breakdown of a community. Who owned the businesses, who owned the industries. And not only who owned them locally, but where were the tentacles that left the state and were in Pittsburgh, or in New York. In some cases in Mississippi, for example, we found that the Queen of England actually had interests in some plantations in Mississippi. So it gave us potential pressure points for a later campaign. So after all this information was gathered and after everyone had a pretty good sense of what the power points were in the community were and who the leadership was, then you began to plan a campaign. And you planned a campaign not by saying, 'here is what we're going to do,' but rather by saying, 'what do you think needs to be done?' And when you got some sense of what the community wanted - and in this community it may be this thing, in that community it might be something else, there's not one model fitting all circumstances. So after you had established that, then you begin to say to the people with whom you had been working with now for a month or even longer, 'how do you think we ought to go about it?' You formulate a plan, you assign some responsibility, you ask for volunteers. And you make sure, importantly, that everyone has something to do. There's nothing more deadening for a movement for me to say, 'here's what you're going to do,' rather than saying, 'what is that you think you can do?' And once all of this has been done, you move forward. And if you're fortunate, if everything works right, if everything falls into place, then you win. And when you win, then the next step is going to be that much easier.