Race still determines success in America, civil rights leader Julian Bond told a Pauley Lecture audience Friday night.

Speaking to hundreds in Owens Auditorium on the campus of Sandhills Community College, Bond said that the battle for social justice is still under way and the NAACP will continue to lead the way with such non-violent strategies as the traditional litigation, mobilization and organization.

“We are the most stratified country in the Western world,” Bond said.

The national chairman of the NAACP was speaking on the topic “2000: A Race Odyssey.” Bond, who was introduced by Dr. James Gaddy, is a former Georgia congressman and is the founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Bond said he first learned about non-violence while a student at a Quaker school in Pennsylvania.

Race is not an easy subject and most Americans are uncomfortable discussing it, he said.

He opened his lecture with a glimpse into his own heritage.

“Only my father stands between Julian Bond and human bondage. I am the grandson of slaves,” he said.

Bond described his grandfather’s effort to gain an education, including the struggle to reach Berea College in Kentucky. He said that today’s generation must move forward with “greater efforts and grander victories” to achieve the promise of his grandfather’s generation.

The victory of the Civil War, he said, did not last long, because the winners soon joined the losers to continue repression of blacks for another 100 years.

He reminded his audience that only in the last 35 years has legal segregation ended, but he emphasized that segregation continues to exist in other forms than “legal.”

The NAACP — the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — was organized in the early part of the 20th Century to combat injustices which the white establishment was continuing to impose, he said.

Calling attention to a slaveowner tradition of taking black women slaves as mistresses, Bond said that the recurring onslaught on black culture resulted in the loss of racial identity and heritage and a loss of African chastity. He said that “mass corruption from white adultery” was passed down through the generations.

Bond recounted a series of actions initiated by the NAACP to bring about social justice for blacks. These included a successful battle against a Louisville city ordinance that prevented blacks from owning property in white communities and targeting news media, long comfortable with headlines saying such things as “Negro Steals” something. The organization even attracted the services of noted trial lawyer Clarence Darrow.

In 1954 the Supreme Court ruling in the Brown versus Board of Education case ended legal segregation in the schools.

Bond called these “acts of passive resistance against American apartheid.”

Although these efforts led to dramatic changes in American society and to greater acceptance of blacks and other minorities into the mainstream, Bond said the “Freedom Train” is slowing down.

Bond was not hesitant in naming political leaders directing a movement to slow that train: Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has addressed white supremacists. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a fellow Georgian, filed a lawsuit to keep the census from covering all people. The Republican leadership “mugged” Ronnie White when the black attorney was nominated for a federal judgeship.

“Last year everyone was trying to become Y2K-compliant, but these people seemed to be KKK compliant,” he said.

“They want to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. We believe the Confederate swastika should be in a museum. They believe it should fly over the state capitol.”

‘Not an Easy Job’

Bond said affirmative action is now being attacked by the very people who have benefitted, notably Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — “the poster child” for affirmative action. He said affirmative action is being attacked not because it failed but because it was successful.

Bond said that elements of the civil rights movement have shifted from “benign neglect to compassionate conservatism.” Where once it moved from the KKK to the CCC, it is now moving from Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas.

“It’s not an easy job,” he said of continuing efforts toward social justice. “But we have never wished our way to freedom. We have worked our way to freedom.”

Bond reminded his listeners that “we live in an increasingly shrinking world” in which the racial makeup of society is shifting. He recalled that when the Social Security program was initiated, five workers were contributing to that retirement fund for every one retiree. Today that number is reduced to three workers for every retiree.

In the early stages of Social Security, those contributing workers bore such names as Jim, Jack and Ralph, he said. Today, the three contributing workers are just as likely to be named Tawana, Maria and Jose.

Seeks More Open GOP

“You’d better just make sure that Tawana, Maria and Jose are making enough money to support that system,” he said.

Bond accepted questions from the audience for about 30 minutes after the conclusion of his lecture.

Speaking in a heavily Republican community, Bond drew some questions about black allegiance to the Democratic Party.

Herman Thompson, a black attorney and a Republican, asked why Bond and other blacks did not turn to the GOP to achieve their goals.

Bond replied that Republican actions speak too loudly that they do not want him as a member. He cited several examples, including a reference to the appointment of John Ashcroft as attorney general. He referred to Ashcroft as a representative of the “Taliban wing of the Republican Party.”

“I wish, I wish the Republicans would make me an offer. The choice is so obvious to me,” Bond said. “I badly want these parties to be competitive for my vote.”

Bond said that the NAACP will continue to use litigation, mobilization and organization in a nonviolent way to achieve its goals against “the comfortable, the callous and the smug.”

John Gent, chair of the Ruth Pauley Lecture Series Board, presided.

At the end of the lecture, everyone was invited to the Kennedy Hall Lobby for a reception honoring Bond.

The League of Women Voters of Moore County, one of four lecture sponsors, hosted the reception.

Other sponsors are the American Association of University Women, the Moore County Schools and SCC.