The perils of organizing and the growing divide among SNCC activists
The stress of organizing took its toll on activists—mentally, physically, and emotionally. As single people, living communally bonded organizers together, but also enhanced tensions among each other. Bond argues that black power stemmed from these tensions among organizers. He describes the sharp divisions between SNCC members over inviting whites to Mississippi in 1964. Interracial relationships emerging from the white influx into SNCC merely heightened the pre-existing frictions and increased gender conflict among activists.
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've read that SNCC members felt "battle
fatigue" after a while. If you could speak about what you
observed with that, both others, personally.
- JULIAN BOND:
-
Well, imagine this. You're twenty, twenty-one years old.
You're doing work that is not only physically taxing, but
physically dangerous. And you're not paid well, so
you're not eating well. So your diet is poor.
You're working under enormous strain—mental,
physical strain. You're just not operating under the best
circumstances. And quite a few–I started to say a lot but I
couldn't say a majority—but quite a few people
obviously suffered from this, either physically because
they'd been beaten and physically hurt or mentally because
they'd been physically beaten or just because the strain was
too much for them. We had a lot of casualties. One person who went
insane. They killed someone. A guy named Dennis [he muttered something
about forgetting his name] killed Allard
Lowenstein. Dennis was married to Mary, and they got divorced, and his
mental condition deteriorated and he shot and killed Allard Lowenstein.
He just got out of the mental hospital a couple of years ago. What was
his name? I can't remember. Anyway, and other people who
didn't go to that extreme but obviously just
weren't functioning well. When we could, we would give them
some money and say, you know, "Go away." I remember
sending a guy to Mexico for a vacation because it was just obvious from
talking to him that his mental state was not well. So a lot of people
were hurt by this—the combination of bad diet, stress,
strain, physical beatings, or just living on the edge all the time. Just
rough on a lot of people.
- ELIZABETH GRITTER:
-
How did it affect you?
- JULIAN BOND:
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I went nuts too. Can't you tell? I don't know. It
surely didn't affect me the way it affected some others
because for one, I was married and had a home life that most other
people didn't. Almost everybody else was single. We lived
communally. So you're living with people who are sharing the
same experience, which on the one hand makes it easier, on the other
hand makes it worse.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
- JULIAN BOND:
-
My parents lived in Atlanta too. So I was at home. None of these other
people were at home. That takes a strain on you when you're
young. So I don't think it affected me. [He again jokes by
acting like he's crazy].
- ELIZABETH GRITTER:
-
The stability. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of segue into how it became so much more
of a black power change and kind of what your opinions were. I know you
eventually resigned from SNCC and why that happened.
- JULIAN BOND:
-
I think probably—. I never thought about it before. But
probably a portion of the black power thought stemmed from the tension.
People's tempers become short. You become angry at people you
would not have become angry at ordinarily. A couple of things happened
and these are big generalizations. We had had a big argument about
bringing whites into Mississippi for the summer of '64. The
argument usually went like this. The people who were in favor of it said
the country is more interested in. [interruption]
Where were we?
- ELIZABETH GRITTER:
-
You were saying about, I asked you about the tensions and
then—.
- JULIAN BOND:
-
Oh yes. So the people who wanted white students to come said,
"The country values white life more than it values black life.
So if we bring these white kids down here and they get beat up and they
get arrested, then the country will pay more attention to what
we're doing." The people opposed to it said,
"That's exactly why they shouldn't come
because we're trying to say to the country, 'You
should value black life as much as white life.' Bringing
these white kids down argues against that." But anyway, the
proponents won. The white kids came. Now on top of this, there had
always been throughout history a strong stream of nationalism in black
America. Sometimes it's very strong; sometimes it goes down.
But it's always there. What this says essentially is that
black people have to do things for themselves, by themselves because
unless they do, we'll never be strong and we'll
never be independent. If we depend on help from white allies, then
we'll always be weak. We'll always need that kind
of help. So the combination of these sentiments comes together.
Then other things enter the mix as well. There
begin to be romances between white women and black men. The black women
say, "Hey! Those are our men." Of course,
that's kind of a possessive thing. Nobody is your man. We are
all independent people. We can be whomever we want to be and with
whomever we want to be or whomever wants to be with us. But it caused an
enormous amount of tension. "These women are stealing our
men." They would say the black men, you've bought
into the American idea of beauty: blond hair, blue eyes, narrow noses,
thin lips, Caucasian features. You don't like black features:
thick lips, broad noses, kinky hair. You hate yourself. So enormous,
enormous tensions. All this come to a head, I can't remember
the dates well, at a staff meeting of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee. The staff meeting has been characterized as the
expulsion of whites from SNCC, which is not really what it is.
It's nearly that, but it's not that. What happened
is that there's a great deal of debate about who ought to
work where. The argument goes: the problem of racism in America
isn't in black communities. It's not black people
who are doing these things. It's white people. So if you want
to solve the problem of racism, you have to work in white communities.
Black people cannot work in white communities, but white people can. So
why don't you [he points to me] go work in this white
community over here? I'll keep working in this black
community over here. We'll be working toward the common
goals, but it doesn't make sense for you to work over here. I
can't work over there. Why don't you go work over
there where you can? Some of the white people said, "Yeah, that
makes sense. That's a good idea." Some of them said,
"No, I want to keep on doing this." The end result was
that this sharp line was drawn between black and white people in SNCC.
It was extremely painful for many people on both
sides because there were friendships going back three, four, five years,
shared experiences, shared terror, shared danger. It was just rough for
people to make an accommodation to this, and not everyone made an
accommodation. It eventually helped to destroy us.