Left leaning press account of NAACP "Nazi" speech

[Stevicat]

Bond: The battle is not over


By Alice Thrasher
Staff writer

Civil rights activist and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond told a crowd at Fayetteville State University on Wednesday that the fight for equal rights is not over.

“We now find ourselves refighting old battles we thought we had already won,” he said. “We have to fight discrimination whenever it raises its ugly head.”

Bond, who is 66, said some schools are more segregated than they were in the past.

“We have to ensure that our children in inner city or suburban or rural schools receive the best education,” he said. “If the law mandates that you leave no child behind, they ought not to leave the money behind.”

Bond spoke for 45 minutes, and his speech was interrupted several times by applause as he jabbed at the Bush administration. Bond’s address was part of FSU’s Distinguished Speakers Series and helped kick off Black History Month.

“We have a president who talks like a populist and governs for the privileged,” Bond said.

Bond said civil rights is not an issue for black people only.

By 2050, blacks and Hispanics will make up 40 percent of the nation’s population, he said. “Wherever there are others that share our concerns and conditions, we need to make common cause with them. At the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, we believe that people come in all colors. Anybody who shares our values is more than welcome.’’

FSU Chancellor T.J. Bryan estimated that 900 people attended the speech. Freshmen, who were required to attend, filled the balcony of Seabrook Auditorium.

“Certainly, I want them to garner a sense of perspective and history and to see how much distance has been covered, even in Mr. Bond’s life,” Bryan said. “So often, students don’t know what it was like because they know what they have now. I hope they have a sense of the great strides that have been made,” she said.

After the speech, some said they had followed Bond’s career for many years. He was involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and also worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “We were saddened by the death of Coretta Scott King,” he said. He said she is regarded as the First Lady of Civil Rights.


Bond talks about the challenges of the future Recalling the past
Gloria Tuprah, a retired FSU math professor, said she first heard Bond speak in the late 1960s while she was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. “It seems like he doesn’t age,” she said.

Douglas Waddell, 77, of Raeford, said he heard Bond speak in Greensboro years ago, during the sit-in days. He stood in line to meet Bond in the Seabrook lobby after the speech. Many people had Bond sign their programs.

As part of the program, FSU science professor Valeria Fleming and FSU alumnus William Thorpe of Chapel Hill were honored for their work during the civil rights era.

Fleming said after the speech that while Bond’s comments don’t satisfy everybody, she thinks he seldom is wrong.

“And he has a unique way of saying it,” she said.

Staff writer Alice Thrasher can be reached at thrashera@fayettevillenc.com or 486-3569.

[SonomaCat]

Thanks for posting that. There definitely is a difference in the presentation of the same speech by the different media outlets, isn't there?