Still much to overcome NAACP chief says at WSU

OGDEN — Despite the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, racism is alive and well in the United States, according to Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"That is a central fact for all nonwhite Americans," Bond said Thursday in a speech at Weber State University.

Bond said he still believes in an integrated America, though it appears to be an elusive goal.

But to fight racism, people have to be willing to register to vote and then cast their ballots.

"For only 45 years have black Americans been granted the rights of all citizens," he said.

After more than 200 years of living as property of whites and then 100 years of oppression, racism can't be remediated by a half-century of protections and one presidential election, Bond said.

And racism is still evident in social indicators.

"Black Americans are more likely to be poor than rich," Bond said, adding that almost every social indicator reflects a disparity between black and white Americans.

Blacks are more likely to be imprisoned, have higher rates of death by homicide, are less likely to have health insurance and college degrees and don't live as long as whites, he said.

Bond said that though Martin Luther King Jr. was the most public face of the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, it was a people's movement. It took the noted, the nameless, the famous and the faceless to organize sit-ins, freedom rides and marches.

"They walked in dignity rather than rioting in shame," he said.

It's a journey that started with slaves.

Bond's grandfather, James, was born into slavery in Kentucky in 1863. He was later freed and graduated from college in 1892.

Decades later, as a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Julian Bond helped organize student sit-ins and anti-segregation organization and was the founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Bond said he believes that King, who was assassinated in 1968, would have considered parts of his dream fulfilled with the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. But he also thinks King would be disappointed by some of the downward trends in employment and education of African-Americans.

Bond urged the theater full of attendees to make sure their children have the best education, whether they live in rural, suburban or inner-city communities.

"When we act together, we can overcome," he said. "Somebody will have to say there lived a race of people, a black people, who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights."

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