Post Publisher Paul Cobb and his longtime friend and comrade in the Civil Rights Movement, Julian Bond (RIP)
Poems by Julian Bond
LOOK AT THAT GIRLLook at that girl shake that thing,Copyright © Julian Bond, 1960, all rights reserved.
We can't all be Martin Luther King.
[This was written sometime in the very early '60s — or perhaps even '58 or '59, — when I was a Morehouse College student. From time to time, usually through the auspices of some religiously oriented campus group, we'd be invited to meet with our white counterparts at Emory or Agnes Scott. We'd wear our Sunday best and sip tea and eat cookies. Typically a well-meaning white student would say as we were parting — 'If only they were all like you.' That prompted the poem." — JBond.]
I TOO, HEAR AMERICA SINGING
[As published in the first issue of The Student Voice — SNCC's newsletter, summer, 1960.]
I too, hear America singingCopyright © Julian Bond, 1960, all rights reserved.
But from where I stand
I can only hear Little Richard
And Fats Domino.
But sometimes
I hear Ray Charles
Drowning in his own tears
or Bird
Relaxing at Camarillo
Or Horace Silver doodling,
Then I don't mind standing
a little longer.
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