As the nation mourns the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., (who died Friday night at age 80), his life in the civil rights movement and 34 years in Congress are vividly recalled.
The Alabama sharecropper’s son was on the front lines of the fight for equality by black Americans from the start — from being one of the first “Freedom Riders” who rode interstate buses into the South to pursue integration in 1961 to leading the march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, that resulted in his much-photographed beating by police nightsticks.
As iconic a congressman as fellow Democratic Reps. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., N.Y., and Andrew Young, Ga., Lewis rose to be a senior Member of the House Ways and Means Committee. His early endorsement of Barack Obama for President was key to the Illinois senator wrapping up the Democratic nomination in 2008.
Far less remembered is that John Lewis first came to Congress following a major upset of an even more celebrated opponent — and after a campaign still vividly recalled for its invective and nastiness.
When Rep. Wyche Fowler announced he would run for the U.S. Senate seat from Georgia in 1986, betting was strong his successor as U.S. Representative from the Atlanta-based 5th District would be one of the nation’s best-known black politicians: State Sen. Julian Bond, who had been denied a legislative seat in the Georgia General Assembly for his opposition to the Vietnam War.
Bond fought his exclusion all the way to the Supreme Court and was finally seated, a process that drew national attention.
Bond, in fact, was even placed in nomination for vice president by anti-war delegates at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. (He announced his withdrawal on the grounds that, at age 28, he had not reached the constitutional age of 35 to be vice president).
The son of much-revered Lincoln College President Horace Mann Bond, the resonant-voiced, Salem-smoking Julian projected a strong image of “cool”— in contrast to then-Atlanta City Councilman Lewis, who overcame a speech impediment as a young man but still retained his strong Alabama accent.
When Lewis announced his run for Congress, Southern Christian Leadership President Joseph Lowery told Atlanta Magazine, “A lot of people laughed. They said, ‘We’re surprised he made the City Council, now he’s talking about Congress!”
In the initial primary, Bond topped Lewis 47 to 35 percent. Since he fell short of a majority, a runoff was required. Lewis later told reporters “I knew I’d win. I knew I’d outwork him.”
Both were 46 at the time and both were committed liberal Democrats who disagreed on little except who should be congressman.
But Bond had demons. His marriage to Alice Clopton was on the rocks and she later charged that his alleged girlfriend Carmen Lopez was her husband’s supplier of cocaine and other drugs.
During the campaign, the rumors of Bond’s drug use circulated in the form of “over the fence gossip.” During a stormy televised debate, Bond accused Lewis of a conflict of interest over a campaign contribution and observed with sarcasm: “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it must be a duck.”
Lewis shot back that the only one ducking was Bond — ducking a drug test, that is. From there, what Atlanta Magazine dubbed “Jar Wars” ensued. Lewis continually reminded voters he had taken and passed a drug test, while Bond refused and accused his opponent of spreading false rumors he was a drug user. (Lewis always insisted he never heard the rumors of Bond using cocaine).
On the day of the run-off, Lewis scored an upset over his former friend Bond with 52 percent of the vote. In a district that was 58 percent black, Bond captured a majority of the black vote. But Lewis, as the “New York Times” reported, was “endorsed by the Atlanta newspapers and a favorite of the white liberal establishment and neighborhood organizations.”
That was enough to give him a narrow win.
Bond later told Atlanta journalist Vincent Coppola he agreed with the analysis white voters put Lewis over the top.
“I think many white voters said, ‘If Bond gets into office, he’s only going to be worried about them and not about us. John Lewis will worry about us all. He’ll be worried about everyone,’ he said, “That was a correct analysis for them to have. They were right.”
With the drug charges continuing after the election — and Alice Bond bringing a complaint to the police about her husband and Carmen Lopez in 1987 — Bond resigned from the state senate. Alice later dropped the charges and the two were divorced. No criminal action was ever filed against Bond. He went on to be a lecturer at Harvard University and was chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He died in 2015.
Bond and Lewis did not speak for three years after the clash but reconciled in 1989.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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