Drowning in his own tears

or Bird

Relaxing at Camarillo

or Herace Silver doodling,

Then I don't mind standing a little longer.

(quoted in Zinn's book p. 35)

As press secretary, he spent lots of time with the newspapermen who covered civil rights in the South. Two of them, Claude Sitton of the New York Times and Karl Fleming of Newsweek, have become his culture heroes. That he would admire these men, that he would speak so openly of his reservations about making a career in politics, and talk longingly of running a newspaper (he was the first managing editor of the militant Atlanta weekly, the Inquirer), set Julian off from SNCC.

SNCC is an in-group. The kids that make it up work hard, take on awesome tasks, and "don't respond well to criticism." Their discussions may be termed "philosophic," their songs are warm and strong, but SNCC workers haven't much time for jokes. Julian is different; he takes things less seriously. When talking to the Harvard kids running the SOUTHERN COURIER, an Alabama weekly, he suggested they run a box on their front page with a picture of a bird, any bird, entitled "Wise Old Bird." Then underneath the bird any three-digit lottery number.

SNCC kids don't, in general, waste time on outsiders. Not so much the result of any peculiar zenophobia, their gruffness is rather an end product of being constantly harried. Julian is more politic, more expansive. When running his campaign he used all the help he could get and took an interest in the people who worked for him.

During the long trip back from the prison last summer, he talked not only about sit-ins and campaigns, but also about movies and books. He babbled on about Susan Hayward in "I Want To Live"; about "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"; and noted that if Golden Gloves boxing hadn't been segregated, George Wallace (who at one point won the title) would have had to face Joe Louis.

Julian's commitment, his SNCC militancy, emerges in a quiet way. Towards the end of the journey, riding along in the dark, Julian spoke out, addressing no one in particular. "Funny, there's not lots of pressure to sell out, just pressure to keep quiet."

He was picking up the thread on an earlier discussion about the problems of grassroots politics. How do you make time to keep in close touch with the people as you get more and more important? It seemed right that Julian keep going on and up, to prove as another boy in the car said that the "hundreds of others like you, Julian," could make it. But how do you maintain your integrity, the honest responsiveness to your constituency and to your own conscience, while wheeling and dealing in the world of power politics?

Julian understood that he would not "sell out." He wouldn't promise on thing and do another. But he was afraid that when he felt he should speak out although it wasn't necessary that he'd choose the easy way out and remain silent.

The events of the last two weeks have shown that Julian won't "keep quiet." He believes in his right to speak out on Vietnam. The danger of losing his seat in the Houses seems less important than his conviction that the war in Vietnam is wrong.