Once they were brothers in arms, but that was in another time and another place, back when Julian Bond and John Lewis were in Selma together for the march to Montgomery, back when they drove the rural roads of the South together, registering voters in towns like Waterproof, La., and Belzoni, Miss. Now, though their paths cross almost every day, the two men barely speak. It has been that way since they sat down for lunch last autumn at a Marriott Hotel in Atlanta. "Well, Mr. Senator, what are you going to do?" Lewis asked his friend, the state senator. "Mr. Chairman," replied Bond to the man who had been his leader years ago as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), "I'm running." Said Lewis: "I'm running too."
In terms of ideological trends and political tidings, the Aug. 12 Democratic primary in Georgia's Fifth Congressional District means little. Its significance far transcends such things. It is about friendships and loyalties, history and change. It is about the ambitions of two men with very different backgrounds and styles who had -- and still have -- an important vision in common. It is about the coming of age of a movement, one that Bond and Lewis helped found 25 years ago, which sought for blacks the right to participate fully in the political process.
Bond, who still has the boyish smile and laid-back cool that made him a celebrity in the '60s, is the glamour candidate. He is the clear favorite of the upwardly mobile young blacks, known as buppies, whose BMWs decorate the lot of his sprawling campaign headquarters. Cicely Tyson came down for a fund raiser, and so did the Temptations; Bill Cosby and Ted Kennedy have sent checks. Polished and witty, Bond has an air of bemused nonchalance; like a horse who shies from hurdles, he has backed away from seeking higher office or tougher challenges in the past. The current campaign, however, has made him more forceful. He now seems to relish a national role. Asked at a forum how effective he would be in getting money for the elderly, he replied, "I was having dinner in Washington last week with Majority Leader Jim Wright, and we discussed my possible position on committees."
Lewis, balding and intense, is a thick-tongued speaker. But he is widely revered as a living saint, a man of courage and commitment who was always on the front lines. During the movement, he was arrested 40 times and beaten often. As an Atlanta councilman, he has set himself up as an unyielding moralist. "In some quarters they think I'm too honest, too open to be effective," he admits with pride.
In many ways, they embody competing cultures within the black community. Bond's father and grandfather were both college presidents, and on the wall of his headquarters are pictures of him as a boy with such people as W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson. He went to a predominantly white prep school in Pennsylvania, then studied English at Morehouse College. Lewis was one of ten children born to a rural sharecropper. He grew up wanting to be a minister -- he used to preach funerals for the chickens on the farm -- and attended a Baptist seminary. Bond and Lewis met in 1960 when as students they joined the fledgling civil rights movement, and they were among the founders of SNCC. Lewis became chairman and led the marches; Bond was the communications director who stayed back at headquarters.