The Civil Rights Movement Loses a Tireless Worker
Monday, August 17th, 2015August 17, 2015
Julian Bond, lifelong champion for civil rights, died on Saturday, August 15, at the age of 75. Handsome and charismatic, with an intolerance for injustice ofttimes obscured by his calm demeanor, Bond took up the banner for equal treatment for African Americans as a teenager in Atlanta, Georgia, and carried it through to the end of his days.
Horace Julian Bond was born in 1940 in Nashville, Tennessee, the son of a librarian mother and an educator father. As a 17-year-old student at Morehouse College, Bond led protests against racial discrimination in Atlanta parks and other public places. In 1960, Bond helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which led peaceful protests and demonstrations against segregation and voter suppression in the American South.
Bond won election as a Democrat to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965 but was initially barred from taking office. In January 1966, Georgia legislators refused to seat Bond, accusing him of allegiances inconsistent with the Georgia Constitution after he endorsed a SNCC statement equating the work of soldiers drafted to serve in Vietnam with the travails of workers in the Civil Rights Movement. A ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States later sided with Bond on free-speech grounds, and Bond served in the body from 1967 through 1975.
Bond added his passionate voice to the clamor at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where proponents of reform vied for recognition with defenders of old-guard party politics. Bond led a group that challenged the seating of the Georgia delegation hand-picked by avowed segregationist Governor Lester G. Maddox. The dispute was settled by giving each of the two delegations half of Georgia’s votes.
In 1971, Bond helped found the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was the organization’s president from 1971 to 1979. In 1977, Bond showed his lighter side when he hosted—with musical guests Tom Waits and Brick—the comedy sketch program “Saturday Night Live.”
Bond served in the Georgia Senate from 1975 to 1986, when he resigned to run for election to the U.S. House of Representatives. In a stunning upset, Bond lost the bid to John Lewis, a fellow black civil rights leader, in a heated primary runoff election to represent most of Atlanta in Congress.
In 1998, Bond was elected chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He held the position for several years. In his later years, Bond taught at several universities and made his presence felt at demonstrations on topics ranging from corporate outsourcing to the Keystone XL pipeline. In 2009, he won the Spingarn Medal, the highest honor given by the NAACP.
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