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Julian Bond, Civil Rights Icon Remembered
Charismatic civil rights champion and former NAACP board chairman Julian Bond has died.
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Julian Bond died Saturday night in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, following complications from vascular disease. News of his passing was announced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in which Bond served as founding president during the 1970s.
“With Julian’s passing, the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice,” said Morris Dees, co-founder of the SPLU.
Horace Julian Bond was on the forefront of the 1960s civil rights movement. Often serving right alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Nashville native was a trailblazer for the movement that made equal rights for African-Americans possible.
Mr. Bond was one of the original leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee while a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta. As the committee’s communications director, Julian Bond frequently guided the national news media toward stories of violence and discrimination against African-Americans as the committee challenged legal segregation in the South’s public facilities. In his ascent toward leadership with the NAACP, Bond was also a writer, a poet, a television commentator, a lecturer and a college professor at Harvard, among other universities.
Julian Bond’s civil rights activism also extended beyond the United States.
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In 1985, Bond was arrested outside the South African Embassy for protesting against apartheid, the legalized racial segregation of South Africa at the time.
“He advocated not just for African-Americans, but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination because he recognized the common humanity in us all,” Dees said.
Mr. Bond served as chairman of the NAACP for 11 years. Throughout his life he remained persistently opposed to the stubborn remnants of white supremacy.
Julian Bond was 75.
He was a giant in the civil rights movement. May he RIP.