Julian Bond, a charismatic figure of the 1960s civil rights movement, a lightning rod of the anti-Vietnam War campaign and a lifelong champion of equal rights, notably as chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., died on Saturday night in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. He was 75.
The Southern Poverty Law Center announced Mr. Bond’s death on Sunday. His wife, Pamela Sue Horowitz, said the cause was complications of vascular disease.
Mr. Bond was one of the original leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee while he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He was the committee’s communications director for five years and deftly guided the national news media toward stories of violence and discrimination as the committee challenged legal segregation in the South’s public facilities.
He gradually moved from the militancy of the student group to the leadership of the establishmentarian N.A.A.C.P. Along the way, Mr. Bond was a writer, poet, television commentator, lecturer and college teacher, and persistent opponent of the stubborn remnants of white supremacy.
He also served for 20 years in the Georgia General Assembly, mostly in conspicuous isolation from white colleagues who saw him as an interloper and a rabble-rouser.
Mr. Bond’s wit, cool personality and youthful face — he was often called dashing, handsome and urbane — became familiar to millions of television viewers in the 1960s and 1970s. On the strength of his personality and quick intellect, he moved to the center of the civil rights action in Atlanta, the unofficial capital of the movement, at the height of the struggle for racial equality in the early 1960s.
Moving beyond demonstrations, Mr. Bond became a founder, with Morris Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization in Montgomery, Ala. Mr. Bond was its president from 1971 to 1979 and remained on its board for the rest of his life.
He was nominated, only somewhat seriously, as a candidate for vice president at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where he was a co-chairman of a racially integrated challenge delegation from Georgia. He declined to pursue a serious candidacy because he was too young to meet the constitutional age requirement, but from that moment on he was a national figure.
When he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, along with seven other black members, furious white members of the House refused to let him take his seat, accusing him of disloyalty. He was already well known because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s stand against the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.
That touched off a national drama that ended in 1966 when the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ordered the State Assembly to seat him, saying it had denied him freedom of speech.
As a lawmaker, he sponsored bills to establish a sickle cell anemia testing program and to provide low-interest home loans to low-income Georgians. He also helped create a majority-black congressional district in Atlanta.
He left the State Senate in 1986 after six terms to run for a seat in the United States House. He lost a bitter contest to his old friend John Lewis, a fellow founder of the student committee and its longtime chairman. The two men, for all their earlier closeness in the civil rights movement, represented opposite poles of African-American life in the South: Mr. Lewis was the son of a sharecropper; Mr. Bond was the son of a college president.
On Sunday, Mr. Lewis posted on Twitter: “We went through a difficult period during our campaign for Congress in 1986, but many years ago we emerged even closer.” In another message, he wrote, “Julian Bond’s leadership and his spirit will be deeply missed.”
During the campaign, the United States attorney’s office began investigating Mr. Bond after allegations surfaced that he had used cocaine. Mr. Bond’s estranged wife, Alice, was said to have told the police confidentially that he was a habitual cocaine abuser. She retracted her accusations after Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta, a friend of the family, telephoned her, leading to speculation that improper political pressure had been applied. She later refused to testify before a grand jury, and neither Mr. Bond nor Mr. Young was indicted.
Horace Julian Bond was born on Jan. 14, 1940, in Nashville, to Horace Mann Bond and the former Julia Washington. The family moved to Pennsylvania five years later, when Mr. Bond’s father became the first African-American president of his alma mater, Lincoln University.
Julian Bond’s great-grandmother Jane Bond was the slave mistress of a Kentucky farmer. Julian’s grandfather James Bond, one of Jane Bond’s sons, was educated at Berea and Oberlin Colleges and became a clergyman. His son Horace Mann Bond expected his own son Julian to follow in his footsteps as an educator, but the young man was attracted instead to journalism and political activism.
At age 12, Julian was sent to the private Quaker-run George School near Philadelphia. It was there that he first encountered racial resentment when he began dating a white girl, incurring the disapproval of white students and the school authorities.
He moved back south at age 17 when his father became dean of education at Atlanta University. At Morehouse College, he plunged into extracurricular activities but paid less attention to his studies. The civil rights movement provided a good excuse to drop out of college in 1961. He returned in the early 1970s to complete his English degree.
Dozens of his friends went to jail during his time with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, but he was arrested only once. In 1960, after word of student sit-ins at lunch counters in Greensboro, N.C., spread across the South, Mr. Bond and a few of his friends at Morehouse organized protests against segregated public facilities in Atlanta. He was arrested when he led a sit-in at the City Hall cafeteria.
During this period, he and some fellow black students had an early experience with racism in the Georgia House of Representatives. They visited there one day and sat in the whites-only visitors’ section. The Capitol police escorted them out.
Mr. Bond devoted most of the 1960s to the protest movement and activist politics, including campaigns to register black voters. Both he and Mr. Lewis left the student committee after its leadership was taken over by black power advocates who forced whites out of the organization.
He prospered on the lecture circuit the rest of his life. He became a regular commentator in print and on television, including as host of “America’s Black Forum,” then the oldest black-owned television program in syndication. His most unusual television appearance was in April 1977, when he hosted an episode of “Saturday Night Live.”
In later years, he taught at Harvard, Williams, Drexel and the University of Pennsylvania. He was a distinguished scholar in residence at American University in Washington and a professor of history at the University of Virginia, where he was co-director of the oral history project Explorations in Black Leadership.
Mr. Bond published a book of essays titled “A Time to Speak, a Time to Act” in 1972. He wrote poetry, much of it reflecting the pained point of view of a repressed minority, and articles for publications as varied as The Nation, Negro Digest and Playboy.
He was made chairman of the N.A.A.C.P. in 1998. He remained active in Democratic Party politics and was a strong critic of the administration of President George W. Bush.
In addition to Ms. Horowitz, his second wife and a former lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, he is survived by three sons, Horace Mann Bond II, Jeffrey and Michael; two daughters, Phyllis Jane Bond McMillan and Julia Louise Bond; a sister, Jane; a brother, James; and eight grandchildren.
In a statement on Sunday, President Obama called Mr. Bond “a hero and, I’m privileged to say, a friend.”
“Justice and equality was the mission that spanned his life,” Mr. Obama said. “Julian Bond helped change this country for the better. And what better way to be remembered than that.”
*****
Horace Julian Bond (January 14, 1940 – August 15, 2015) was an American social activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement, politician, professor, and writer. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the early 1960s, he helped to establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Bond was elected to four terms in the Georgia House of Representatives and later to six terms in the Georgia Senate, having served a combined twenty years in both legislative chambers. From 1998 to 2010, he was chairman of theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.[4]
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[hide]Early life and education[edit]
Bond was born at Hubbard Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, to parents Julia Agnes (Washington) and Horace Mann Bond. His father was an educator who went on to serve as the president of Lincoln University.[5][6] His mother, Julia, was a former librarian at Clark Atlanta University.[7] At the time, the family resided on campus at Fort Valley State College, where Horace was president. The house of the Bonds was a frequent stop for scholars and activists and celebrities passing by, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson. In 1945 his father was offered the position as the first African-American president of Lincoln University, and the family moved North.[8]
In 1957, Bond graduated from George School, a private Quaker preparatory boarding school near Newtown in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.[9]
Political organizing[edit]
On April 17, 1960, Bond helped co-found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).[10] He served as the communications director of SNCC from January 1961 to September 1966, when he traveled around Georgia, Alabama,Mississippi, and Arkansas to help organize civil rights and voter registration drives. Bond left Morehouse College in 1961 to work on civil rights in the South.[11] From 1960 to 1963, he led student protests against segregation in public facilities and the Jim Crow laws of Georgia.[12]
He returned in 1971 at age 31 to complete his Bachelor of Arts in English.[13] With Morris Dees, Bond helped found the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a public-interest law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama.[14] He served as its president from 1971 to 1979.[15] Bond was an emeritus member of the Southern Poverty Law Center board of directors at his death.[16]
Career[edit]
In politics[edit]
In 1965, Bond was one of eleven African Americans elected to the Georgia House of Representatives after passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of 1965 had opened voter registration to blacks. By ending the disfranchisement of blacks through discriminatory voter registration, African Americans regained the ability to vote and entered the political process.[17] Although he was initially undecided about his party affiliation, Bond ultimately ran and was elected as a Democrat, the party of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law.[18] On January 10, 1966, Georgia state representatives voted 184–12 not to seat him because he had publicly endorsed SNCC's policy regarding opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.[19] They disliked Bond's stated sympathy for persons who were "unwilling to respond to a military draft".[20] A three-judge panel on theUnited States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled in a 2–1 decision that the Georgia House had not violated any of Bond's constitutional rights. In 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled 9–0 in the case of Bond v. Floyd (385 U.S. 116) that the Georgia House of Representatives had denied Bond his freedom of speech and was required to seat him. From 1967 to 1975, Bond was elected to four terms in the Georgia House, where he organized the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus.[21]
In January 1967, Bond was among eleven House members who refused to vote when the legislature elected segregationist Democrat Lester Maddox of Atlanta asgovernor of Georgia over the Republican Howard Callaway. Callaway had led in the 1966 general election by some three thousand votes. The choice fell on state lawmakers under the Georgia Constitution of 1824 because neither major party candidate had polled a majority in the general election. Former Governor Ellis Arnallpolled more than fifty thousand votes as a write-in candidate, a factor which led to the impasse. Bond would not support either Maddox or Callaway, although he was ordered to vote by lame duck Lieutenant Governor Peter Zack Geer.[22]
Throughout his House career, Bond's district was repeatedly redistricted:
Bond went on to be elected for six terms in the Georgia Senate, in which he served from 1975 to 1987.[26]
During the 1968 presidential election, Bond led an alternate delegation from Georgia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where he became the first African American to be nominated as a major-party candidate for Vice President of the United States. The 28-year-old Bond quickly declined nomination, citing the constitutional requirement that one must be at least 35 years of age to serve in that office.[27][28]
Bond ran for the United States House of Representatives from Georgia's 5th congressional district in 1986. He lost the Democratic nomination in a runoff to rival civil rights leader John Lewis in a bitter contest,[29] during which Bond was accused of using cocaine and other drugs.[30] During the campaign, Lewis challenged Bond to take a drug test (Lewis had said he took one and passed). Bond refused, saying the drug test was akin to McCarthyism and trivializes the issue of drugs.[31] While Bond had raised twice as much money as Lewis and had a larger national reputation, Lewis cast himself as the man on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement and ran up large margins over Bond among white liberals in Atlanta.[32] As the district had a huge Democratic majority, the nomination delivered the seat to Lewis, who still serves in Congress. Still dogged by allegations of drug use, Bond resigned from the Georgia Senate the following year.[33][34] Bond's estranged wife, who publicly accused him of using cocaine, later retracted her statements.[28]
After leaving politics, Bond taught at several universities in major cities in the North and South, including American,[35] Drexel,[36] Harvard,[37] and the University of Virginia, where he taught until 2012.[28] Bond was on the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.[38]
In activism[edit]
Bond became the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center[39] in 1971. He served until 1979, remaining a board member and president emeritus for the rest of his life.[40]
In 1998, Bond was selected as chairman of the NAACP. In November 2008, he announced that he would not seek another term as chairman.[41] Bond agreed to stay on in the position through 2009, as the organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. Roslyn M. Brock was chosen as Bond's successor on February 20, 2010.[42]
Bond was an outspoken supporter of the rights of gays and lesbians. He publicly stated his support for same-sex marriage. Most notably, he boycotted the funeral services for Coretta Scott King on the grounds that the King children had chosen an anti-gay megachurch as the venue. This was in conflict with their mother's longstanding support for the rights of gay and lesbian people.[43] In a 2005 speech in Richmond, Virginia, Bond stated:
- African Americans ... were the only Americans who were enslaved for two centuries, but we were far from the only Americans suffering discrimination then and now.... Sexual disposition parallels race. I was born this way. I have no choice. I wouldn’t change it if I could. Sexuality is unchangeable.[44]
In a 2007 speech on the Martin Luther King Day Celebration at Clayton State University in Morrow, Georgia, Bond said, "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married." His positions pitted elements of the NAACP against religious groups in the Civil Rights movement who oppose gay marriage. Most resistance came from within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was partially blamed for the success of the gay marriage ban amendment in California.[45]
On October 11, 2009, Bond appeared at the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., and spoke about the rights of theLGBT community, a speech which was aired live on C-SPAN.[46][47]
He was a strong critic of policies that contribute to anthropogenic climate change and was amongst a group of protesters arrested at the White House for civil disobedience in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline in February 2013.[48]
Other political views[edit]
Bond was a strong critic of the Bush administration from its assumption of office in 2001, in large part because Bond believed the administration was illegitimate. Twice that year, first in February to the NAACP board and then in July at that organization's national convention, he attacked the administration for selecting Cabinet secretaries "from the Taliban wing of American politics". Bond specifically targeted Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had opposed affirmative action, and Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who defended the Confederacy in a 1996 speech on states' rights. In the selection of these individuals, Bond said, Bush had appeased "the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing and chosen Cabinet officials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection." Then House Majority Leader Dick Armey responded to Bond's statement with a letter accusing NAACP leaders of "racial McCarthyism."[49] Bond later added at the annual NAACP convention that year, that since Bush's election he had "had his picture taken with more black people than voted for him."[49]
On May 14, 2013, while on MSNBC, Bond called the Tea Party the "Taliban wing of American politics."[50] Bond told MSNBC, "I think it's entirely legitimate to look at the tea party." But he also said, "It was wrong for the IRS to behave in this heavy-handed manner. They didn't explain it well before or now what they're doing and why they're doing it." He called Tea Party members "a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political, who've tried as best as they can to harmPresident Obama in every way they can." He added, "We all ought to be a little worried about them."[50]
Work and appearances in media[edit]
From 1980 to 1997, Bond hosted America's Black Forum.[28] He was also a commentator for radio's Byline and NBC's The Today Show.[51] He authored the nationally syndicated newspaper column Viewpoint,[35] and narrated the critically acclaimedPBS series Eyes on the Prize in 1987 and 1990.[52]
Bond hosted Saturday Night Live on April 9, 1977, becoming the first black political figure to host the television show. In 1978, Bond played himself in the miniseries King.[53] He also had a small appearance in the movie Ray (2004).[54] In 2012, Bond was centrally featured in Julian Bond: Reflections from the Frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement, a 32-minute documentary film by Eduardo Montes-Bradley.[55][56]
Personal life[edit]
On July 28, 1961, Bond married Alice Clopton, a student at Spelman College. They divorced on November 10, 1989. They had five children: Phyllis Jane Bond-McMillan, Horace Mann Bond II, Michael Julian Bond (an at-large member of Atlanta’s City Council), Jeffrey Alvin Bond, and Julia "Cookie" Louise Bond. He married Pamela Sue Horowitz, a former SPLC staff attorney, in 1990.[57]
Bond died from complications of vascular disease on August 15, 2015 in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, aged 75. He was survived by his wife, his five children, James (a brother), Jane Bond Moore (a sister), and eight grandchildren.[40]
Awards and honors[edit]
- 2002, he was a recipient of the National Freedom Award, from the National Civil Rights Museum.[58]
- 2009, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal, from the NAACP.[59]
Among 25 honorary degrees, he was awarded:[60]
- 1999, an honorary LL.D. from Bates College.
- 2008, an honorary degree from George Washington University. Bond was also the 2008 Commencement Keynote Speaker.[61]
- 2009, an honorary L.H.D. from Macalester College.
Bibliography[edit]
- Bond, Julian (1969). Black Candidates: Southern Campaign Experiences. Atlanta: Voter Education Project. ASIN B0007GSIKG.
- Bond, Julian (1972). A Time to Speak, A Time to Act. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671213459.
- Bond, Julian; Lewis, Andrew (1995). Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table. American Heritage. ISBN 978-0828106399.
- Bond, Julian; Wilson, Sondra Kathryn, eds. (2000). Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Celebration of the Negro National Anthem; 100 Years, 100 Voices. New York:Random House. ISBN 978-0679463153.
- Nationally syndicated column Viewpoint.
- Poems and articles have appeared in a list of national magazines and newspapers.
- Julian Bond's papers reside at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.
*****
Julian Bond, in full Horace Julian Bond (born January 14, 1940, Nashville,Tennessee, U.S.), U.S. legislator and black civil rights leader, best known for his fight to take his duly elected seat in the Georgia House of Representatives.
The son of prominent educators, Bond attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he helped found a civil rights group and led a sit-in movement intended to desegregate Atlanta lunch counters. In 1960 he joined in creating the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and he later served as communications director for the group. In 1965 he won a seat in the Georgia state legislature, but his endorsement of a SNCC statement accusing the United States of violating international law in Vietnam prompted the legislature to refuse to admit him. The voters in his district twice reelected him, but the legislature barred him each time. Finally, in December 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the exclusion unconstitutional, and Bond was sworn in on January 9, 1967.
At the Democratic National Convention in 1968, Bond led an insurgent group of delegates that won half of Georgia’s seats. He seconded the nomination of Eugene McCarthy and became the first black man to have his name placed in nomination for the vice presidential candidacy of a major party. Younger than the minimum age required for the position under the Constitution, however, Bond withdrew his name.
Bond served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1967 to 1975 and in the Georgia Senate from 1975 to 1987. In 1986 he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In addition to his legislative activities, Bond served as president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and as executive chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
*****
Julian Bond, in full Horace Julian Bond (b. January 14, 1940, Nashville, Tennessee - August 15, 2015, Fort Walton Beach, Florida), legislator and civil rights leader, best known for his fight to take his duly elected seat in the Georgia House of Representatives.
The son of prominent educators, Bond attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he helped found a civil rights group and led a sit-in movement intended to desegregate Atlanta lunch counters. In 1960 he joined in creating the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and he later served as communications director for the group. In 1965 he won a seat in the Georgia state legislature, but his endorsement of a SNCC statement accusing the United States of violating international law in Vietnam prompted the legislature to refuse to admit him. The voters in his district twice re-elected him, but the legislature barred him each time. Finally, in December 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled the exclusion unconstitutional, and Bond was sworn in on January 9, 1967.
At the Democratic National Convention in 1968, Bond led an insurgent group of delegates that won half of Georgia’s seats. He seconded the nomination of Eugene McCarthy and became the first African American man to have his name placed in nomination for the vice presidential candidacy of a major party. Younger than the minimum age required for the position under the Constitution, however, Bond withdrew his name.
Bond served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1967 to 1975 and in the Georgia Senate from 1975 to 1987. In 1986 he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives against his fellow civil rights activist, John Lewis.
In addition to his legislative activities, Bond served as president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and as executive chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Bond became the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971. He served until 1979, remaining a board member and president emeritus for the rest of his life.
In 1998, Bond was selected as chairman of the NAACP. In November 2008, he announced that he would not seek another term as chairman. Bond agreed to stay on in the position through 2009, as the organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. Roslyn M. Brock was chosen as Bond's successor on February 20, 2010.
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