Julian Bond

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Horace Julian Bond (born January 14, 1940) is an American leader of the American Civil Rights Movement. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia during the early 1960s, he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He has been Chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1998.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Controversial comments 1.2 Current activities 2 Trivia 3 External links 4 References

[edit] Biography

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Bond's family moved to Pennsylvania when he was five years old when his father, Horace Mann Bond, took a position as the first African American President of Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), his alma mater. He was educated at the George School, a private Quaker preparatory boarding school near Newtown, Pennsylvania. Then, beginning in 1957, he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta. While there, he won a varsity letter for swimming. He was also instrumental in founding a literary magazine called The Pegasus and he served as an intern at Time magazine.

In 1960, Bond was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and served as communications director from 1961 to 1966. From 1960 to 1963, he led student protests against segregation in public facilities in Georgia.

Bond left Morehouse in 1961, returning to complete his degree, a BA in English, in 1971. He helped found the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a public interest law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama, along with Morris Dees. He was that organization's president from 1971 to 1979. Bond remains a member of the board of directors of the SPLC.

Five years later, Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives. After his election, however, the other members of the House refused to seat him because of his publicly expressed opposition to the Vietnam War. In 1966, the Supreme Court of the United States 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 had to seat him.

From 1965 to 1975, he served as a Democratic member in the Georgia House for four terms. He went on to serve six terms in the Georgia Senate from 1975-1986.

During the 1968 Presidential election, Bond led a challenge delegation from Georgia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and was the first African-American nominated as Vice President of the United States. He withdrew his name from the ballot, however, because of the Constitutional requirement that a person must be at least 35 years of age to serve.

Bond resigned from the Georgia Senate to run for the United States House of Representatives, but he lost to civil rights leader John Lewis. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bond taught at several universities, including American, Drexel, and Harvard universities and the University of Virginia.

Bond continues with his activism as Chairman of the NAACP and working to educate the public about the history of the civil rights movement and the injustices that African Americans and the poor still endure. He serves as President Emeritus of the Southern Poverty Law Center. He hosted America's Black Forum from 1980 until 1997, and still serves as a commentator for the show.

He also serves as a commentator for radio's Byline and for NBC's The Today Show. He authored the nationally-syndicated newspaper column Viewpoint. He narrated the critically-acclaimed PBS series Eyes on the Prize in 1987 and 1990, on the life of New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell.

He has published A Time To Speak, A Time To Act, a collection of his essays as well as Black Candidates Southern Campaign Experiences. His poems and articles have appeared in a Who’s Who list of magazines and newspapers.

Bond is a supporter of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered rights and marriage equality.

[edit] Controversial comments

As NAACP chairman, Bond has repeatedly denounced the Republican Party. WorldNet Daily, a conservative Internet-based news service, reported that Bond had made a statement of the Republican's view on civil rights on February 2006 at a speech given at Fayetteville State University, a historically black college in North Carolina, saying: “Their [the Republicans] idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side-by-side.” WorldNet Daily accused him of calling Secretary of State Rice and former Secretary Powell "tokens" and comparing the judicial nominees of President George W. Bush to the Taliban. ^[1] What he actually said was that the Republican Party uses them "as kinds of human shields against any criticism of their record on civil rights." ^[2] The issue was resolved by the Fayetteville Observer reviewing the audio recordings of the speech. Bond has been giving the same speech since at least the Fall of 2003, in which he has made the comment about Republicans' seeing "equal rights" as the ability to fly the "American flag and Confederate swastika side-by-side" and has called the Republican Party the "American Taliban."^{[citation needed]}

Bond was quoted in a New York Times article in 2003 criticizing the names of public schools named for Confederate leaders by saying that "if Robert E. Lee had had his way, [black children] would still be in bondage."

[edit] Current activities

Today, Bond is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and a faculty member in the history department at the University of Virginia where he teaches HIUS 367: History of the Civil Rights Movement. Bond will retire from teaching at Virginia following the spring 2007 semester, but will continue teaching one day a week at American. In 1999, Bond received a LL.D. from Bates College.

[edit] Trivia

• Bond hosted Saturday Night Live on April 9, 1977. One of the most famous segments from this appearance is the "Black Perspective" skit with then-SNL cast member Garrett Morris.
• Julian Bond appeared on The Colbert Report on July 20, 2006.
• Bond had a small appearance in the movie Ray.

[edit] External links

• NAACP biography
• SPLC biography
• Julian Bond at the Internet Movie Database
• Brief video clip From the State Library & Archives of Florida.

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48635
2. ^ http://www.fayettevillenc.com/article?id=225894