Social Justice Activists |Julian Bond

Horace Julian Bond, the son of Horace Mann Bond and Julia Bond, was born January 14, 1940 in Nashville, Tennessee.  At the time of his birth, Julian’s father was president of Fort Valley State College in Fort Valley, Georgia.  Coming from a family that highly prized education (Julian’s mother was a librarian) Bond, an avid reader, enrolled at Morehouse College in 1957 as an English Major.  At Morehouse he helped found The Pegasus, a literary magazine and interned at Time magazine.

Bond’s social activism began at Morehouse when he became one of the founding members of the Committee on appeal for Human Rights.  In Atlanta he led non-violent protests against segregation and, later, in 1960, in Raleigh, North Carolina, he helped form the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) where, in 1961, he would become the Committee’s communications director.

In 1965, Bond ran for and won election to the Georgia House of Representatives.  The State Congress, however, refused to seat him because Bond endorsed SNCC’s anti-Vietnam War platform.  Martin Luther King, Jr. rallied for Bond and, in 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bond on the basis of freedom of speech.  Bond finally took his seat in the Georgia House in 1967.  From there, Bond went on to win election to and serve in the Georgia State Senate from 1975 to 1986.

From 1971 to 1979, Julian Bond served as the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.  He also served as president of the Atlanta Chapter of the NAACP, eventually becoming the National Chairman of the organization; a position he held from 1998 to 2010.

Julian Bond was also a commentator for NBC’s Today Show as well as a contributor to a number of newspapers and magazine including the New York Times and The Nation.  Bond also held a professorship of history at the University of Virginia and was an adjunct professor at American University.

Julian Bond died August 15, 2015.