Bond, Julian

Bond, Julian (Horace Julian Bond), 1940–2015, U.S. civil-rights leader, b. Nashville, Tenn. As a student at Morehouse College, he participated in sit-ins at segregated Atlanta restaurants. He was a founder (1960) of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, serving (1961–65) as its communications director. Elected (1965) to the Georgia assembly, Bond was denied his seat because of his statements opposing the war in Vietnam. Reelected in 1966, he began serving after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld (Dec., 1966) his right to hold office. A state representative until 1974, he then served as a state senator (1975–87). Bond led a group of black delegates to the 1968 Democratic Convention where he challenged the party's unit rule and won representation at the expense of the regular Georgia delegation. He was also a founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, serving as its president from 1971 to 1979. In 1986 he lost a Georgia congressional race to John Lewis. From 1998 to 2010 he was chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Bond was the author of A Time to Speak, a Time to Act (1972).

See biographies by J. Neary (1971) and R. M. Williams (1971).

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