President Obama Remembers Civil Rights Icon Julian Bond

He rose to national prominence as a vocal force in the civil rights movement, and over the long arc of his career, Julian Bond blended the personal and political in ways that created and transformed societal structures.

Marion Barry became the mayor of the District of Columbia – John Lewis, who still is an icon of the civil rights movement, Julian Bond – and I am running out of names. In 1965, he was elected as a Democrat to the Georgia House of Representatives, but members of the legislature – mostly white – refused to seat him, citing his opposition to the Vietnam War.

“Julian Bond was a hero, an advisor, and a dear friend of mine who always spoke the truth and forged a path for many in the ongoing fight for justice and progress”.

“Julian Bond helped change this country for the better”, President Obama concluded in the statement. In 1972, he published A Time to Speak, a Time to Act: The Movement in Politics, a book of essays in which he advocated for more black leadership in the United States. Julian’s grandfather James Bond, one of Jane Bond’s sons, was educated at Berea and Oberlin colleges and became a clergyman.

He also served in Georgia State legislature for 20 years.

Former Ambassador Andrew Young said Bond’s legacy would be as a “lifetime struggler”.

“Julian Bond was just smart, just smart”.

Speaking to NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, Rep. Lewis acknowledged that the contest created “a little schism for a while” between the two, but said they later renewed their friendship.

Bond spent his life fighting against discrimination and oppression.

Max Tinsley remembered spending summers in Louisville with Bond during his childhood years and then watching him rise to prominence on the national scene. He made significant contributions to the University of Virginia, teaching thousands of our students while serving as a mentor and role model for all of us. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, the civil rights legend is best-known for his contributions to the black community during the 1960s civil rights movement. Bond was elected Board Chairman of the NAACP in 1998. He organized a group of staged student sit-ins that year aiming to integrate movie theaters, lunch counters and other public facilities in the city. This original one-on-one interview with Bond, part of the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project, was produced by the Kentucky Oral History Commission and Historical Society.

Bond served as the president of SPLC when it was founded in 1971 until 1979. “He did support King’s fight for voting rights”.

Bond was also a writer, poet, politician and professor. He was the founding president of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the 1970s and would go on to serve as chairman of the NAACP from 1998 until 2010.

Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP, looks at a portrait of himself taken by Richard Avedon in 2004 on September 10, 2008 during a press preview at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.