Local civil rights groups remember Julian Bond

Bond recalled “her warning against entanglements with adults…just to keep our movement pure”.

Jackson said in a statement Monday morning that Bond “set the moral and academic tone of our generation of student activists”.

Bond died Saturday in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, Horowitz said.

He was a major figure in the 1960s civil rights movement and longtime board chairman of the NAACP.

Bond was the co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Julian Bond, a champion of equal rights, was an inspiring and strategic voice for the civil rights movement.

Julian Bond was a student at Morehouse College, one of the colleges that made up Atlanta University, when I was a student at Georgia Tech.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is an independent, bipartisan agency charged with advising the President and Congress on civil rights matters and issuing a federal civil rights enforcement report. Members of the Legislature refused to seat him, citing his vocal opposition to the Vietnam War, a posture they called “repugnant” and “inconsistent” with the oath of office he was required to take. “Julian Bond – we celebrate your life”.

In the most intense debates, Bond was “always a gentleman” and never mean, his wife said.

He and others are looking back on 55 years of friendship with the civil rights legend.

GREENE: His activism began in a very different time, and that’s where NPR’s Debbie Elliott picks up the story.

In 1968, Bond led a delegation to the Democratic National Convention, where his name was placed in nomination for the vice presidency, but he declined because he was too young.

A speech he gave to the National Press Club, which I attended years ago when I was a reporter in Washington and Bond was president of the NAACP, summed up his sensibility. He ended up serving 20 years in the Georgia House and Senate.

Another faculty member – Dale Wright, a pioneer black journalist whose earliest work on migrant labor was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize – interrupted me and said, “How about sending the crew to Harlem instead?” At the remarkable age of 25, he was elected to the Georgia State House.

“I voted for Julian”, Brooks told Geary.

“With Julian’s passing, the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice”.

In it, Bond patiently explained why the disparity between black and white life circumstances is not a result of poor individual choices; why affirmative action does not constitute unfair special treatment for black people; and how structural racism contributes to the disenfranchisement and economic abandonment of African American citizens.

This included immigrant rights and the rights of gays, lesbians and transgender people.

CHARLIE COBB: That young people committed to change can actually make a difference, and that struggle continues from youth to old age.

A writer, poet, television commentator, lecturer and college teacher, Bond was a persistent opponent of white supremacy.