The Activist Julian Bond Passed Away at 75

“He was a writer as well as a young philosopher”, said Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a journalist who struck up a friendship with Bond in the early 1960s, when she was one of the first two black students to attend the University of Georgia.

Julian Bond, who has unexpectedly died at 75, did not think of civil rights as matter of color.

Bond was only 28 years old and knew that he could not accept the nomination. His father, Horace Mann Bond, moved the family to Pennsylvania five years later, when he became the first African-American president of his alma mater, Lincoln University. “Julian Bond – we celebrate your life”. During a break in the three-hour class, other students would disappear while Watson would chat with Bond about the civil rights movement. Fellow representatives, claiming they had the right to determine someone’s suitability for service in the legislative body, refused in 1965 to seat Bond. He became an early and outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. That’s why we saw him as an important witness whose story should be a part of the series.

The case wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Georgia argued that it had the power to judge conscientiousness in order to “ensure the loyalty of its public servants by making them taking of an oath a qualification of office”.

Despite his many accomplishments, Bond also had a reputation for being down-to-earth and approachable, even with his acerbic wit.

It would not be his last struggle.

While most people would have had their secretary make the call, she said, Bond made the call himself.

He served in the Georgia Legislature in the state House and Senate. Along the way he helped carve out a U.S. Congress district to more equitably represent the black residents of the region.

On Monday, his work and life was remembered by those in Albany, including former Albany mayor Tommy Coleman, who was chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party from 1980 to 1983.

Bond was elected chairman of the NAACP in 1998, and continued to serve on its board.

Lewis stated they frequently reminisced about their times in the social civil rights movements, transforming voting rights legislation, urging individuals to sign up to vote right through the South and also pushing the federal government for transform. Bond was also a founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which focuses on seeking justice for minority and marginalized groups in the United States.

Mr. Bond’s blunt talk – propelled by a clear-eyed vision, leavened by his graciousness and enhanced by his ability to persuasively articulate his vision to a diversity of Americans – can be a model for these latest warriors.

In a statement, President Obama said, “Julian Bond helped change this country for the better”.

Long-time and highly revered civil rights activist Julian Bond passed away Saturday night, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

For Bond, the mission was a marathon, not a sprint. He had a reputation as a calm leader, not afraid to engage his opponents or offend his constituents.

That quiet resolve never dimmed his ardor, or his burning passion for justice. (All worries about how that long title would fit into the tiny squares of the printed newspaper TV guides were summarily dismissed.) Second, Henry declared the narrator of the series would be Julian Bond.