Georgia and Alabama, March 1-7, 2008
Lead Faculty Member: Julian Bond
Horace Julian Bond (born January 14, 1940) is an American leader of the American Civil Rights Movement. While a student at Morehouse College in
Atlanta, Georgia during the early 1960s, he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He has been Chairman of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1998.
Full Biography
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Bond's family moved to Pennsylvania when he was five years old when his father, Horace Mann Bond, took a position as the
first African American President of Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), his alma mater. He was educated at the George School, a private Quaker
preparatory boarding school near Newtown, Pennsylvania. Then, beginning in 1957, he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta. While there, he won a
varsity letter for swimming. He was also instrumental in founding a literary magazine called The Pegasus and he served as an intern at Time magazine.
In 1960, Bond was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and served as communications director from 1961 to 1966. From 1960
to 1963, he led student protests against segregation in public facilities in Georgia.
Bond left Morehouse in 1961, returning to complete his degree, a B.A. in English, in 1971. He helped found the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a
public interest law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama, along with Morris Dees. He was that organization's president from 1971 to 1979. Bond remains a
member of the board of directors of the SPLC.
Five years later, Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives. After his election, however, the other members of the House refused to seat
him because of his publicly expressed opposition to the Vietnam War. In 1966, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 9-0, in the case of Bond
v. Floyd (385 U.S. 116), that the Georgia House of Representatives had denied Bond his freedom of speech and had to seat him.
From 1965 to 1975, he served as a Democratic member in the Georgia House for four terms. He went on to serve six terms in the Georgia Senate from
1975-1986.
During the 1968 Presidential election, Bond led a challenge delegation from Georgia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Here, unexpectedly
and contrary to his intention, he became the first African-American to be proposed as a major-party candidate for Vice President of the United States.
While expressing gratitude for the honor, the 28-year-old Bond quickly declined, citing the constitutional requirement that one must be at least 35
years of age to serve in that office.
Bond resigned from the Georgia Senate to run for the United States House of Representatives, but he lost to civil rights leader John Lewis in a bitter
contest in which Bond being accused of using cocaine and other drugs. Bond was later the target of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney's office,
during which his estranged wife made numerous accusations of his drug use to the Atlanta Police Department while refusing to testify to a grand jury
after receiving a phone call from Andrew Young, who was at that time Mayor of Atlanta. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bond taught at several universities,
including American, Drexel, and Harvard universities and the University of Virginia.
Bond is at present Chairman of the NAACP while continuing to write and lecture about the history of the civil rights movement and the condition of
African Americans and the poor. He is President Emeritus of the Southern Poverty Law Center. He hosted America's Black Forum from 1980 until 1997. He
remains a commentator for the Forum, for radio's Byline, and for NBC's The Today Show. He authored the nationally-syndicated newspaper column
"Viewpoint." He narrated the critically-acclaimed PBS series Eyes on the Prize in 1987 and 1990, on the life of New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell.
He has published A Time To Speak, A Time To Act, a collection of his essays, as well as Black Candidates Southern Campaign Experiences. His poems and
articles have appeared in a Who’s Who list of magazines and newspapers.