Civil rights icon Julian Bond dies at 75
Julian Bond. Photo from the NAACP.
Corrected: Former NAACP chairman Julian Bond died on Saturday at the age of 75.
The Southern Poverty Law Center announced the death in this post by SPLC co-founder Morris Dees. Bond was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, serving from 1971 to 1979. The cause of death was complications from vascular disease, report the New York Times and the Washington Post.
“With Julian’s passing,” Morris Dees wrote, “the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice. He advocated not just for African Americans, but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination, because he recognized the common humanity in us all.”
Before joining the NAACP, Bond was a co-founder and communications director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives at age 25, taking his seat over objections of white legislators because of a 1966 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. He was in the legislature for 20 years.
He was also a professor at American University and the University of Virginia.
Updated at 10:10 a.m. to state that Bond was a co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, not the Southern Poverty Law Center.
