Bond, Julian (Horace Julian Bond), 1940–, U.S. civil-rights leader, b. Nashville, Tenn. As a student at Morehouse College, he participated in sit-ins at segregated Atlanta restaurants. He was a founder (1960) of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, serving (1961–65) as its communications director. Elected (1965) to the Georgia assembly, Bond was denied his seat because of his statements opposing the war in Vietnam. Reelected in 1966, he began serving after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld (Dec., 1966) his right to hold office. A state representative until 1974, he then served as a state senator (1975–87). Bond led a group of black delegates to the 1968 Democratic Convention where he challenged the party's unit rule and won representation at the expense of the regular Georgia delegation. In 1986 he lost a Georgia congressional race to John Lewis. In 1998 he became chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He is the author of A Time to Speak, a Time to Act (1972).

Bibliography

See biographies by J. Neary (1971) and R. M. Williams (1971).

Bond, (Horace) Julian

(born Jan. 14, 1940, Nashville, Tenn., U.S.) U.S. politician and civil-rights leader. The son of prominent educators, Bond graduated from Morehouse College. In 1960 he helped create the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1965 he was elected to the Georgia legislature, but his support of a SNCC statement accusing the U.S. of violating international law in the Vietnam War caused the legislature to deny him his seat. He was twice reelected and was twice more refused entry. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled his exclusion unconstitutional in December 1966, and he assumed his seat in January 1967. He later served in the state senate (1975–87). In 1998 he became chairman of the NAACP.

Bond, (Horace) Julian (1940– ) civil rights activist, state legislator; born in Nashville, Tenn. His mother was a librarian and his father was a college professor who became president of Lincoln University. Julian led a life relatively sheltered from the worst of discrimination, but in 1960s, while a student at Morehouse College, following the lead of the original sit-in in Greensboro, N.C., he sat in at an Atlanta cafeteria and was arrested. In 1960 he helped to found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and while working with SNCC as its communications director he took a job with a new African-American owned newspaper, the Atlantic Inquirer (1960–61). (He dropped out of college and didn't get his B.A. from Morehouse until 1971.) Elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, he was denied his seat because of his objections to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War; in 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he must be seated; after his years there (1966–75), he served in the Georgia Senate (1975–87). He gave up his seat there to seek the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives but lost to John Lewis; shortly thereafter a scandal broke out when his wife charged him with using cocaine and he was named in a paternity suit; he was divorced in 1989. After leaving public office he became a visiting professor at such universities as Drexel (1988–89), Harvard (1989), and American University (1991). Meanwhile he had remained active in various civil rights organizations and events; he helped found the Southern Poverty Law Center (1971); he hosted a television program, America's Black Forum; and later narrated the Public Broadcasting System special, Eyes on the Prize.