Bond, Julian

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.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.