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Bond, Julian (1940-2015)

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Julian BondHorace Julian Bond was born in January 1940 in Nashville, Tennessee. His father, Dr. Horace Mann Bond, was a dedicated educator. Among other accomplishments, Dr. Bond was the first black president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the oldest black private college in the U.S. Julian Bond graduated from a coeducational Quaker school in Pennsylvania and then entered Morehouse College in Atlanta. He was very active at Morehouse. He was a member of the varsity swimming team. He was one of the founding members of a literary magazine called The Pegasus and interned at Time magazine.

While at Morehouse, Bond also helped found the student civil rights organization, the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR). COAHR led non-violent anti-segregation protests that led to the integration of movie theaters, lunch counters, and parks in Atlanta.

In 1961, Bond left Morehouse to join the staff of the Atlanta Inquirer, a new protest paper. He became the paper’s managing editor. In 1971, he returned to Morehouse and graduated with a degree in English. Bond then went on to serve twenty years in the Georgia General Assembly. He holds honorary degrees from nineteen colleges and universities and has served on the boards of numerous civil rights organizations. He is currently the chairman of the NAACP. He is also a Distinguished Professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and a professor in history at the University of Virginia.


A Note on Unitarian Universalist Connections

Julian Bond gave the 79th Ware Lecture at the 2003 UUA General Assembly.


Resources Recommended by Harvard Square Library

Jordan, Denise M. Julian Bond: Civil Rights Activist and Chairman of the NAACP. New York: Enslow Publishers, 2001.