“I will say as simply and sincerely on behalf of my delegation that we wish to offer a nomination that is the wave of the future,” Wisconsin delegate Ted Warshafsky said while addressing the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Immediately afterwards, he boldly declared Julian Bond as his nomination for the office of Vice President of The United States.
The 28-year-old Bond was legally ineligible to run for the office that holds a minimum age requirement of 35.
However, a person of color as vice president was seen as being far more implausible than being underage at the time.
“It may be a symbolic nomination tonight, but it may not be symbolic in years hence,” Warshafsky said, clearly referring to Bond’s blackness.
Forty-seven years later, the first African-American president of the United States led the nation in mourning Bond’s sudden passing Saturday night.
“Julian Bond was a hero and, I’m privileged to say, a friend,” President Barack Obama said in response to Bond’s death. “Michelle and I have benefited from his example, his counsel, and his friendship.”
Bond’s wife, Pamela Sue Horowitz, said the cause of death was complications of vascular disease. He was 75.
Known in later years for his tenure as chairman of the NAACP (1998-2010), he left this world a civil rights icon with a list of accomplishments, achievements and honors that seem too vast to belong to a single individual.
“From my days as a youth board member of the NAACP to my present tenure as NAACP chairman, like so many of my generation and before, I am yet inspired by the depth and breadth of Chairman Emeritus Bond’s exemplary service,” said current NAACP Chairman Roslyn M. Brock. “[He was an] activist, writer, historian, professor, public intellectual, public servant and an unrelentingly eloquent voice for the voiceless.”
Much like when he had the audacity to entertain the notion of the vice presidency during the tense racial climate of 1968 – less than four months after the assassination of his former professor and mentor, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – Bond spent the better part of six decades taking bold risks and sowing seeds for future generations to reap with respect to civil rights and equality.
Young, but ready
“The first thing that comes to mind for me with Julian was how young he was,” said fellow civil rights champion Frankie Muse Freeman.
She lovingly reflected on a Bond’s “baby face” during the meetings with Dr. King as the collective of civil rights elite prepared for the March on Washington in 1963.
“Just think about it. He couldn’t have been much older than 21 or 22 at the time,” Freeman said. “All of this was taking place in the 60s, and he was only 75 when he died. He was a young man, but he was very effective – and there was no question about his commitment to civil rights.”
Bond was still in his teens when he began his work in the movement while a student at Morehouse College. He was barely out of them when he became a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960.
“His role at SNCC as communications director gave him the ability to shape issues,” Les Bond Jr. said of his beloved cousin. “And he had an equanimity about himself that lent itself to negotiation without anger. It was being able to deal with things calmly and in an intellectual way that made him most effective.”
He was born Horace Julian Bond on January 14, 1940 in Nashville, Tennessee, but spent his youth in Pennsylvania, where his father, Horace Mann Bond, served as president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania – the nation’s second oldest historically black university.
“His parents were like my parents – constantly exposing him to the greatest minds of the time,” Les said. “W.E.B. DuBois was a friend of his father’s, so he had the opportunity to listen to the discussions between the two. They talked scientifically about the conditions of the black community. His father did all sorts of scientific studies about the effects of poverty in sharecropping communities among black families in the south.”
He would remember those conversations as his work for equal rights within the black community and beyond on the civil rights and political landscape.
In 1965, at 25-year-old Bond was one of 11 African Americans elected to the Georgia House of Representatives after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 an Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened voter registration to blacks.
On January 10, 1966, Georgia state representatives voted 184–12 not to seat him, because he had publicly endorsed SNCC’s policy regarding opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War. Later that year, 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 was required to seat him.
From 1967 to 1975, Bond was elected to four terms in the Georgia House, where he organized the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus.
From 1971 to 1976, he served as the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal organization that fights discriminatory practices throughout the country.
“He recognized that civil rights had to go hand-in-hand with economic rights,” Les said. “Plus, he more broadly identified the civil rights struggle as a human rights movement and not just a black power movement.”
‘Liberty and justice for all’
Outside of politics, Bond would enjoy a career as a highly-coveted speaker on the lecture circuit before, during and following his tenure as Chairman of the NAACP.
“He loved the NAACP, and he loved seeking justice for not just black people but any group that had been marginalized,” said John Gaskin III of the St. Louis County NAACP and National Board of Directors. “In the latter part of his career he became noted for his commitment to LGBTQ rights. He is one of the major reasons the NAACP National Board of Directors voted to endorse marriage equality in 2012.”
Bond fought opposition from his peers’ conservative stance on the issue as he spoke up for the gay community’s right to marry and against the deafening silence with respect to the HIV/AIDS epidemic within the African-American community.
“His legacy was not just the rights of African Americans, but the rights of all people – the right to dignity and justice for all,” Les Bond said. “It gives a purpose to my life to know that my family is connected with the struggle of African Americans in this country. I’m very proud of that – I’m very proud to be a Bond.”
With all of Bond’s efforts – as well as that of the freedom fighters who came before him and those who follow in his footsteps – the work remains unfinished.
But the recent uprising that ignited in Ferguson and spread throughout the nation in response to police violence against the African American community and campaigns for higher minimum wage show promise that his legacy will continue.
“All over this country we have a separation when it comes to the poor people and African Americans,” said Freeman. “The fact that there are more young people are involved in fighting against that now because of Ferguson reflects the sort of thing that he would be delighted to see.”
Even in the shock of his sudden passing, it is impossible not to celebrate all that was gained because of a life well-lived.
“Although I am saddened by his death and many of us are personally reduced
by the loss of his counsel and leadership, he will always be remembered for
his contributions to the cause of a better, more fair world,” Said Donald M. Suggs, publisher and executive editor of the St. Louis American. “Many of us were inspired especially by his courage and audacity-his willingness to forsake his privilege to join in a struggle for justice during a period of tumult and peril.”
The footprint of Bond’s legacy is one that won’t soon be forgotten.
“The arc of service of Chairman Emeritus Julian Bond’s life extends high and wide over America’s social justice landscape,” said NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks.
He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Pamela Horowitz; five children from his first marriage, Phyllis Jane Bond-McMillan, Horace Mann Bond II, Michael Julian Bond, Jeffrey A. Bond and Julia L. Bond, all of Atlanta, and eight grandchildren.
“Julian Bond helped change this country for the better,” Obama said. “And what better way to be remembered than that.”
