Born: January 14, 1940, Nashville, TN

Education: Morehouse College, 1957–60, B.A., 1971

Died: August 15, 2015, Fort Walton Beach, FL

A son of educators Horace M. and Julia Bond, Julian Bond has been a recognized civil rights leader since his Morehouse years.

Inspired in a course on nonviolence taught by Martin Luther King, Jr., he became an activist. Cofounder of the Atlanta Student Movement, which conducted sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, he was also cofounder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Its communications director, he edited the Student Voice and managed media coverage of SNCC's sit-in, voter registration, and literacy campaigns in the South. Frequently arrested and jailed, he persisted in calling for nonviolent protest, racial integration, and social justice. He won election to the Georgia House (1965), but, rebuking his criticism of the Vietnam War, it refused to seat him. After the Supreme Court overturned the House's refusal (1967), Bond served in the House and Senate until 1986, “elected to office more times than any other black Georgian” (Roady).

His career afterward included public speaking, narrating documentary films, writing, university teaching; chairing the NAACP Board of Directors, and co-hosting America's Black Forum for TV One, Silver Spring, Maryland. Launched in 1977, Forum is the oldest black talk show on television. It airs nationwide and in more than forty countries.