Julian Bond

Julian Bond has been an active participant in the movements for civil rights and economic justice student days to his current Chairmanship of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As an activist who has faced jail for his convictions, as a veteran of more than 20 years service in the Georgia General Assembly, a university professor and a writer, he has been on the cutting edge of social change since 1960. While a student at Morehouse College in 1960, he was a founder of the Atlanta student sit-in and anti-segregation organization and of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). As SNCC’s Communications Director, Bond was active in protests and registration campaigns throughout the South. Elected in 1965 to the Georgia House of Representatives, Bond was prevented from taking his seat by members who objected to his opposition to the Vietnam War. He was re-elected to his own vacant seat and un-seated again, and seated only after a third election and a unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court. He has served since 1998 as Chairman of the Board of the NAACP, the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United States.