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31st Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration: An Evening with Julian Bond

From his college days as a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to his role as former Chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Julian Bond has been an active participant in the movements for civil rights, economic justice, and peace and an aggressive spokesman for the disinherited. While a student at Morehouse College over forty years ago, he founded the Atlanta student sit-in and anti-segregation organization. As SNCC's Communications Director, Bond was active in protests and registration campaigns throughout the South during one of this nation's most difficult times.

While still a student, Bond was a founder in l960 of the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR), the Atlanta University Center student civil rights organization that directed three years of non-violent anti-segregation protests that won integration of Atlanta's movie theaters, lunch counters, and parks. Bond served four terms in the Georgia State House and six terms in the Georgia State Senate. The widely published author of many books of poetry, Bond is also author of A Time to Speak, A Time to Act, a collection of his essays as well as Black Candidates Southern Campaign Experiences. In 2002, he received the prestigious National Freedom Award. He has also been named one of America's top 200 leaders by Time Magazine. In 2008, he was named a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress. Bond's teaching experience includes being a Pappas Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and a Visiting Professor at Drexel University, Harvard University, and Williams College.

He is currently a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the American University in Washington, DC, and a Professor at the University of Virginia in the Department of History, where he is co-director of Explorations in Black Leadership.