By Gyna Jean-Pierre
CSMS Magazine
Black America is in mourning with the passing of Julian Bond who died suddenly in the sunshine state of Florida over the weekend. Born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1940, into an educated middle-class family, Julian Bond had a fairly interesting upbringing. He grew up in a highly educated African-American household. His father was the first black president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and later became an important official at Atlanta University.
Bond made his debut as a social activist in the 1960s. His activism turned him into an impeccable figure during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. He made his spectacular entry in the struggles during the sit-ins against lunch counter segregation that began in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960. He became a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at the age of 20, and for the next five years was the new organization’s communications director.
This was a time of growing mass struggle. SNCC was particularly involved in organizing African-Americans to demand voting rights in the South, a battle against the whole system of Jim Crow and second-class citizenship, a social order that was supported by police brutality on minority communities, including lynching black citizens to establish racist terror. Julian Bond also headed NAACP from 1998 to 2010. He was 75.
