Julian Bond: 1940-2015

At the National Equality March in 2009 I had the please of hearing Julian Bond speak.   After the event, I got to speak with him one on one (we had a new camera and the husband accidentally deleted the photo of us together - yes, there was a fight!).   Being of a certain age, I remember Julian Bond well.  I also have the privilege of being friends with one of his cousins who lives locally.  I was very saddened to learn of his passing. The New York Times looks at Julian Bond's life and achievements. Here are highlights:

Julian Bond, a charismatic figure of the 1960s civil rights movement, a lightning rod of the anti-Vietnam War campaign and a lifelong champion of equal rights, notably as chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., died on Saturday night in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. He was 75.

He died after a brief illness, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a statement Sunday morning. His wife, Pamela Sue Horowitz, said Mr. Bond suffered from vascular disease, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Bond was one of the original leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee while he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He was the committee’s communications director for five years and deftly guided the national news media toward stories of violence and discrimination as the committee challenged legal segregation in the South’s public facilities.

He gradually moved from the militancy of the student group to the leadership of the establishmentarian N.A.A.C.P. Along the way, Mr. Bond was a writer, poet, television commentator, lecturer and college teacher, and persistent opponent of the stubborn remnants of white supremacy.

He also served for 20 years in the Georgia General Assembly, mostly in conspicuous isolation from white colleagues who saw him as an interloper and a rabble-rouser.

Mr. Bond’s wit, cool personality and youthful face — he was often called dashing, handsome and urbane — became familiar to millions of television viewers in the 1960s and 1970s. On the strength of his personality and quick intellect, he moved to the center of the civil rights action in Atlanta, the unofficial capital of the movement, at the height of the struggle for racial equality in the early 1960s.

Moving beyond demonstrations, Mr. Bond became a founder, with Morris Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization in Montgomery, Ala. Mr. Bond was its president from 1971 to 1979 and remained on its board for the rest of his life.

When he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, along with seven other black members, furious white members of the House refused to let him take his seat, accusing him of disloyalty. He was already well known because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s stand against the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.

That touched off a national drama that ended in 1966 when the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ordered the State Assembly to seat him, saying it had denied him freedom of speech.

As a lawmaker, he sponsored bills to establish a sickle cell anemia testing program and to provide low-interest home loans to low-income Georgians. He also helped create a majority-black congressional district in Atlanta.

Horace Julian Bond was born on Jan. 14, 1940, in Nashville, to Horace Mann Bond and the former Julia Washington. The family moved to Pennsylvania five years later, when Mr. Bond’s father became the first African-American president of his alma mater, Lincoln University.

Julian Bond’s great-grandmother Jane Bond was the slave mistress of a Kentucky farmer. Julian’s grandfather James Bond, one of Jane Bond’s sons, was educated at Berea and Oberlin Colleges and became a clergyman. His son Horace Mann Bond expected his own son Julian to follow in his footsteps as an educator, but the young man was attracted instead to journalism and political activism.

Mr. Bond devoted most of the 1960s to the protest movement and activist politics, including campaigns to register black voters. Both he and Mr. Lewis left the student committee after its leadership was taken over by black power advocates who forced whites out of the organization.

He prospered on the lecture circuit the rest of his life. He became a regular commentator in print and on television, including as host of “America’s Black Forum,” then the oldest black-owned television program in syndication. His most unusual television appearance was in April 1977, when he hosted an episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

In later years, he taught at Harvard, Williams, Drexel and the University of Pennsylvania. He was a distinguished scholar in residence at American University in Washington and a professor of history at the University of Virginia, where he was co-director of the oral history project Explorations in Black Leadership.

Read the full piece.  Bond spoke out forcefully for LBGT equality  and, unlike black pastors who act as water carries for former segregationist, Bond never let the smoke screen of religion distract his focus from civil rights for all.  I am saddened by his passing.

Julian Bond: Maryland Must End Marriage Discrimination

I had the pleasure of meeting Julian Bond at the National Equality March (unfortunately, the boyfriend screwed up and accidentally deleted the photos that I had taken with Bond) and I enjoyed his remarks at the March. Now, Bond has written an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun as to why Maryland needs to approve same sex marriage and end marriage discrimination. As noted many times before on this blog, civil law marriage in no manner changes the restrictions for church marriages that various denominations may choose to uphold. Those Christianists and opportunistic political whores like Maggie Gallagher and many in the GOP - local Congressman Randy Forbes included - who claim otherwise are liars. The only thing that civil law same sex marriage takes away from the hate merchants is the ability to use the CIVIL laws to punish gays for their nonconformity with Christianist religious beliefs. I am glad that Bond is speaking out because all too often black citizens are co opted to do the anti-gay dirty work of Christianists who hold black Americans in nearly as low regard as LGBT citizens. Here are highlights from the op-ed piece:
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As a civil right activist, I have spent my life fighting to make ours a more just and fair society. That's why I urge the Maryland General Assembly to support marriage equality and pass the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act. I firmly believe that this is a matter of civil rights, equal protection and equality. Civil rights are positive legal prerogatives — the right to equal treatment before the law. These are rights shared by everyone; there is no one in the United States who does not — or should not — share in enjoying these rights. Discrimination is wrong no matter who the victim is. We cannot move toward full human rights protection and opportunity without confronting — and ending — homophobia. For it is homophobia that is at the root of denying the freedom to marry to gays and lesbians. As my late neighbor and friend, Coretta Scott King, said in 1998:
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"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood."
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Three years ago we celebrated the 40th anniversary of a case aptly called Loving v. Virginia, which struck down anti-miscegenation laws and, many years later, allowed my wife, Pam, and me to marry in the state that declares "Virginia is for lovers." Then, as now, proponents of marriage-as-is invoked "God's plan." The trial judge who sentenced the Lovings said that when God created the races: "He placed them on separate continents. … The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." God seems to have made room in his plan for interracial marriage. He will no doubt do the same for same-sex marriage.
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Standing for the freedom to marry is about supporting all families, but I would be remiss without highlighting the impact that this inequality has on black same-sex couples, who statistically are already economically disadvantaged compared to their straight sisters and brothers. . . . The lack of marriage rights negatively affects black same-sex couples because they are also more likely to work in the public sector, relying on health insurance that is often only afforded to married couples.
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Furthermore, I firmly believe that marriage strengthens communities. Allowing more couples the opportunity to marry will strengthen the communities — and families — that most need it.

NAACP Calls for Overturning of Proposition 8

The Advocate is reporting that the The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ("NAACP") announced support on Monday for California's supreme court to invalidate Proposition 8. The announcement was made by NAACP CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous (pictured at left) in a letter to legislative leaders. This is a welcomed development and may help heal some of the fractures caused when exit polls purportedly showed that nearly 70% of California blacks voted in support of Proposition 8. I suspect that a number of extremely homophobic black ministers in this area will be none too pleased with the NAACP - even though these same ministers refuse to see that they are being cynically manipulated by anti-black Christianists like Tony Perkins and James Dobson to further the agenda of those who supported the Jim Crow laws. Here are some story highlights:

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The civil-rights group not only wants the court to overturn Prop. 8 -- they want California's legislature to go on record against Prop. 8 as well.

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"The NAACP's mission is to help create a society where all Americans have equal protection and opportunity under the law," wrote NAACP CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous (pictured) in a letter to legislative leaders. "Our mission statement calls for the 'quality of rights of all persons.' Prop. 8 strips same-sex couples of a fundamental freedom, as defined by the California state supreme court. In so doing, it poses a serious threat to all Americans. Prop. 8 is a discriminatory, unprecedented change to the California constitution that, if allowed to stand, would undermine the very purpose of a constitution and courts -- assuring equal protection and opportunity for all and safeguarding minorities from the tyranny of the majority."

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The NAACP has long opposed any proposal that would alter the federal or state constitutions for the purpose of excluding any groups or individuals from guarantees of equal protections," said NAACP chairman Julian Bond in a press release. "We urge the legislature to declare that Proposition 8 did not follow the proper protective process and should be overturned as an invalid alteration that vitiated crucial constitutional safeguards and fundamental American values, threatening civil rights and all vulnerable minorities."

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I can already hear the shrieking and wailing of the professional Christian set over this development. Hopefully, the black community is waking up to the fact that these demagogues are NOT friends to the black community or to equality for all.