Remembering Julian Bond

Friends,

One year ago today we lost Julian Bond; not just we who knew and loved him, but our nation as well.

Here below are some comments from last year’s news reports honoring his passing.

Angelo Fuster

"Julian Bond was a hero and, I'm privileged to say, a friend. Justice and equality was the mission that spanned his life. Julian Bond helped change this country for the better." President Barack Obama

“Bond's legacy will be as a lifetime struggler. He started when he was about 17 and he went to 75. And I don't know a single time when he was not involved in some phase of the civil rights movement.” Andrew Young

“Bond's life traced the arc of the civil rights movement, from his efforts as a militant young man to start a student protest group, through a long career in politics and his leadership of the NAACP almost four decades later. Year after year, the calm, telegenic Bond was one of the nation's most poetic voices for equality, inspiring fellow activists with his words in the 1960s and sharing the movement's vision with succeeding generations as a speaker and academic. Jesse J. Holland and Jeff Martin, The Associated Press

"You can use the term giant, champion, trail blazer — there's just not enough adjectives in the English language to describe the life and career of Julian Bond," said Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney in Birmingham, Alabama. "A voice that has been silenced now is one that I just don't think you can replace," Jones said.

Julian Bond wanted three things on his headstone, according to his longtime friend and renowned author Taylor Branch.

“Freedom fighter, founder of SNCC,” Branch said, referring to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee the civil rights titan helped launch in the 1960s. And that Bond — one of the country’s most revered human rights activists — was “easily amused.”