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http://democracynow.org
- Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, remembers the
life of civil rights pioneer Julian Bond, who died on Saturday at the age of 75.
Bond first gained prominence in 1960 when he organized a series of student
sit-ins while attending Morehouse College. He went on to help found SNCC, the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. After the passage of the 1965 Voting
Rights Act, Bond was elected as a Democrat to the Georgia House of
Representatives. But members of the Legislature refused to seat him, citing his
vocal opposition to the Vietnam War. Bond took the case to the Supreme Court and
won. He went on to serve 20 years in the Georgia House and Senate. At the 1968
Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Julian Bond became the first
African-American person nominated for U.S. vice president by a major political
party. But he had to withdraw his name because he was just 28 years old — seven
years too young to hold the second-highest
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