CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Julian Bond, the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, will present the 10th Annual Daniel S. Sanders Peace and Social Justice Lecture on March 28 at the University of Illinois.
The lecture will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Music Building, 1114 W. Nevada St., Urbana. It is free and open to the public.
Bond, a professor of history at the University of Virginia and a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at American University in Washington, D.C., will speak on the role race has played in American life and culture. Among the subjects he plans to cover are the founding of the NAACP, Martin Luther King’s “dream” for America, race relations today, and the possibilities for achieving racial justice and equality.
Bond’s civil rights efforts began in 1960, during his years as a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he was a founder of a student civil rights organization that would win integration of the city’s theaters, lunch counters and parks. He also was one of several hundred students that year who founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which would become a driving force in the growing civil rights movement. He soon became SNCC’s communications director and editor of its newsletter, The Student Voice, and worked in voter registration drives in several states.
In 1965, Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, and would serve more than two decades as a state representative and then senator. In 1971, he became the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and continues as president emeritus. The center is known for its tolerance education programs and work in opposing white supremacist and hate groups.
Among his other accomplishments, Bond has been a host or commentator on several television and radio shows, including “America’s Black Forum” and “Today,” was the author of a nationally syndicated column called “Viewpoint,” and narrated the critically acclaimed PBS series “Eyes on the Prize,” on the history of the civil rights movement. He also was a one-time host of “Saturday Night Live.”
Bond is the author of “A Time to Speak, A Time to Act,” a collection of essays; and of “Black Candidates – Southern Campaign Experiences.” His poems and articles have appeared in a variety of publications, among them The Nation, Negro Digest and The New York Times.
The Sanders lecture is sponsored by the School of Social Work and the Daniel S. Sanders Memorial Fund, with support from about two dozen other units and organizations. The fund was established to honor a past dean of the school who was known for his work on issues of world peace, human rights and social justice.
