Bond, who brought the NAACP back to credibility during his longtime chairmanship and who was the first black American nominated as vice president, died Saturday night in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., the Southern Poverty Law Center said Sunday.
He first came
on the national scene in the 1960s as a student activist.
"Julian helped inspire an entire generation of young people, students, black and white," Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said Sunday. "He spent so much time speaking on college campuses, telling the story of the movement. He was so smart, so gifted, so articulate and he had a way of getting to people, to students, to young people and he succeeded."
Lewis and Bond helped establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later ran against each other in a contentious 1986 race for Congress when Bond was a Georgia state senator. After a few months, they smoothed out their differences and over the years, became good friends.
Lewis said they often reminisced about their days in the civil rights movement, changing voting rights laws, urging people to register to vote throughout the South and pressing the government for change.
"I knew that he hadn't been feeling too well the past few weeks and months, but it is shocking," Lewis told USA TODAY. He said he last saw Bond in March in Atlanta. Bond had brought students and staff from the University of Virginia to interview Lewis and former U.S. ambassador Andrew Young. "He was not feeling too good," Lewis said about Bond.
President Obama, on vacation in Martha's Vineyard, called Bond a hero and a friend who helped change America. "What better way to be remembered than that," he said.
During last month's NAACP convention in Philadelphia, Bond praised Obama, telling USA TODAY that the president's speech condemning the U.S. criminal justice system showed Obama is a "a path-breaking president and he proved it today."
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