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Adapted from the Britannica: Horace Julian Bond (born Jan. 14, 1940,
Nashville, Tenn. ) U.S. legislator and black civil-rights
leader, best known for his fight to take his duly elected seat
in the Georgia House of Representatives. Bond
attended Morehouse College in Atlanta (B.A., 1971), where he
helped found a civil-rights group and led a sit-in movement
intended to desegregate Atlanta lunch counters.
In 1960 Bond joined in creating the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and he later served
as communications director for the group. In 1965 he won a
seat in the Georgia state legislature, but his endorsement of
a SNCC statement accusing the United States of violating
international law in Vietnam prompted the legislature to
refuse to admit him.
The voters in his district twice reelected
him, but each time, the legislature barred him. Finally, in
December 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the exclusion
unconstitutional, and Bond was sworn in on Jan. 9, 1967.
At the Democratic National Convention in 1968,
Bond led an insurgent group of delegates that won half the
Georgia seats. He seconded the nomination of Eugene McCarthy
and became the first black man to have his name placed in
nomination for the vice presidential candidacy of a major
party.
Bond served in the Georgia House of
Representatives from 1967 to 1975 and in the Georgia Senate
from 1975 to 1987 | 
