NEW YORK
U.S. civil rights leader Julian Bond died Saturday night, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was 75.
"With Julian's passing, the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice", the center said.
Bond, who chaired the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1998 to 2010, was best known for his fight to take his elected seat in the Georgia state legislature.
“Julian Bond was a hero and, I’m privileged to say, a friend. Justice and equality was the mission that spanned his life”, President Barack Obama said in a statement on Sunday.
"Julian Bond helped change this country for the better – and what better way to be remembered than that", he added.
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Bond co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960.
He won a seat at the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, but the legislature refused to admit him, citing his endorsement of a SNCC statement accusing the U.S. of violating international law in the Vietnam War.
In 1966, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled the exclusion a violation of his freedom of speech, and Bond was sworn in the following year.
He also served as the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, from 1971 to 1979.
