Julian Bond Kept His Wit, Despite Tragedies of Race
Now after years of being described as "youthful," he is more often described as "iconic." But even in his semi-retirement Bond had no shortage of causes to protest or audiences eager to hear him.
When I spoke to his widow, Pam, on the day after he passed away, she said she thought he should best be remembered for "his years of constantly and consistently fighting for equal rights."
Bond saw his drive for equality as broader than race, she said. "He would say that he was an 'early and often' crusader for gay rights and marriage equality," leading the NAACP board to support the cause before President Obama did.
But "race was always No. 1," she said. I would agree, since the one issue on which Bond, as NAACP chairman, and I disagreed most was on the direction that the 105-year-old organization should take in its second century.
I was not the only critic who assailed the organization from time-to-time as old, stodgy and losing touch with changing times. As race declines in significance compared to class and income, thanks to the hard-won victories of the movement Bond helped to lead, perhaps now is the time for the civil rights movement to target school reform, job creation and other self-help issues, I argued.
But Bond wasn't hearing it. "We're a civil rights organization," he said. "Not a social service organization."
In that spirit, he supported the Black Lives Matter movement, even when other civil rights veterans have criticized its lack of top-down leadership. Imagine that: A new and impatient generation is outraging its elders. Bond must have been highly amused.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
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