Julian Bond, a well-known civil rights leader and former board chair of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), has died at the age of 75 after a short bout with an undisclosed illness.
Bond passed away on Saturday night in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. The news was confirmed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, where he served as its founding president back in the 1970s.
Bond is often recognized as the face of the 1960s civil rights movement and is among many activists who had protested for equal rights for African-Americans.
However, Bond's activism for civil rights went beyond the U.S., as he was arrested outside of the South African Embassy back in 1985 for protesting apartheid, which is the legalized segregation that was imposed in South Africa at the time.
He also served as a professor at numerous universities around the country, including Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, and also served as chairperson of the NAACP for 11 years, CNN reported.
Bond is an alumnus of Morehouse College, where he helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and was often on the forefront during protests that led to breakthrough civil rights laws around the country, while serving as its communications director.
Bond is survived by his wife Pamela Horowitz, who was a former SPLC staff attorney, their five children, his brother and his sister, according to the Associated Press.
