Julian Bond (1940-2015) Tribute List

Civil Rights icon Julian Bond died on August 15 at the age of 75. Bond was one of the original members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which responded to incidents of violence and the policy of segregation throughout the southern United States with non-violent protests and demonstrations, such as lunch counter sit-ins, as well as voter registration drives.

Bond was also the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group, and he later became chairman of the N.A.A.C.P. As these ten quotes demonstrate, Bond was an expert at describing the big picture and what he felt was at stake.

Also in these quotes one finds a Julian Bond capable of providing a historical perspective. He was at the forefront of huge changes in American history, which also means he had a sense of what still needs to change.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. agitate
    move or cause to move back and forth
    Good things don't come to those who wait. They come to those who agitate!
  2. rite
    any customary observance or practice
    If your Bible tells you that gay people ought not be married in your church, don't tell them they can't be married at city hall. Marriage is a civil rite as well a civil right, and we can't let religious bigotry close the door to justice to anyone.
  3. rend
    tear or be torn violently
    America is race. From its symbolism to its substance, from its founding by slave holders to its rending by the Civil War … from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin and to Michael Brown.
  4. segregation
    a social system that provides different facilities for minority groups
    It's a good thing that young people don't know about the horrors of segregation — at least don't know about it firsthand. It's a bad thing that they don't know this used to be in the United States and a great struggle arose in the country and people like themselves joined that struggle to get rid of it.
  5. civil
    not rude
    Those were the days when politicians from both parties supported the struggle for civil rights, now they struggle to be civil.
  6. diversion
    an attack that draws an enemy's attention away
    There is no coloration to rights. Everybody has rights. I don’t care who you are, where you come from. You got rights. I got rights. All God’s children got rights. We could make a song out of this. But anyway, I think this discussion is more a diversion than anything else. Because we all have rights. And they are human rights because we are human beings. And that’s just it for me.
  7. transcendent
    exceeding or surpassing usual limits
    Martin Luther King belonged to another transcendent generation. A generation born into segregation; a generation freed from racism's restraints by their own efforts; a generation equally determined to see their way as free women and men.
  8. diminished
    made to seem smaller or less, especially in worth
    The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others.
  9. grapple
    work hard to come to terms with or deal with something
    I'm sorry to say looking back on it we managed that unthinkingly. We didn’t plot it; we didn’t plan it. We didn’t say, “Now let’s work on this issue. Now let’s work on that issue.” The issues seemed to come to us. And we grappled with them and said, “Here is the best way to go about this thing. Here’s poverty. Here’s hunger. Here’s something else. Here’s absence of voting rights. Here’s inability to sit at the lunch counter.” All these things are both separate and connected.
  10. trepidation
    a feeling of alarm or dread
    Yes, I started [ registering people to vote]with some trepidation. I was very well aware of what had happened four years ago, those of those civil rights workers being murdered in Mississippi. By the way, I was 16 when that demonstration in Washington took place. It tremendously inspired me.
Created on Sun Aug 16 18:10:06 EDT 2015 (updated Mon Aug 17 00:08:30 EDT 2015)

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