Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, encouraged students to become involved in their worlds in a lecture on Monday co-sponsored by the Kennedy Political Union and the Eagle Endowment.
"Engage yourself in the world around you, whether it's in your backyard, in your city, in your neighborhood, in your county, in your state, in your country or in the larger world because the world is crying out for people like you to lend a hand," Bond said while addressing students in the McDowell Formal Lounge.
Bond's career includes being a founder and communications director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a 20-year veteran of the Georgia General Assembly. Bond has honorary degrees from 23 colleges and is currently a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at AU and a professor at the University of Virginia's history department, where he is co-director of Explorations in Black Leadership.
Bond's speech largely focused on his life. He got into the civil rights movement when a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta approached him and asked if he had seen the lunch counter sit-ins at the Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C. Bond said he had and he thought the idea was fabulous.
"Then [the student] asked the crucial question, 'Why don't we do it here?'" Bond said.
Bond then helped organize a sit-in at the Atlanta City Hall.
From there, he helped found the SNCC. He was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, but other members refused to seat him following his first two elections because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. He also lost an election to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was also the first African-American nominated as vice president in 1968. He later withdrew his name from he ballot because he did not meet the age qualifications.
"His story definitely is empowering and influential," said Cory DuValier, a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs. "It makes it seem even more tangible how important it is to get out into the outer D.C. community. When you walk the streets, you see so much imbalance and disparity between the wealthy and the dirt poor, and it touches you - words like his touch you."
Bond identified a variety of problems that society faces today.
"All of us know that there are enormous problems in the country," he said. "Some of them have nothing to do with race. Some of them have to do with the environment, with war and peace, with discrimination against people of different sexual orientations. Some of them have to do with a wide variety of evils and ills."
Bond said these problems "call out for bright young minds like yourselves to address themselves to them."
He encouraged students to get involved "not only because it needs to be done but because you cannot imagine how rewarding it can be to you, how thrilling it can be to you, to know that you've done something to move that needle slightly forward."
He said this reasoning is why his life has been "as rewarding as it could possibly be."
Bond said he is comforted that "there are other people coming along behind who can do ... [and] can finish the things that you thought you were helping to finish and that someone else long before you were born had started. It's a great, great feeling, so if you want to feel good, do it"
