Bond, Julian
$35.00
Social activist & civil rights leader, 1st African-American major party nominee for Vice President, declined as he was only 28!
Description
Type: First Day Cover
Description: (1940-2015) Social activist and civil rights leader. While at Atlanta’s Morehouse College in the early 60s (a member of the only class taught by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), he helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), its communications director 1961-66, and led student protests against segregation in public facilities in Georgia 1960-63. He helped found (with Morris Dees) the Southern Poverty Law Center, its 1st president 1971-79.
Elected to 4 terms (1967-75) in the Georgia House of Representatives (one of 1st 8 African-Americans elected in 1965, he formed the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus) and later to 6 terms (1975-86) in the state Senate. When the Georgia House initially refused to seat him because of his outspoken views on the Vietnam War and the draft, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Bond v. Floyd (1966) that the Georgia House denied him his freedom of speech and was required to seat him. In 1968, Bond led an alternate delegation from Georgia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where he became the 1st African American proposed as a major-party candidate for Vice President; the 28-year-old Bond quickly declined, citing the constitutional requirement that one must be at least 35 to serve in that office. NAACP Board Chairman 1998-2010, awarded 2009 NAACP Spingarn Medal.
Signed 3 ½ x 6 ½ 15c Whitney Moore Young-Black Heritage USA 15c stamp colorfully cacheted First Day Cover, postmarked NYC, January 30 1981, signed by Bond at top. Nice association of 2 Black civil rights icons.
Whitney M. Young, Jr. (1921-71) Led the National Urban League (NUL) during its most progressive period (1961-71. He graduated from the Lincoln institute 1937 and Kentucky State 1941, earning a 1947 Master’s Degree from the University of Minnesota. He spent most of his career working to end employment discrimination and changing the NUL into a more proactive organization. Young was appointed to head the NUL in 1961, a position he held until his untimely death in 1971. During the decade of Young’s leadership NUL experienced pronounced growth, which included a near twenty-fold increase in its annual budget from $325,000 to over $6M and an increase in staffing from three dozen employees to over a thousand. Young moved the organization to the forefront of the civil rights movement, the NUL previously held a cautious stance on civil rights issues. Young was one of the most influential leaders of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and a member of the legendary “Big Six” civil rights leadership team. Planners for the March used NUL’s NYC HQ for their meetings and Young was a featured speaker. After the March, Young advocated for federal assistance to cities combating poverty and developed a 10-point domestic program, the “Domestic Marshall Plan” for combating poverty and closing the Black-White wealth gap. His plan was influential to LBJ’s War on Poverty and partially incorporated into legislation. In 1968, the Johnson Administration awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Condition: Very good
