Forty years after the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
one of the young men he inspired to devote his life to the cause of
civil rights, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, will deliver the 2008
graduation address at The George Washington University’s
Commencement on the National Mall on Sunday, May 18. Bond will speak to
an estimated 25,000 graduates and guests 45 years after King delivered
his historic “I Have a Dream”
speech on the National Mall in 1963. Bond will receive an honorary
Doctor of Public Service degree during the ceremony.
“Julian Bond’s
courageous and principled positions on behalf of racial equality and
economic justice have played a central role in our nation’s
efforts to realize its highest ideals,” said
GW President Steven Knapp. “His extraordinary
record of achievement as a social activist, writer, and teacher has won
the admiration of our faculty, students, and trustees, and he honors our
university by accepting this invitation.”
“This great university honors me,”
Bond said, “but it also honors the thousands
of nameless women and men who made the modern-day civil rights movement
possible. Forty years after King’s death,
these graduates represent a generation that seems willing to take our
country’s racial dialogue to a new level, and
I am delighted to speak to them at their graduation.”
Perhaps best known for his status as one of the founding leaders of the
civil rights movement, Julian Bond was an activist in college, joining
the staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. Bond’s
commitment to civil rights is deeply rooted; his father, Horace Mann
Bond, who was the son of a slave, rose to become president of Fort
Valley College in Georgia and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and
was an acclaimed sociologist.
In 1965, Julian Bond was elected to the Georgia state legislature, but
was denied his seat. He fought his case all the way to the United States
Supreme Court. As part of that effort, King spoke out on Bond’s
behalf and organized a march in support of his right to be seated. The
Supreme Court ultimately voted unanimously in Bond’s
favor, and he went on to serve more than two decades in the Georgia
General Assembly.
In 1998, Bond was elected chairman of the NAACP, the nation’s
oldest and largest civil rights organization. The NAACP will mark its
centennial in 2009. Bond also served as the first president of the
Southern Poverty Law Center and is a member of the boards of People for
the American Way and the Council for a Livable World. He also serves on
the advisory board of the Harvard Business School Initiative on Social
Enterprise.
Located four blocks from the White House, The George Washington
University was created by an Act of Congress in 1821. Today, GW is the
largest institution of higher education in the nation’s
capital. The university offers comprehensive programs of undergraduate
and graduate liberal arts study as well as degree programs in medicine,
public health, law, engineering, education, business, and international
affairs. Each year, GW enrolls a diverse population of undergraduate,
graduate, and professional students from all 50 states, the District of
Columbia, and more than 130 countries.
For more information about GW’s
Commencement on the National Mall, visit commencement.gwu.edu.
For more news about GW, visit the GW News Center at www.gwnewscenter.org.
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