Julian Bond has been one of America’s most prominent civil rights figures since he led demonstrations as a college student in Atlanta in the early 1960s. He has been chair of the NAACP since 1988. He was a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and he served in the Georgia General Assembly for 20 years. In 1971, Bond was named as SPLC’s first president and served in that capacity for eight years. He is a Distinguished Professor at American University in Washington, DC, and a professor of history at the University of Virginia.