Civil rights leader Julian Bond dies at 75

Civil rights leader Julian Bond died over the weekend in Florida, the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, said. He was 75.

Bond, a former chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, died in Fort Walton Beach on Saturday after a short illness, the SPLC said in a statement.

Bond, born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1940, was the SPLC’s first president, serving from 1971 to 1979, and became a life member of the organization’s board.

President Barack Obama praised Bond’s leadership during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, describing the late activist in a statement as “a hero and a friend.”

Bond was among the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee while a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Bond, a writer, poet and scholar, moved from student activism to a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives, and then into the leadership of the 500,000member NAACP for a decade, stepping down in 2010.

Bond’s time as a state legislator was mired in controversy when other lawmakers tried to prevent him from taking his seat by accusing him of “disloyalty” because as a student activist he had opposed the Vietnam War.

The dispute went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1966 that Bond could take his seat in the state legislature, a job he held for almost 20 years.