On Oct. 23, History Prof. Julian Bond will join the ranks of Rosa Parks, Colin Powell and Coretta Scott King as this year's recipient of the National Civil Rights Museum's Freedom Award.
Bond played an integral role in the 1960s civil rights movement, leading sit-ins, working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and helping to form the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
The two groups organized peaceful rallies and protests to further civil rights causes.
Gwen Harmon, the public relations spokeswoman for the museum, describes Bond as "a living legend."
Bond "took injustice and met it head on. He is a positive voice and force and is one of the few names that repeatedly popped up among the successes of the movement," Harmon said.
Bond will be the 12th individual to receive this award, which the museum has issued since 1991.
Bond expressed gratitude for the award, but stressed that his accomplishments were made possible by the efforts of many others.
"I feel like I'm in high cotton," Bond said. "It's a tremendous honor and I'm extremely flattered."
Bond, however, said the nature of the award "runs counter to what I teach." He stressed that the movement was not an individual accomplishment, but rather a mass effort.
Martin Luther King Jr. "did not march to Selma alone," Bond said. "He did not stand in front of the Washington monument alone."
Bond, who currently is the national chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, teaches a popular course on the history of the civil rights movement.
"Mr. Bond is a great lecturer, and it's a pleasure to sit back in his class and listen to his oral history," fourth-year College student Ben Grosz said. "University students are fortunate to have the opportunity to study the civil rights movement with a man who contributed to its outcome."
While Bond acknowledges that the movement achieved many of its goals, he says it is by no means over.
"What the movement achieved was the end of legal segregation. What it didn't end was racial discrimination. It has yet to do that, but no one can deny the United States is a different and better place because of it," Bond said.
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