RIP Brother Bond
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez
It was difficult reading this announcement from Morris Dees, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
We've lost a champion
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of legendary civil rights activist Julian Bond, SPLC's first president. He was 75 years old and died last evening, August 15, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
From his days as the co-founder and communications director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s to his chairmanship of the NAACP in the 21st century, Julian was a visionary and tireless champion for civil and human rights. He served as the SPLC's president from our founding in 1971 to 1979, and later as a member of its board of directors.
With Julian's passing, the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice. He advocated not just for African Americans, but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination, because he recognized the common humanity in us all.
Julian is survived by his wife, Pamela Horowitz, a former SPLC staff attorney, and his five children.
Not only has the country lost a hero today, we've lost a great friend.
For those of us of a certain age, Julian Bond was always a part of our civil rights landscape of struggle. Tributes have poured in from many people around the globe who have been touched by his activism, including one from
President Obama.
I thought it would be fitting to share many of the materials that are readily available online about his life and work.
A Conversation with Julian Bond was produced by Stanford University's Black Community Services Center.
Julian Bond is an American social activist and a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. Mr. Bond helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the early 1960s; was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center; served 20 years in both houses of the Georgia Legislature; and from 1998 to 2010, served as chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Mr. Bond is also an author of books, the creator of a comic book, and a poet.
Hosted by: Judge LaDoris H. Cordell
He was recently the subject of a short film (34 minutes).
Trailer of the movie "JULIAN BOND: Reflections from the Frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement.” A Film by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. Distributed by Filmakers Library an imprint of Alexander Street Press.
Notes: This enlightening portrait joins African American social activist Julian Bond as he traces his roots back to slavery. A leader in the Civil Rights Movement, Julian Bond was among the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a leader of the 1963 March on Washington, and a Georgia legislator for twenty years. Now in his seventies, Bond recalls the experience of growing up in the segregated south, where his parents' belief in hard work and education lifted the family out of what he describes as an apartheid system...
Julian Bond's recollections chronicle several turbulent decades of American history, as society was evolving to allow more opportunity to African Americans.
A Time to Speak, A Time to Act, is a collection of essays by Julain Bond. Many people are not aware that he created a comic book "Vietnam," in 1967, which was illustrated by T.G. Lewis.
Julian Bond's 'Comic' Stance on the Vietnam War
Civil rights activist, organizer, speaker and comic book author? Yes, Julian Bond created a comic book to express his displeasure with the war in Vietnam
The 20-page, black-and-white comic book (the cover seems lost; so 19 pages are available online) begins with listing all of the black American leaders—from King to Adam Clayton Powell Jr.—who opposed the war in Vietnam.
Then Bond summarizes what he feels is the average black man’s view in 1967: that the fight for democracy was here in America, not in Southeast Asia.
“One out of every ten young men in America is a Negro,” Bond writes. “But two out of every five men killed in Vietnam is a Negro.”
Bond points out that while blacks were fighting in the Civil War for their right to not be enslaved, the French were fighting to colonize Vietnam.
He narrated
A Time For Justice.
A Time for Justice is a 1994 American short documentary film produced by Charles Guggenheim. It won an Academy Award in 1995 for Documentary Short Subject. The film was produced by Guggenheim and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
This 38-minute film, narrated by Julian Bond and featuring John Lewis, presents a short history of the Civil Rights Movement using historical footage and spoken accounts of participants. Events recounted are the Montgomery Bus Boycott; school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas; demonstrations in Birmingham; and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights.
Bond hosted an interview series with many black leaders and activists, many of which I've used in the classroom.
Explorations in Black Leadership Series, for the University of Virginia, Co-Directed by Phyllis Leffler & Julian Bond
Between 2000 and 2014, more than fifty African American leaders agreed to participate in a videotaped interview to share their thoughts about black leadership in America.
You can
watch most of the interviews, conducted by Bond, on YouTube.
Julian Bond was also an outspoken advocate for LBGT rights.
It is impossible to list all of his contributions here today.
Let us simply say, that he made a difference. A path we can all attempt to follow.
Thank you Brother Bond.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The drama “Straight Outta Compton” profiles the rap group N.W.A. FiveThirtyEight: ‘Straight Outta Compton’ Is The Rare Biopic Not About White Dudes.
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In theaters [last] Friday, “Straight Outta Compton” tells the story of the hip-hop group N.W.A., five young rappers from Compton, California, who revolutionized rap and its place in the mainstream music industry in the 1980s.
The film, which counts original N.W.A. members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre among its producers, is also exceptional in mainstream Hollywood — it’s the only biopic about people of color in wide release this summer1 and one of only a couple of dozen made about people of color so far this decade.
Unlike documentaries, which typically include raw footage and interviews, biopics are dramatizations, loosely based on the real-life events of actual people. Biopics offer an interpretation of lives deemed important (and profitable) by Hollywood, and they often try to make a statement about their subjects’ historical or cultural significance. So which figures filmmakers spotlight matters, as does whom they ignore (or can’t get the funding to feature).
Women don’t fare much better in the genre than people of color — there is only one2 biopic about a woman in U.S. theaters this summer,3 and only about a quarter of all biopic subjects are women. That’s according to my analysis of IMDb data on biographical films released from 1915 through 2014.4
Apparently, the people with important lives are white men. Since the early 20th century, more than 80 percent of biopicture subjects whose race or ethnicity I was able to determine have been white, and 77 percent of subjects have been men. The genre has seen vast improvement in the presence of women and people of color, but Hollywood biopics still tend to reproduce to a greater degree the stories of white men from all corners of society.
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On Friday, Janelle Monàe performed on NBC’s “Today,” and while the performance was amazing, the message afterward was cut short when she began to talk about police brutality. The Grio: Janelle Monàe cut off while sharing message about black lives on ‘Today’.
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She had just finished performing the song “Hell You Talmbout,” which is being hailed as a theme song for the Black Lives Matter movement and was about to begin to address the themes of the piece when the camera cut away and an anchor tried to talk over her.
“Yes Lord! God bless America! God bless all the lost lives to police brutality. We want white America to know that we stand tall today. We want black America to know we stand tall today. We will not be silenced…” she said to the crowd before the rude interruption.
What’s more, although clips from the show and other musical segments were posted to the “Today” website on Friday, there were no clips or recordings from the performance of “Hell You Talmbout.”
You can see the interrupted moment below starting at the 14:45 mark
On Wednesday, Monàe had shared the message behind her song on Instagram:
“This song is a vessel. It carries the unbearable anguish of millions. We recorded it to channel the pain, fear, and trauma caused by the ongoing slaughter of our brothers and sisters. We recorded it to challenge the indifference, disregard, and negligence of all who remain quiet about this issue. Silence is our enemy. Sound is our weapon. They say a question lives forever until it gets the answer it deserves… Won’t you say their names?”
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A new film shows the ravages of the foreign and local corrupt bureaucracy in the world's newest country. The New Republic: South Sudan's Orderly Disorder.
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rriving unannounced to South Sudan in a homemade flying machine to film a documentary, Austrian director Hubert Sauper parallels fictional space conquests and real colonial invasions. “I come in a vulnerable situation and I get out of a ridiculous flying machine. They laugh at me,” Sauper told me. “The connection that’s created in a relatively short time because of the oddness of our arrival is then our basis for conversation.” The resulting intimacy gives the film, We Come As Friends, an emotional core, which didn’t go unrecognized: It won awards at both the Sundance and Berlin International Film Festival.
That title, of course, refers to the stereotypical moment of first contact with intelligent life. But it also suggests the film’s preoccupation with the stories we use to make sense of our own foreign interactions. “We come as friends” is a hollowed out B-movie trope, and throughout the film, Sauper subtly exposes the other stories, often equally hollow, that we use to explain away our own interactions with developing African nations.
The film meanders, essayistic, from Chinese oil fields to UN bureaucracy, letting the camera’s gaze settle on white bodies handing out solar-powered bibles or lounging around hotel pools. In his flying machine, Sauper too becomes a structural device, his journey a backbone for the film’s interconnected subjects—globalization, Chinese-African relations, government corruption, displaced communities.
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News channel’s managing director meets president after social media outcry over coverage suggesting Obama would be at risk during historic trip. The Guardian: CNN executive flies to Kenya to apologise for 'hotbed of terror' claim.
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A senior CNN executive has flown to Nairobi to apologise for coverage calling the country a “hotbed of terror” ahead of Barack Obama’s visit in July.
Many Kenyans were outraged by the report, which suggested Obama was likely to be attacked during his historic visit to the land of his father’s birth. While the country has suffered a string of atrocities by the Somalia-based al-Shabaab militant group, most of Kenya does not resemble the parts of the world where terror attacks are commonplace, stressed Kenya’s active Twitter community.
The hashtag #someonetellcnn trended for several days ahead of the US president’s arrival, visit with users deploying a mix of humour and satire to criticise the American network. Tony Maddox, a CNN executive vice president and managing director, said the channel could have covered the story differently.
“We acknowledge there is a widespread feeling that the report annoyed many, which is why we pulled down the report as soon as we noticed,” he said.
“It wasn’t a deliberate attempt to portray Kenya negatively, it is regrettable and we shouldn’t have done it. There is a world at war with extremists; we know what a hotbed of terror looks like, and Kenya isn’t one.”
Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta’s press team issued a statement with the headline CNN regrets ‘hotbed of terror’ gaffe, written in unusually triumphal terms. It said the president had expressed “his deep disappointment at the story” which had “angered the people of Kenya”.
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Julian Bond, Civil Rights Icon and Former NAACP Chairman, Dies at 75. Southern Poverty Law Center: WE'VE LOST A CHAMPION.
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It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of legendary civil rights activist Julian Bond, SPLC's first president. He was 75 years old and died last evening, August 15, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
From his days as the co-founder and communications director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s to his chairmanship of the NAACP in the 21st century, Julian was a visionary and tireless champion for civil and human rights. He served as the SPLC's president from our founding in 1971 to 1979, and later as a member of its board of directors.
With Julian's passing, the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice. He advocated not just for African Americans, but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination, because he recognized the common humanity in us all.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
The first time I heard of Julian Bond I was 10 years old. I overheard my Dad discussing Bond to his academic and civil rights colleagues at one of the many meet ups that were held at our house in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California in 1965. I saw him speak on the news shows then and I was completely enamored. His measured and reasoned speaking style appealed to that part of me that was at odds with that other part of me that was not so measured and rarely reasoned.
The next year, I heard the Georgia House voted to remove him from his elected seat there, for his anti war pronouncements and actions. I don't remember if that is when I placed him on my Pantheon of Heroes, but it must have been close to that event. When I compared him to the white establishment he was up against and how he prevailed, I wanted him to run for President every election year from 1968, though he was far too young, to this current one.
Now, we are experiencing what the young Julian Bond fought against then and continued to fight his entire life. The latent bigotries, large and small, that kept young black girls from attending the white school in the Southern or Northern town. The racist hatred that exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church and killed four little black girls at prayer study. To think of the struggle and lives lost to pass the Voting Rights Act, to then have it wrested away and mocked, causes me to merely shake my head and wonder.
I wonder how he could keep so measured, so reasoned. So committed to continue doing the good Work.
Rest in Peace, truly, Great Man.
For Peace is truly where Power resides.
States May Sing Their Songs of Praise
I imagine each enunciation, each syllable
pronounced—Mississippi—makes a noose
cinch somewhere, rope reduced
to arousal, tightening. The pull,
the hard-learned feel of vertebrae supple
within a neck's column, and marrow's juice
sucked clean until what remains are flutes
of bone, a wind section of rubble.
Whenever I meet Mississippi in a dream,
it is always a landfill of labored breaths
or a grand mammal crippled in morass.
What did you ever want of us? I ask. It beams,
The same you want for me—the subtle heft
of razors beneath the magnolia tongue's lash.
-- Kyle Dargan
"States May Sing Their Songs of Praise"
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