Julian Bond was a 26-year resident of Ward 3 and Chevy Chase.  His  memorial in Chevy Chase is the Julian Bond Memorial Bench, dedicated by Mayor Bowser in 2017.    WP Julian Bond Bench Finally In Place 

Before his untimely death at the age of 75 in 2015, Bond could be seen walking throughout the neighborhood, or in Safeway, and the Starbucks on Connecticut Avenue,  Bond was a lifelong advocate for human rights of all.  

Our petition seeks not simply to preserve the bench placed in his honor, but to expand upon that with the naming of an auditorium: the H. Julian Bond Community Room.   The concept is not only to honor the past, but more importantly to re-envision the future, and to welcome new conversations, commentators, and artists, with room for culture and engagement.  Perhaps even music, humor and dramatic performance.    

Bond was on the Board of the fledgling National American Museum of African American History in 2015, and is fondly remembered by Lonny Bunch III, Trustee: Remembering Julian Bond   Bond recorded some of the oral histories preserved there himself.     Other memories of Julian Bond recorded shortly after his passing are numerous, but here are two others: 

Ford Foundation: His Story Was History: A Remembrance

"UVA Today" Julian Bond Beacon of Hope Blueprint for Activism

After moving the Washington DC in 1988, Bond hosted television shows, and taught at American University (where there is a Plaque in his honor)  and the University of Virginia before being elected to the NAACP in 1998.

Bond served as the President of the NAACP during the early Obama Years until 2010.  During his time as a resident of the District of Columbia, Bond advocated for DC Statehood, and advocated for the rights of the LGBTQ community.  

Bond occupied a unique place in the modern civil rights movement as the only black representative to represent Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the Georgia statehouse.  Born in Nashville in 1940, Julian Bond grew up in Tennessee as the grandson of a former slave, James Bond. His mother Julia Agnes Bond was a former librarian at Clark Atlanta University, and his father Horace Mann Julian Bond was known as a black scholar and educator. In 1945 his father became the first black President of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.   His parents frequently met with the literary lights of the black community.   He was photographed at the age of 4 with W. E.B. Dubois.    

After the family moved north, Bond graduated in 1957 from the Quaker-run George school, and then moved to Atlanta to enroll at Morehouse College.  Early in his time at Morehouse he enrolled in a seminar class taught by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.   It was the beginning of his active participation in luncheon counter sit-ins, in get out the vote efforts in Mississippi, and in all elements of the civil rights campaigns.  

As a Communications Director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Council, Bond wrote to then President Eisenhower, advocating for federal national guard protection for civil rights workers in Mississippi and elsewhere.      

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Georgia State Legislature created a new State Assembly District in Atlanta, which included the home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Bond was encouraged by John Lewis and others to enter the race ran for the newly created seat. Bond won the race, and became Dr. King’s representative to the GA Statehouse, though he had to take Georgia to the Supreme Court of the United States to finally take his seat.  

Please join us in asking the District to continue to honor Julian Bond at the Chevy Chase Community Center and Library and to further expand his legacy by naming the Community Room/Auditorium in his honor.