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ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • AUGUST 20 – 26, 2015
BOND
Continued from A1 “Julian Bond was a hero and, I’m privileged to say, a friend,” President Barack Obama said in response to Bond’s death. “Michelle and I have benefited from his example, his counsel, and his friendship.” Bond’s wife, Pamela Sue Horowitz, said the cause of death was complications of vascular disease. He was 75. Known in later years for his tenure as chairman of the NAACP (1998-2010), he left this world a civil rights icon with a list of accomplishments, achievements and honors that seem too vast to belong to a single individual. “From my days as a youth board member of the NAACP to my present tenure as NAACP chairman, like so many of my generation and before, I am yet inspired by the depth and breadth of Chairman Emeritus Bond’s exemplary service,” said current NAACP Chairman Roslyn M. Brock. “[He was an] activist, writer, historian, professor, public intellectual, public servant and an unrelentingly eloquent voice for the voiceless.” Much like when he had the audacity to entertain the notion of the vice presidency during the tense racial climate of 1968 – less than four months after the assassination of his former professor and mentor, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – Bond spent the better part of six decades taking bold risks and sowing seeds for future generations to reap with respect to civil rights and equality. Young, but ready “The first thing that comes to mind for me with Julian was how young he was,” said fellow civil rights champion Frankie Muse Freeman. She lovingly reflected on a Bond’s “baby face” during the meetings with Dr. King as the collective of civil rights elite prepared for the March on Washington in 1963.
“Just think about it. He couldn’t have been much older than 21 or 22 at the time,” Freeman said. “All of this was taking place in the 60s, and he was only 75 when he died. He was a young man, but he was very effective – and there was no question about his commitment to civil rights.” Bond was still in his teens when he began his work in the movement while a student at Morehouse College. He was barely out of them when he became a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. “His role at SNCC as communications director gave him the ability to shape issues,” Les Bond Jr. said of his beloved cousin. “And he had an equanimity about himself that lent itself to negotiation without anger. It was being able to deal with things calmly and in an intellectual way that made him most effective.” He was born Horace Julian Bond on January 14, 1940 in Nashville, Tennessee, but spent his youth in Pennsylvania, where his father, Horace Mann Bond, served as president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania – the nation’s second oldest historically black university. “His parents were like my parents – constantly exposing him to the greatest minds of the time,” Les said. “W.E.B. DuBois was a friend of his father’s, so he had the opportunity to listen to the discussions between the two. They talked scientifically about the conditions of the black community. His father did all sorts of scientific studies about the effects of poverty in sharecropping communities among black families in the south.” He would remember those conversations as his work for equal rights within the black community and beyond on the civil rights and political landscape. In 1965, at 25-yearold Bond was one of 11 African Americans elected to the Georgia House of Representatives after passage
Back to school Merlbie Jean-Baptiste walks her daughters Marissa Blanks 5, and Micayah Jean-Baptiste 8, into Sigel Elementary School Monday for the first day of school in the St. Louis Public School District.
Photo by Wiley Price
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 an Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened voter registration to blacks. On January 10, 1966, Georgia state representatives voted 184–12 not to seat him, because he had publicly endorsed SNCC’s policy regarding opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War. Later that year, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 9–0 in the case of Bond v. Floyd (385 U.S. 116) that the Georgia House of Representatives had denied Bond his freedom of speech and was required to seat him. From 1967 to 1975, Bond was elected to four terms in the Georgia House, where he organized the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. From 1971 to 1976, he served as the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal organization that fights discriminatory practices
throughout the country. “He recognized that civil rights had to go hand-in-hand with economic rights,” Les said. “Plus, he more broadly identified the civil rights struggle as a human rights movement and not just a black power movement.” ‘Liberty and justice for all’ Outside of politics, Bond would enjoy a career as a highly-coveted speaker on the lecture circuit before, during and following his tenure as Chairman of the NAACP. “He loved the NAACP, and he loved seeking justice for not just black people but any group that had been marginalized,” said John Gaskin III of the St. Louis County NAACP and National Board of Directors. “In the latter part of his career he became noted for his commitment to LGBTQ rights. He is one of the major reasons the NAACP National Board of Directors voted to endorse marriage equality in 2012.” Bond fought opposition from his peers’ conservative stance on the issue as he spoke up for the gay community’s right to marry and against the deafening silence with respect to the HIV/AIDS epidemic within the African-American community.
NGA
Continued from A1 NGA director, with a detailed knowledge of the factors and constraints that guide his decision on where to relocate and expand the facility, which currently houses 3,100 jobs with a median salary of $75,000. “Selecting the Northside of St. Louis for this location will bring desperately needed jobs and redevelopment to economically distressed communities of color,” Trumka wrote, citing the 1978 Executive Order that “requires consideration of the impact of federal site selection on the social and economic conditions of urban communities.” The new NGA West facility will take a projected $1.2 billion to construct, with a projected $1.6 billion in total development cost, as U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay has noted in this paper. “With this initial federal investment, 15,000 construction jobs and 11,500 permanent jobs will be created throughout Missouri,” Clay wrote on July 15. “The estimated economic impact of putting the NGA West facility in North St. Louis city is an additional $1.4 billion annually to the Missouri economy. Of that, 11,200 jobs and $1.2 billion are expected to benefit the St. Louis metropolitan region alone. Lastly, $8.1 billion of public and private investment is expected to be generated from 2016 to 2023 by selecting North St. Louis city as the new NGA West site,” Clay noted. Trumka also situated Cardillo’s decision in the renewed emphasis on race and inequity brought about by the Ferguson movement, which has been a major concern to the Obama
“His legacy was not just the rights of African Americans, but the rights of all people – the right to dignity and justice for all,” Les Bond said. “It gives a purpose to my life to know that my family is connected with the struggle of African Americans in this country. I’m very proud of that – I’m very proud to be a Bond.” With all of Bond’s efforts – as well as that of the freedom fighters who came before him and those who follow in his footsteps – the work remains unfinished. But the recent uprising that ignited in Ferguson and spread throughout the nation in response to police violence against the African American community and campaigns for higher minimum wage show promise that his legacy will continue. “All over this country we have a separation when it comes to the poor people and African Americans,” said Freeman. “The fact that there are more young people are involved in fighting against that now because of Ferguson reflects the sort of thing that he would be delighted to see.” Even in the shock of his sudden passing, it is impossible not to celebrate all that was gained because of a life welllived.
“Although I am saddened by his death and many of us are personally diminished by the loss of his counsel and leadership, he will always be remembered for his contributions to the cause of a better, more fair world,” said Donald M. Suggs, publisher and executive editor of the St. Louis American. “Many of us were inspired especially by his courage and audacityhis willingness to forsake his privilege to join in a struggle for justice during a period of tumult and peril.” The footprint of Bond’s legacy is one that won’t soon be forgotten. “The arc of service of Chairman Emeritus Julian Bond’s life extends high and wide over America’s social justice landscape,” said NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks. He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Pamela Horowitz; five children from his first marriage, Phyllis Jane BondMcMillan, Horace Mann Bond II, Michael Julian Bond, Jeffrey A. Bond and Julia L. Bond, all of Atlanta, and eight grandchildren. “Julian Bond helped change this country for the better,” Obama said. “And what better way to be remembered than that.”
administration. “The economic benefits of building the new West Campus Headquarters on the North Side of St. Louis will help the local community heal the race and class divisions that have fractured the greater St. Louis metropolitan area,” Trumka wrote. In case Cardillo missed the point, Trumka added, “North Side St. Louis borders Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown was tragically killed last year.” Trumka then cited a few statistics that, no doubt, are to be found on a much-thumbed spread sheet on Cardillo’s desk:
now-underway $8 billion urban community development project called NorthSide Regeneration,” Trumka wrote to Cardillo. “The project is developing a 1,500-acre area into approximately 3 million square feet of private sector commercial office space, 3,000 market-rate housing units, and a massive upgrade to the public infrastructure.” Trumka spoke up – finally – on behalf of the 15,000 construction jobs the NGA project will bring to his members. Labor, of course, is often at odds with the African-American community, which feels shut out of many unions and apprenticeship programs. Trumka addressed that issue as well. “The St. Louis Building & Construction Trades Council has proposed a community workforce agreement that will provide local hiring and apprenticeship training,” Trumka wrote to Cardillo. “Working with NGA, this agreement will launch sustainable career opportunities with skilled jobs for a severely underserved community.” According to sources close to the NGA decision-making process, the North Side location and a site near Scott Air Force Base in the Metro East are the only serious contenders for NGA West. “Business and labor leaders in St. Louis have supported the expansion and retention of Scott Air Force Base for many years,” Pat White, president of the Greater St. Louis Labor Council noted in a separate letter of support. “Now is not the time for SW Illinois to try to pirate these jobs out of the City of St. Louis and seriously undercut the City’s ongoing revitalization efforts and jeopardize the fiscal future of St. Louis.”
n “The estimated economic impact of putting the NGA West facility in North St. Louis city is an additional $1.4 billion annually to the Missouri economy.” – U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay
“North Side St. Louis residents are 85 percent African-American, the unemployment rate is an astounding 22 percent and 45 percent of the population lives in poverty.” The North Side location initially was pitched to the NGA by developers Bob Clark of Clayco and Paul McKee Jr. The largest owners of property in the North Side site are the City of St. Louis and McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration. Locally, McKee has been attacked for advancing a federal project that would benefit his own development, but Trumka argued that McKee’s project is another positive for the North Side site. “The proposed 100-acre NGA West site is part of a