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Civil rights activist and former NAACP president Julian Bond to deliver Harris Lecture

IU Cinema will screen Bond-narrated `Eyes on the Prize? episodes

• Oct. 8, 2014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Julian Bond, former president of the NAACP and the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, will deliver the Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Harris Lecture at noon Wednesday, Oct. 15, in the school’s Moot Court Room.

Bond’s presentation, “The Broken Promise of Brown,” continues the school’s commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. On Thursday, Oct. 16, the IU Cinema will screen select episodes from "Eyes on the Prize," a 14-part civil rights documentary broadcast by PBS and narrated by Bond.

“Julian Bond has been a tireless advocate for civil rights and social justice, confronting head-on some of our nation’s biggest challenges of the last half-century,” said Maurer School of Law Dean and James H. Rudy Professor of Law Austen L. Parrish. “From co-founding the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to chairing the NAACP, to his work with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Professor Bond has been an inspiring force for justice. We are privileged to welcome him to the campus of Indiana University.”

In addition to serving as chairman emeritus of the NAACP and president emeritus of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Bond is a professor of history at the University of Virginia and an adjunct professor at American University.

The son of a university president and librarian, Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, but his endorsement of the SNCC’s opposition to the Vietnam War led his fellow state representatives to refuse to seat him. The case eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which found Bond’s First Amendment rights had been violated and that the Georgia legislature was required to seat him. Bond went on to serve as an elected official in Georgia until 1987. He was selected chairman of the NAACP in 1997, a position he held until 2010.

Bond’s lecture at the Maurer School of Law will be open to the public and will be streamed live online. Also open to the public is the 7 p.m. Thursday screening of selected episodes of "Eyes on the Prize" on Oct. 16 at the IU Cinema. Bond is scheduled to introduce personally selected episodes. The screening is free but requires a ticket. Tickets can be acquired at the IU Auditorium box office during regular hours or 30 minutes before the screening.

Established in 1946 by a trust from the bequest of India Crago Harris in the name of her husband, Addison C. Harris, the Harris Lecture Series brings prominent scholars to the Maurer School of Law. Harris was an Indiana lawyer and president of the old Indiana Law School. He was appointed minister to Austria-Hungary by President William McKinley.