October 13, 2000

Contact: Janet Crow, Hall Center for the Humanities, (785) 864-4798

Famed civil rights leader to lecture at KU's Lied Center

LAWRENCE -- Drawing on his extraordinary career in public service, Julian Bond, activist, scholar, essayist and poet, will launch this season's Humanities Lecture Series at the University of Kansas with a lecture titled "Crossing the Color Line: From Rhythm & Blues to Rock 'n' Roll," at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 24, at the Lied Center.

Bond will discuss the civil rights movement from the perspective of what was happening in music as rhythm and blues and pop came together to give birth to rock and roll. The Humanities Lecture Series is sponsored by KU's Hall Center for the Humanities. The lecture also is this year's Horowitz Lecture, a series established by former vice chancellor Frances D. Horowitz to provide an annual lecture on a multicultural topic.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Doors open at 7 p.m.

Bond has been an active participant in the movements for civil rights, economic justice and peace for more than three decades. Currently, he is chair of the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization.

He appears regularly on America's Black Forum, the oldest black-owned television show in syndication. He has authored a nationally syndicated newspaper column. His poetry and articles have appeared in numerous publications, and he has been narrator of numerous documentaries, including the Academy Award-winning "A Time for Justice" and the critically acclaimed series "Eyes on The Prize."

He was founder, in 1960, of the Atlanta student sit-in and anti-segregation organization, and of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. As SNCC's communications director, Bond was active in protests and voter registration campaigns throughout the South.

Elected in 1965 to the Georgia House of Representatives, Bond was prevented from taking his seat by members who objected to his opposition to the Vietnam War. He was re-elected to his own vacant seat and unseated again, and seated only after a third election and a unanimous Supreme Court decision that ruled that the Georgia House had violated his rights.