When the civil rights movement was gaining momentum in the early 1960s, Julian Bond emerged as one of its most visible champions. As the handsome, charismatic spokesperson of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Bond deftly drew widespread media attention to his fellow activists’ efforts to combat segregation across the South, and the discrimination and violence that often met these efforts. A state congressman and senator in Georgia for some two decades, he founded the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization, and led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as its chairman for a decade—all while building a distinguished career as a lecturer, commentator, professor, essayist and poet.