By Kirk Laughlin
Speaking on issues ranging from the Montgomery bus protest to hurricane Katrina, Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP and a civil right’s leader, delivered a lecture celebrating the opening of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice on April 4.
Hundreds turned out at the Brown & Williamson Club at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium to listen to Bond’s speech, entitled “2007: A Race Odyssey.” The speech was the inaugural Anne Braden Memorial Lecture and also fell on the 39th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
Bond delivered remarks on the life and works of Anne Braden, a Louisville civil rights activist who died last spring after 60 years of service to the civil rights movement, prior to the ribbon-cutting ceremony that officially marked the opening of the Braden Institute.
“Rosa Parks and Dr. King may have convinced me to join the civil rights’ movement, but Anne Braden showed me how to do it,” Bond said. He honored Braden for “being a soldier, not a general,” and that her life “was dedicated to the cause.”
“Braden is a legend in our community, and the Institute will hopefully bridge between the university and the community,” said junior Pan-African studies major Perry Green.
Dr. Cate Fosl, founder and director of the Braden Institute, said the event was a “huge success.” Highlighting the “rainbow” of people present at the lecture, Fosl said, “Braden’s activism bridges race, gender and age. Hopefully, the younger people in the community will take up Braden’s work.”
“Bond’s visit was great and helps in diversity here at the university to counteract the visit by Connerly,” said senior Phillip Bailey, a Pan-African studies major, in reference to the March visit of Ward Connerly, an African-American leader of an anti-affirmative action movement.
In reference to affirmative action, Bond commented on the idea of a “stigmatism of inequity” associated with that phrase by saying “as if there weren’t any stigmatism in the black community long before those two words were ever put together.”
Bond also spoke on the Bush administration, saying that it has failed with “the disaster of Katrina, to which he did not respond, and the disaster of Iraq, which he initiated.” He also quoted Theodore Roosevelt, “‘Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official blindly during a time of war.'”
Green said he found Bond’s comments to be “very timely for both in our community and nationally.”
Andrew Murphy, a sophomore political science major, said, “While I may not agree with every point [Bond] made, I thought he presented interesting facts, made strong points on affirmative action and is an inspiration to student activists everywhere.”
