GW has announced the commencement speaker for the May 18th GW commencement on the National Mall. Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP, will speak to guests and receive an honorary doctor of public service degree from the university.Bond has a long history of civil rights activism that began in college. He was elected to the Georgia state legislature, but was denied his seat and fought it all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled in his favor and Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out about Bond’s case, even organizing a march for the cause. Bond went on to serve more than twenty years in the Georgia General Assembly.
Bond will be speaking forty five years after Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, which was also delivered on the National Mall.
On this distinguished honor, Bond said, “This great university honors me, but it also honors the thousands of nameless women and men who made the modern-day civil rights movement possible. Forty years after King's death, these graduates represent a generation that seems willing to take our country's racial dialogue to a new level, and I am delighted to speak to them at their graduation."
- Julie Hyman
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