Julian Bond decides not to step down as NAACP chair

After announcing last month that he would not seek a new term as chairman of the board of the NAACP, Julian Bond announced Tuesday that he had changed his mind and would seek reelection when his term ends in February 2009.

In an interview with Jeff Johnson on The "Tom Joyner Morning Show" Tuesday morning, Bond said he was responding to a groundswell of support from people who contacted him and the organization in recent days. (Hear audio here.)

Last week, Tom Joyner commentator Jeff Johnson argued that Bond, 68, should stay in his position at the NAACP because of his years of experience, and he put out a call for supporters to contact the NAACP. Since that time, Bond said the phones were "popping off their hooks" at the NAACP, which he called "a dramatic demonstration of the power of black talk radio."

Several NAACP members had urged Bond to stay on. Lamell McMorris, a member of the search committee for the President and CEO and Special Contributions Fund Trustee of the NAACP, told the media recently that Bond should stay on in his post.

"America is poised for change with the election of the country's first African American President and the NAACP should not only be a central part of that change but should be the initiators and collaborators of this change," McMorris said.

Bond said he got an "outpouring of support" from people in and out of the NAACP who urged him to stay on in his post. Monday night Bond sent a message to his board members that he had "changed my mind" and would run for re-election.

In response to critics who question the relevance of the NAACP in an Obama era, Bond said the civil rights organization is still important. "We don't believe the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the National Association for the Advancement of one person. Obama may have reached the mountaintop; it that doesn't mean the rest of us aren't still climbing."

"If you think because a black man will be president after January 20, that racism is just vanishing in the United States, you're sadly, sadly mistaken," Bond said. The NAACP chair said Obama will need help and sometimes the group would "push him." 
 
Last month after Obama's election, Bond announced he was leaving, calling this a "time for renewal." Bond said then that the organization and the country have "dynamic new leadership" that would lead them into the future. "The country has a new president in Barack Obama; the organization has a new CEO in Benjamin Jealous, and we'll soon have a new Chairman of the NAACP Board. The NAACP and the country are in good hands," he said then.
 
NAACP Board members and officers are elected to volunteer positions, and the chairman serves a one-year term and board members serve a three-year term.  
 
Bond was a founder of the Atlanta student sit-in and anti-segregation organization and of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) while still a student at Morehouse College in 1960. He was elected in 1965 to the Georgia House of Representatives, but 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 un-seated again, and seated only after a third election and a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. 
 
He is the recipient of 25 honorary degrees and currently teaches at American University in Washington, DC, and at the University of Virginia.