NAACP Chairman Julian Bond delivered an eloquent and sometimes-fiery speech in Aycock Auditorium on Jan. 18, telling the audience that King’s legacy must continue in fighting against racism.

Bond spoke at UNCG as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration 2005 in Aycock Auditorium. The event was sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Division of Student Affairs, the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the American Democracy Project.

The slim, grey-headed leader and former Georgia senator encouraged the crowd to remember not just King, but the movement and the ideals for which King fought.

“King was the best known and among the most famous of the movement’s personalities, but we ought to remember that it was a people’s movement,” Bond said. “It produced leaders of its own. It relied not on the famous, but on the faceless. It did not wait for commands from afar to begin campaigns against injustice. It sought wrong and acted against it. It sought evil, and it brought it down.”

Similarly, people today must rise up to fight racism and discrimination on their own accord, the NAACP leader told the crowd of more than 600. That is difficult, Bond said, because racism – like terrorism – is a slippery target.

“Just as this enemy terrorism is more difficult to identify and to punish, so is discrimination a much more illusive target today,” Bond said. “No more do signs read white and colored. The law now requires the voting booth and the school house door to swing open for everyone. No longer are they closed to those whose skins are dark. But despite impressive increases in the number of black people holding public office, despite our ability sit, eat, ride, vote, go to school in places that used to bar black faces, in some important ways, non-white Americans face far more difficulties now than in all the years that went before.

“At the NAACP, we believe these problems – old ones and new ones – have their root in race and racial discrimination. At the NAACP, we are often asked why we don’t focus on social service…we respond that we are an organization that fights discrimination…We believe that when the people have social justice, they don’t need social services.”

Some of Bond’s sharpest barbs, however, were not for the general public and the need to continue to fight racism at home – although that was certainly the crux of his message – he reserved his sharpest points for the current political parties, both Democratic and Republican.

“They've written a new constitution for Iraq and they are trying to rewrite the constitution at home. We might as well give ours to them because we're not using it here...And what about the other party? Too often, they aren't an opposition party, they are an amen corner. While one party has been whistling Dixie, the other party has been whistling in the dark. They have been largely absent without leave in this battle for America’s soul. When one party is shameless, the other cannot afford to be spineless.”

After Bond's speech, the Office of Multicultural Affairs presented the Martin Luther King Service Award to Dr. Kathleen Casey, an associate professor of educational leadership and cultural foundations in the Department of Education.