Father’s Day Reflections: Children of Atlanta’s Historic Civil Rights Era
Post 1 At-Large Council member Michael Julian Bond and District 10 Council member Andrea Boone are both children of icons of the civil rights era.
In celebration of Father’s Day, Bond and Boone took some time to reminisce about their fathers and reflect on the recent demonstrations and protests in Atlanta and across the world.
Bond’s father, Julian Bond, helped co-found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, in 1960. He served as the communications director of SNCC from 1961 to 1966 and traveled around the South to help organize civil rights and voter registration drives. He also led protests against segregation in public facilities and other Jim Crow laws.
Bond said growing up with his dad, he knew that he had a busy schedule and remembers regularly seeing notable people of the civil rights movement visiting the house, including Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, and John Lewis.
“It was always busy. He traveled a tremendous amount,” Bond said about his dad, noting that he often gave speeches across the country. “There were always movement people in and out of our home. That wasn’t unusual — folks that other people would consider notable or famous were always dropping by.”
Bond’s father was also a member of the Georgia House of Representatives from 1969–1974 and a member of the Georgia Senate from 1975–1987. He was the second African American senator elected. He later served as chair of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP. He passed away in 2015.
Bond noted that his father was a genuine man with a tremendous sense of humor.
“He was a great dad. He spoiled us, but at the same time, he could be very stern,” Bond said. “He always gave it to me straight. He didn’t sugarcoat things, but he supported me to the end.”
In terms of his father and his thoughts on current times, Bond noted that it’s the 60th anniversary of the Atlanta Student Movement and felt his father would still be protesting and demonstrating as well.
“He would be out in the thick of it,” Bond said, noting that his father’s work in the 1960s helped to desegregate Atlanta, as well as impacted the presidential election of 1960.
He added, “I think that he would want to see a transition from marching to definitive action.”
Bond noted in retelling a message from his father that one of the great items of history is that there’s an extensive amount of footage from the marches of the 1960s. However, there’s scant archival footage of the work that went into actually organizing and planning the marches.
“The marches are just to call attention to what you want to see happen. There’s an extraordinary amount of work that goes into preparing the marches and the training and the discipline that you need,” Bond said in thinking about his father’s words and his work. “Then, of course, there’s the real work afterward — the lobbying, the letter writing, the subsequent campaign to go out and attend meetings and hold your elected officials accountable for some real results.”
Boone’s father, the Rev. Joseph E. Boone, was a key organizer of the Atlanta Movement, which led to the integration of lunch counters and department stores in Atlanta during the early 1960s. He staged more than 150 boycotts and protests in Georgia against unfair practices by businesses.
Boone remembered her dad having a tireless spirit and being a dynamic leader in the community.
“There was never a dull moment. That’s for sure,” Boone said about childhood. “My father was a very strong man. I remember my father getting information on local businesses engaged in racial discrimination. He would grab picket signs for me and my sister. We would even make picket signs and we would leave the house on a mission.”
Known as the “picketing preacher,” Rev. Boone was appointed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as chief negotiator for Operation Breadbasket, a program that urged local businesses to hire and promote black employees. He helped lead a team of more than 200 ministers in more than 30 cities. He passed away in 2006.
Boone picked up on these lessons of compassion from her father, adding that he set a particularly impactful example for his family.
“My dad was a great father because he taught me how to love. He taught me not to judge. He taught me to stand up and speak out for what is right. He taught me not to look down, but to look up. I miss my daddy,” she said.
In terms of the turmoil of the 1960s and how it relates to today, Boone said her father would appreciate the peaceful marches taking place in Atlanta and throughout the world.
“My father would be sad about the violence and burning of the buildings that is existing right now all across this country. My father, Reverend Boone, was truly non-violent,” she said. “But when I look around and I look at the peaceful protests — the young people, folks of all races, folks of all size and shapes — I feel that he would be proud.”
