RIP Julian Bond

   Damn.
   I've always admired Bond very much. He was particularly important to me as a teenager, especially as a young teen as I was first trying to understand American society and politics. My father--among his other evil and psychopathic characteristics--was a virulent racist. And there was a fair amount of racism in general where I grew up. Anti-black racism was particularly prevalent, perhaps in part due to the fact that blacks were the only non-whites in the area. It always repulsed and angered me, but, at first anyway, I was just a kid and it all rather confused me.
   I distinctly remember the first time I saw Julian Bond on television. He was opposite a high-ranking Klansman, and--as you might expect--just shredded the hell out of him. I particularly remember a point at which some Klan march came up--perhaps the one in Greensboro, NC. The Klansman claimed, at one point, that no weapons had been found. Bond pulls out a list and rattles off all the weapons that had been found...x number of guns, y number of knives, z number of blackjacks, etc. etc.  Not a moment Bond would even recall were he still with us, I'm sure. Not significant compared to the most important actions of a long and consequential career. But I remember standing up and cheering. It was just a beautiful evidential beat-down. It's hard for me to think about that without getting kind of emotional, actually.
   I'd always hoped that I'd get a chance to meet him, and I'm exceedingly sorry that I won't.