Condolences to his friends and family on this very sad loss for all of us: Julian Bond, civil rights leader and former NAACP chairman, dies at 75:

Julian Bond, a lifelong civil rights leader and former board chairman of the NAACP, has died. He was 75.

Bond died Saturday night after a brief illness in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which he served as founding president in the 1970s.

"Not only has the country lost a hero today, we've lost a great friend," the legal advocacy group said in a statement.

The Tennessee native was on the forefront of the 1960s civil rights movement and was among activists who demanded equal rights for African-Americans. [...]

President Barack Obama highlighted what he called Bond's lifetime mission of justice and equality.

"Julian Bond was a hero and, I'm privileged to say, a friend," Obama said in a statement.

Obama added: "Julian Bond helped change this country for the better. And what better way to be remembered than that."

Bond was part of a small group of students taught by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at Morehouse College in 1962.

"(King) was certainly known, but he was not nearly as famous then as he became, and he certainly didn't act like a famous person," Bond told CNN in 2013. "That was my feeling in being in that class and listening to him. He was important. He definitely seemed like an important person, and he was important in my life. I knew even at the time that I was privileged to learn from him, but he never made us feel as if he was that important. That's not what it was about."

It was around that time that Bond helped lead one of the first student sit-ins in Atlanta.

"With Julian's passing, the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice," said Morris Dees, co-founder of the SPLC. Read on...