Civil rights leader Julian Bond was an honorary Cedar Rapidian

Julian Bond, a civil rights titan, longtime leader of the NAACP and frequent visitor to Iowa, died Saturday in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. He was 75.

A public face of activism for civil rights throughout his life, Bond led the Southern Poverty Law Center and was the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States. He also served in the Georgia Legislature for 20 years.

Bond died after a brief illness, according to a statement released Sunday by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

A onetime student of Dr. Martin Luther King, Bond was active in the civil rights movement while still in his teens. He was a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s and was on the front lines of civil rights battles in the South, including being beaten by police during demonstrations.

Bond was awarded his seat in the Georgia House of Representatives by a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966, after the all-white legislative body refused to seat him - allegedly because of critical statements he had made about the Vietnam War.

His first official appearance in Iowa came the next year - in March 1967 at the Des Moines YMCA. He spoke at an event sponsored by a coalition of local anti-war and civil rights groups.

After King's assassination in 1968, Bond was seen as a possible heir to King's mantle as a national civil rights leader. For a time, there was open talk that Bond could well be the nation's first black president.

He was nominated for vice president at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, but at age 28, was too young to be eligible for the office.

Before he could be nominated, though, Bond first had to gain full access to the convention. And for that he credited Iowa Gov. Harold Hughes.

Hughes noticed that Bond was sitting in the gallery when he was supposed to be seated on the floor during the 1968 gathering.

Hughes reached out to a contact who could help and got Bond admitted to the floor. The pair remained friends afterward.

From 1969 on, Bond was a frequent speaker at Iowa colleges and universities including Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, Simpson, Coe, Luther, Upper Iowa, Grinnell and Mount Mercy.

He became an honorary Cedar Rapidian on Sept. 14, 1973. Bond received the honor during an informal meeting with Mayor Don Canney and members of the city's Human Rights Commission.

According to a Gazette account, he used the occasion to express concern about a perceived apathy toward politics among young people and said the Watergate scandal was partly to blame.

'It's given a black eye to this whole class of people called politicians,” Bond said.

He returned to Cedar Rapids several more times, speaking at the Five Seasons Center in August 1979 and at the African American Museum of Iowa in November 2005.

According to a Gazette account of the 2005 visit, Bond retold a story from when he had King as a philosophy teacher at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

'One day, class is over, and he and I are walking across this beautiful Morehouse campus. I said, ‘Doc, how are you doing?' ” Bond said.

King said he was not doing so well because of the nation's pervasive segregation and racism.

Bond recalled that King's exact words were, 'I feel awful. I have a nightmare.”

Bond replied with: 'Doc, turn that around. Try, ‘I have a dream.' ”

Nationally, Bond faded from the public stage after a losing a bitter 1986 campaign for the U.S. House to fellow civil rights icon John Lewis.

Bond later reconciled with Lewis, and in March the two participated in a weeklong tour of civil rights landmarks in the South.

'We went through a difficult period during our campaign for Congress in 1986,” Lewis, D-Ga., said on Twitter, 'but many years ago we emerged even closer. Julian was so smart, so gifted, and so talented. He was deeply committed to making our country a better country.”

President Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, also mourned the civil rights leader.

'Justice and equality was the mission that spanned his life,” Obama said in a statement. 'Julian Bond helped change this country for the better. And what better way to be remembered than that.”

The Gazette's Diane Langton contributed to this report.