A scholar, educator, and advocate for civil rights Horace Mann Bond was co-founder of The Africa-America Institute.
PHOTO CREDIT: UMass Amherst

UMass Amherst Libraries’ Department of Special Collections hosted a special event on Feb. 12 to unveil the digitization of the papers of Dr. Horace Mann Bond, one of the founders of The Africa-America Institute.

AAI President and CEO Amini Kajunju offered remarks at the event where she announced AAI’s intent to collaborate with UMass on the archival project. The event also featured a conversation, “Growing Up Bond,” with the children of Horace Mann Bond: civil rights pioneer and former NAACP President Julian Bond, political consultant James Bond, and lawyer Jane Bond Moore.

AAI President Amini Kajunju with Julian Bond, civil rights leader and son of Dr. Horace Mann Bond

A scholar and educator, Horace Mann Bond’s remarkable collection of personal papers present rich historical documents and materials such as correspondence with leading African American intellectuals and figures in the emerging world of independent Africa.

Dr. Bond, then President of Lincoln University, and Professor William Leo Hansberry, a Howard University professor of African History, founded AAI in 1953 in Washington, D.C. with a multi-racial collective of educators, to support African students in their pursuit of higher education in the United States. He was also a civil rights advocate and key figure in the growth of historically Black colleges following of the historic decision of Brown v. Board of Education, which ended segregation in U.S. schools.

The collection is digitized and available at Credo (http://credo.library.umass.edu/) through the generous support of the Bond family and a grant from the National Historic Publications & Records Commission.