Forty years after the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., one of the young men he inspired, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, will deliver the 2008 graduation address at The George Washington University's Commencement on the National Mall May 18. Bond will speak to an estimated 25,000 graduates and guests 45 years after King delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech on the National Mall in 1963. Bond will receive an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree during the ceremony.

“This great university honors me,” Bond said, “but it also honors the thousands of nameless women and men who made the modern-day civil rights movement possible. Forty years after King's death, these graduates represent a generation that seems willing to take our country's racial dialogue to a new level, and I am delighted to speak to them at their graduation.”

Perhaps best known for his status as one of the founding leaders of the civil rights movement, Julian Bond was an activist in college, joining the staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. Bond's commitment to civil rights is deeply rooted; his father, Horace Mann Bond, son of a parent who was enslaved, rose to become president of Fort Valley College in Georgia and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and was an acclaimed sociologist.

For more information about Julian Bond and GW Commencement 2008 read the university press release.