While a student at Morehouse College over forty years ago, he founded the Atlanta student sit-in and anti-segregation organization, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). As SNCC's Communications Director, Bond was active in protests and registration campaigns throughout the South during one of this nation’s most difficult times.

Elected in 1965 to the Georgia House of Representatives, Bond was prevented from taking his seat by members who objected to his opposition to the Vietnam War. He was re-elected to his own vacant seat and un-seated again, and re-seated only after a third election and a unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court.

In 1968, he was co-chair of a challenge delegation from Georgia at the Democratic Convention. The challengers were successful in unseating Georgia's regular Democrats, and Bond was nominated for Vice-President, but had to decline because he was too young.

Bond serves as Chairman of the Premier Auto Group PAG (Volvo, Land Rover, Aston-Martin, Jaguar) Diversity Council and is on the Boards of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council for a Livable World, and the advisory board of the Harvard Business School Initiative on Social Enterprise, among many others.

Bond has served as commentator on America's Black Forum, the oldest black-owned show in television syndication and his poetry and articles have appeared in numerous publications. He has narrated numerous documentaries, including the Academy Award-winning A Time for Justice and the prize-winning and critically acclaimed series Eyes On The Prize. He has been a commentator on The Today Show and was the author of a nationally syndicated newspaper column called Viewpoint. He has published A Time To Speak, A Time To Act, a collection of his essays as well as Black Candidates Southern Campaign Experiences.

Serving since 1998 as Chairman of the Board of the NAACP, the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United States, Bond continues with his activism, working to educate the public about the history of the Civil Rights movement and the struggles that African Americans and the poor still endure.

In 2002, he received the prestigious National Freedom Award.

The holder of twenty-five honorary degrees, he is a Distinguished Professor at American University in Washington, DC, and a Professor in history at the University of Virginia