(WXIA) -- On January 14th, 2015 - Julian Bond's 75th birthday - the Civil Rights icon sat down for an interview with Atlanta historian Tom Houck. The two talked for nearly an hour, shooting footage for a short video to be shown during Houck's Civil Rights Atlanta bus tour.
It is believed to be Bond's final interview in Atlanta, taped just seven months before his death.
Much of the interview ended up on the cutting room floor and, aside from the bus tour, has remained largely unseen. Bond spoke of his time in the Georgia Assembly and opened up about his fond memories of Atlanta, describing it as a "who's who of Black America, settled in one city."
But in the largely unseen interview, we get a glimpse of a different side of Bond. We learn about the young man who moved to Georgia with his family at age 17 - terrified to leave the North.
"I was really frightened of coming to the segregated south," Bond remembered. "I'd heard nothing but these horror stories about what happened in the south."
He recalled learning about Emmett Till's murder and thinking, at roughly the same age as Till, "if it happened to him, it might happen to me as well."
As Bond remembers his Morehouse days, we learn that initially, he had very little inclination to be on the front lines of a movement. Instead, it was fellow Morehouse classmate Lonnie King who helped light that fire.
"A student came up to me and held a newspaper up and said, 'have you seen this?'" Bond recalled, describing the student pointing to an article about the Greensboro sit-ins.
"Don't you think something like this should happen in Atlanta?" Bond was asked. He responded that someone would make it happen, to which the student replied: "why don't we make it happen!"
Bond went on to describe his first time being arrested in 1960, and even touched on his connection to Southview Cemetery. To watch the entire story, please click the video above.
RAW VIDEO: Watch Julian Bond's final interview from January 2015 (Credit Civil Rights Tour Atlanta/ Crawford Media):
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