December 21, 1972 Horace Mann Boyd, historian, college administrator, and social science researcher, died.

Bond was born November 8, 1904 in Nashville, Tennessee. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Lincoln University in 1923 and went on to earn his Master of Arts degree in1926 and Ph. D. in 1936 in education from the University of Chicago. His dissertation on black education in Alabama won the Rosenberger Prize in 1936 and was published in 1939. Bond taught at Langston, Fisk, and Dillard Universities while completing his doctorate.

He was appointed the first president of Fort Valley State College in 1939 and served until 1945. In 1945, Bond was appointed the first African American president of Lincoln University, a position he held until 1957. In 1953, Bond provided research that helped support the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Bond later became the dean of the School of Education and director of the Bureau of Educational and Social Research at Atlanta University. He authored several books, including “The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order” (1934) and “Education for Freedom: A History of Lincoln University” (1976). Bond’s biography, “Black Scholar: Horace Mann Bond 1904-1972,” was published in 1992.