Horace Mann Bond - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Horace was born 8 November 1904 in Nashville, Tennessee, the grandson of slaves. His mother Jane Alice Browne was a schoolteacher, his father James Bond a minister who served at Congregational churches across the South, often associated with historically black colleges. Both had graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio, one of the first colleges that was interracial. They were among the black elite and encouraged their children in academic achievement.

Horace was the sixth of seven children – one brother was prominent educator J. Max Bond, Sr.. At age eight, Bond suffered an attack by the Ku Klux Klan that wounded him more emotionally than physically. He worked all his life to advance his race. Bond excelled in school, graduating from high school at the age of fourteen.

Bond graduated with honors from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania at age 19 in 1923. He also obtained membership in Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. While taking classes at Penn State, Bond earned grades higher than those of his white classmates and later he returned to Lincoln University as an instructor. Bond then suffered the only setback to his success; he was dismissed from the college for tolerating a gambling ring in a dormitory which he was supervising. Despite his embarrassment at Lincoln, Bond achieved a reputation as a fine scholar and administrator.

Bond earned the M.A. and Ph.D degrees from the University of Chicago, where his dissertation on black education in Alabama won the Rosenberger Prize in 1936. It was published in 1939. As was customary in those years, Bond taught at a variety of academic institutions before completing his doctorate, and published his first academic book in 1934.