Former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond remember for a lifetime of civil rights work

FILE- In this July 8, 2007, file photo shows NAACP Chairman Julian Bond addresses the civil rights organization's annual convention in Detroit. Bond, a civil rights activist and longtime board chairman of the NAACP, died Saturday, Aug. 15, 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was 75. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File) (The Associated Press)

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FILE- In this Oct. 13, 2006, file photo, Julian Bond, chairman of the Board for The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, gestures as he talk to the media about the organization at The University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C. Bond, a civil rights activist and longtime board chairman of the NAACP, died Saturday, Aug. 15, 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was 75. (AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain, File) (The Associated Press)

FILE- In this April 10, 2014, file photo, social activist Julian Bond hugs Luci Baines Johnson, the younger daughter of President Lyndon Baines Johnson after singing "We Shall Overcome" during the Civil Rights Summit to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act in Austin, Texas. Bond, a civil rights activist and longtime board chairman of the NAACP, died Saturday, Aug. 15, 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was 75. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster File) (The Associated Press)

ATLANTA – Through the tough struggles of the civil rights movement, Julian Bond always kept his sense of humor, his wife recalls.

Pamela Horowitz told The Associated Press on Sunday that her husband "never took his eyes off the prize," which was always racial equality.

Bond died Saturday in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. He was 75. Horowitz said she did not yet know the exact cause of death, but said her husband had circulatory problems.

Horowitz said her husband's demeanor helped him persist for so many years in his work to improve the lives of black Americans.

Bond's life traced the arc of the civil rights movement, from his efforts as a militant young man to start a student protest group, through a long career in politics and his leadership of the NAACP almost four decades later.