During his time at Harvard, he was one of a group of eleven black students targeted by a cross-burning incident in front of their dormitory, Stoughton Hall.
[5] He ignored advice from a Harvard faculty member to give up the professional pursuit of architecture due to his race, overcoming barriers in what was at the time a white profession.
In 1964, he moved to Ghana where he designed several government buildings, including the Bolgatanga Regional Library in an area near the border with Burkina Faso, which consisted of four buildings shaded by a common roof that was designed to provide natural ventilation and make air conditioning unnecessary.
After that, in 1969, together with Donald P. Ryder, he founded the architectural firm of Bond Ryder & Associates, which was responsible for the design of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, as well as Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
He was survived by his wife, writer Jean Carey Bond, two children, three grandchildren, a sister and a brother.