Saturday, March 17, 2012, will mark the 100th birthday of the late civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. Rustin was a proud Black gay man who was an indispensable architect of the Civil Rights Movement. His most noteworthy achievements include serving as chief organizer of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, mentoring the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and helping to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As an effective bridge builder across a broad range of demographics, he spent more than 60 years involved in social, racial, economic, class, labor, anti-war and other justice movements, both domestically and internationally.
However, the story of this visionary strategist and activist, who dared to live as an openly gay man during the violently homophobic 1940s, 50s, and 60s, has rarely been told in mainstream or Black media.
Rustin was a brilliant strategic thinker and campaigner. He was a principled man who knew how to use principled nonviolent means to get results. And as the NJBC notes, he was openly gay in a time when that required a superhuman degree of courage.
Bayard Rustin (right) with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1956.
Rustin was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era.
… Today, the United States is still struggling with many of the issues Bayard Rustin sought to change during his long, illustrious career. His focus on civil and economic rights and his belief in peace, human rights and the dignity of all people remain as relevant today as they were in the 1950s and 60s.
Rustin’s biography is particularly important for lesbian and gay Americans, highlighting the major contributions of a gay man to ending official segregation in America. Rustin stands at the confluence of the great struggles for civil, legal and human rights by African-Americans and lesbian and gay Americans. In a nation still torn by racial hatred and violence, bigotry against homosexuals, and extraordinary divides between rich and poor, his eloquent voice is needed today.
In February 1956, when Bayard Rustin arrived in Montgomery to assist with the nascent bus boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr. had not personally embraced nonviolence. In fact, there were guns inside King’s house, and armed guards posted at his doors. Rustin persuaded boycott leaders to adopt complete nonviolence, teaching them Gandhian nonviolent direct protest.
The means you choose won’t determine just whether you reach your goal — it will change the way that goal plays out when you bring it into reality. … It may be naive to think you can change the world by focusing on what’s true and can be supported by reason. Certainly our anti-gay opponents jettison careful thought every day. They work from their own prejudice and count on the prejudice of others (even if they’re too blinded by their phobia to see it that way). But whether I do it well or not, whether it’s the best strategy or a hopeless attempt, I have to stick with my dorky does-this-make-sense approach. It’s not just a method, it’s the world I want to live in.
This gets at the core of what I find most challenging in Rustin (and King). Rustin believed that nonviolence was effective, but he didn’t believe in it because it was effective. He believe in it because it was true, and it was effective because it was true — because this is how reality is. Because, as Rob puts it, “Your means will shape your end.”
Personal/local footnote: Bayard Rustin was born and raised in West Chester, Pa., and he got his degree from Cheyney University, so we’re pretty proud of him around here. This afternoon my daughters played their first rugby game of the official season against West Chester Rustin High School. The school’s athletic mascot is the Golden Knights, which seems inappropriately martial for a school named after a pacifist prophet. But then it’s hard to think of what mascot wouldn’t seem that way. (I did a quick scan of several high schools named after Martin Luther King Jr. to see how they handled this. I found three called “Crusaders,” Lions, Cougars, Wolves, Jaguars and Royals. That last one works great for King, but not for Rustin.) The DRFC girls team is now 1-0 meaning, alas, that the Knights were not able to celebrate their namesake’s centennial with a win.
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