BAYARD RUSTIN (1912-1987) was one of the most influential civil rights activists who maintained a low profile, reserving the spotlight for other prominent figures, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and A. Philip Randolph.
Born March 17, 1910, Rustin was one of twelve children raised by his grandparents in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Rustin’s life-long commitment to nonviolence began with his Quaker upbringing and the influence of his grandmother, a member of the Society of Friends and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). NAACP leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in the Rustin home. With these influences in his early life, Rustin campaigned against racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws in his youth.
Rustin graduated from West Chester High School and, in 1932, entered Wilberforce University. He left in 1936 before taking his final exams. He also attended Cheyney State Teachers College and completed an activist training program conducted by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The following year he moved to Harlem and began studying at City College of New York. There he became involved in efforts to free the Scottsboro Boys – nine young black men who had been accused falsely of raping two white women. He also became a member of the Young Communist League in 1936; soon after coming to New York City, he also became a member of Fifteenth Street Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
Rustin organized for the Young Communist League until 1941, when he turned his efforts to the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a nondenominational religious group that sought racial justice, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a nonviolent direct-action organization dedicated to improving race relations and ending racial discrimination in the U.S. That same year, Rustin and Randolph planned a 1941 march on Washington to protest discrimination in the defense industry. The protest was cancelled when President Roosevelt issued an executive order prohibiting such discrimination. Rustin also organized 1947′s Journey of Reconciliation, in which blacks and whites rode together on public transportation. 
The journey served as a model for the freedom rides of the 1960s. He was imprisoned several times during the 1940s for his activism.
In 1948, Rustin traveled to India to learn nonviolence techniques directly from the leaders of the Gandhian movement at a conference that was organized by Gandhi himself before he died earlier that year. Between 1947 and 1952, Rustin met with leaders of Ghana’s and Nigeria’s independence movements and, in 1951, he formed the Committee to Support South African Resistance, which later became the American Committee on Africa.
In 1953, Rustin was arrested in Pasadena, California; originally charged with vagrancy and lewd conduct, he eventually pleaded guilty to a single, lesser charge of “sex perversion” (as consensual sodomy was officially referred to in California at the time) and served 60 days in jail. This was the first time that his homosexuality had come to public attention, yet he remained candid about his sexuality, which was still criminalized throughout the United States. After his conviction, he was fired from FOR, though he became the executive secretary of the War Resisters League.
Rustin served as an unidentified member of the AFSC’s task force to prepare one of the most influential and widely commented upon pacifist essays ever produced in the United States, “Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence,” published in 1955. (According to the chairman of the group, Stephen Cary, Rustin’s membership was repressed at his own request because he believed that his known sexual orientation would compromise the 71-page pamphlet once it appeared.) It analyzed the Cold War and the American response to it and recommended non-violent solutions.
Rustin took leave from the War Resisters League in 1956 to advise Martin Luther King Jr., on Gandhian tactics as King organized the public transportation boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The following year, Rustin and King began organizing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Many black leaders were concerned that Rustin’s sexual orientation and Communist past would undermine support for the civil rights movement. U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. forced Rustin’s resignation from the SCLC in 1960 by threatening to discuss Rustin’s morals charge in Congress. Although Rustin was open about his sexual orientation and his conviction was a matter of public record, it had not been discussed widely outside the civil rights leadership.
In 1963, Rustin and Randolph began organizing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Senator Strom Thurmond railed against Rustin as a “Communist, draft-dodger, and homosexual” and produced an FBI photograph of Rustin talking to King while King was bathing, to imply that there was a same-sex relationship between the two. Both men denied the allegation of an affair, but, despite support from King and Randolph, NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins did not allow Rustin to receive any public recognition for his role in planning the march. As a compromise, Randolph was chosen as the march’s official director, and he in turn appointed Rustin his working deputy. In less than sixty days, Rustin guided the organization of an event that would bring over 200,000 participants to the nation’s capital.
After passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, Rustin advocated closer ties between the civil rights movement and the Democratic Party and its labor activist base. Rustin was an early supporter of President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policy, but as the war escalated and began to supersede Democratic programs for racial reconciliation and labor reform, Rustin returned to his pacifist roots. Still, he was seen as a “sell-out” by the burgeoning Black Power movement, whose identity politics he rejected.
From 1963 until 1979, Rustin served as president and later as co-chair of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an organization of black trade unionists. From this position, Rustin promoted his view that future progress for blacks rested on alliances between blacks, liberals, labor and religious groups. Rustin opposed activities that he thought would undermine this coalition strategy, including King’s Poor People’s Campaign.
Before his death in 1987, Rustin worked as a human rights and election monitor for Freedom House. He also testified on behalf of New York State’s Gay Rights Bill and, in 1986, claimed that the gay and lesbian community had become the “barometer” of human rights because it is “the community which is most easily mistreated.” He also urged gay and lesbian organizations to stand up for all minorities. LOGO will be airing Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin Saturday, Feb. 7 at 01:30 PM.
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Concrete Loop features ‘CL History Spotlights’ (formerly known as Black History Spotlights) each week honoring individuals who have played pivotal roles in history. submissions are welcome.
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Now A. Powell could have handled that better. Man, I wish I were alive back then. But I’m a girl, so it may have still sucked.
Fight the power
very interesting… thank you
In one word… wow!!!!!
He had double trouble, Black and Homosexul during that time period
I had no idea about the homosexual allegations against him and Dr. King
Yet they kept going with their plans, that is amazing!
I wonder if Langston Hughes would have the same struggles as Mr. Rustin had he not been in the “arts”
This might seem a bit off topic, but it’s still about making change in our community: check it out..me and my friend were talking..and we thought to ourselves.. WHY don’t Black people use the same tactics on marching, striking and protesting that Civil Rights leaders used in the past? (I mean for issues concerning our people specifically, not people in general, because Unions are never afraid to go on strike)
Could they still be as effective as they were then? Where are OUR black leaders of today? Do we have any? Has the idea of having a universal Black leader (of Dr. King stature) been dissolved?
I kinda think we also need to protest our OWN community nowadays.
Have a protest against black domestic violence.
A protest: against drugs in our community
A protest against “baby daddies” “dealers” and “thugs”
A protest against bad rap music.
and
Have a protest against lazy azz women who just want to sit on their ass, have babies and expect the government to support them.
My motto is: hit the perpetrator where it hurts… their wallets!!
Thanks for the post! Can’t wait till Black History Month! (lol which we WILL always celebrate YEAR ROUND!)
Thank you for this, CL. There were so many others (of various races) against segregation who stayed behind the curtain. Yet, their contribution affected all in a major and extraordinary way.
Thanks for posting.
I hadnt heard of him before.
Wow.
CL,
Thanks for spotlighting one of the MANY BLACK GAY MEN that has contributes greatly to our society. Rustin as well as, Hughes, Baldwin, Riggs, Hemphill and many others are unsung hereos and their true stories must be told.
I respect these leaders but integration did not lead to better schools for all. Black people were too busy fighting to integrate and “fit in” instead of fighting to fix their own schools and their own neighborhoods. Which is why we are in the position we are in today. Bad schools iin our communities and no money circulating in our communities.
Like I said, I respect these leaders cause it was hard for Blacks to fight for any cause back then, but I think there are things we should have done a little different.
#10
They weren’t fighting to fit in…they were fighting for equality. There is a big difference. And while its so easy to say what they “shoud have” been doing its important to recognize that they couldn’t do it all. The was not their generation’s alone to carry. Some of the work is up to us. That said, what are you doing to help the cause?
Made respect CL for highlighting Bayard Rustin, a personal hero of mine, and doing him justice in a fair, balanced, and truthful presentation of his story.
omg by brother goes to the school named after him
Bayard Rustin high school in Manhattan
13.
Fighting to fit in and fighting for equality is in fact different. That’s what my message implied. Fighting for equality would have been fighting to get equal treatment, better books, and education in our OWN schools, not fighting to segregate and fit in with whites, which was what segregation was about at that time. In my opinion, the fight should have been just about the equal treatment, than segregation.
That’s why Black folks are so divided now. We don’t stand for our own, we always trying to “fit it”. But that’s just my take on.
Oh and I am doing and have done a lot to help the cause. I don’t know if you were asking that rhetorically or not, being that you don’t know anything about me and what I do.
I knew about him. I remember when I came out to my Mom we had a discussion about gays and lesbians and I brought up Mr. Ruskin. She was floored. She had no clue and mind you she grew up before and during the Civil Rights Movement in the State of Georgia.
Love my people, black and gay.
CL thanks for enlightening Black folks about the great pioneers that helped paved the way in the struggles for Black empowerment. But I have one question. How can one achieve civil rights without achieving human rights? I mean don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin et al did in the struggles for Black power, but they all had it backwards. You cannot achieve civil rights without first achieving human rights. Civil rights is defined as “a class of rights put in place to protect human beings” (the operative word here in human beings). A donkey, goat or monkey cannot advocate civil rights because they are not humans. Black people like a donkey or monkey are not considered human; we are/were classified in the constitutions as sub-humans. That is why the louder we beat drum about our civil liberties being violated the more white people ignore us. What we should have been fighting for is human rights. Civil rights is a domestic issue, hence should be handled with in the confines of that particular country’s boundaries. When it becomes a human rights issue, then and only, would it have been an international issue/problem; which would allow us enlist the help of other non-white nations to assist in our cause.
Just my two cents
Not even going into the man’s sexual orientation, just studying his background and mindset shows you why the integration movement was fundamentally flawed from the start. Essentially, white people taught a few black people how to get their rights against the white man, lol. Keep in mind that the NAACP was run by white jews into the 1970′s. Anyone associated with these negro letter organizations are puppets, always have been and always will be. This is how you know that King did not believe in the scriptures and only used it as his lynchpin to get blacks to follow him. The white man knows that our people are a spiritual people and you only have to control the pastors to control the people. In addition to that; Gandhi was these mens’ hero, and he was an agent for the British MI5, which is why the Indians killed him.
Yep, my poli-sci professor told us about him last year…when he told us about him, I was like, I never heard of him before! I was shocked. One day being gay/lesbian won’t be a big deal, because it’s really not. Most people would think I was just a straight girl if I didn’t tell them.
Please keep these black history profiles up!
Thank you for posting about Bayard, he’s not given the credit that is due.
He has been swept under the rug becuz he was openly gay. But he is and always will be the architect of the civil rights movement.
Its really nice of Concrete Loop to recognize Bayard Rustin. He was one of the most influential, yet forgotten figures of the Civil Right Movement.
I saw that documentary a couple of years ago too, so if you have LOGO, you should watch it!
16 Megan
Fighting to fit in and fighting for equality is in fact different. That’s what my message implied. Fighting for equality would have been fighting to get equal treatment, better books, and education in our OWN schools, not fighting to segregate and fit in with whites, which was what segregation was about at that time. In my opinion, the fight should have been just about the equal treatment, than segregation.
That’s why Black folks are so divided now. We don’t stand for our own, we always trying to “fit it”. But that’s just my take on
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I really don’t see how your approach would’ve worked. You forget that going to school back then wasn’t like it is today. Alot of blacks got off twice a year because they had to farm for a living to make ends meet…once to plant and once to harvest. Because of this, alot of your youth fell behind or dropped out all together. To combat this they tried to get us into the same schools the white kids attended because there was no way the government was gonna spend resources to bring our schools up to par when we weren’t even deemed fit to be on their level.
Much respect for putting information up about Mr. Rustin…. Thanks for being open minded concreteloop…
To all the black people, particularly black h*mosexuals that want to speak of this man as a revolutionary…the sign behind him says that, “Integration means better schools for all!!”. Has that come to pass, lol?
@Dukesman
Civil rights or Human rights…it doesn’t really matter.
The issue of human rights has been used as a scapegoat. Its the best way to turn everything evil into good. Take for example the United States. Your fellow Americans used the “human rights” excuse to invade Iraq.
Plus, the UN isn’t an accountable international organization because its members and its own sub-organization commit crimes of humanity. So much for human rights!
There’s nothing wrong in making the black movement a civil rights issues. Let be clear, the struggle that an African American faces in the US is not the same as the ones that other blacks face in Canada or in European countries face. One of the two chose to live with the white men.
yes this was a true soldier for the movement. which the southern preachers white and black scandalized him. and they had to smuggle him out of the south in the middle of the night. it was this man who lit a fire up under martin’s feet. and all them hypocrites and judgemental pharisees in the south who labeled him a trouble-maker commuist, dr king w/ love and patience for all embraced his thinking and suggestions. and the fresh ideas of that lost civil rights movement. lost i say because you have some black folks believeing that the dream is fullfilled. just don’t know. how that song go by the pointer sis. TAKE THE CHAIN OFF YOUR BRAIN…….. america; and this world will never be free has long as there is suffering or injustice any where on this planet. as RICHARD PRYOR put it. the statue of liberty in all of its glory , but because of the injustice and racism and corrupt people who run the show. you look at that staue in all its glory w/ its woman standing tall torch held high. but look at her and you see this lady our statue of liberty ITS LIKE SHE HAS A BIG GREASE STAIN ON THAT DRESS in all her glory.
Bayard Rustin was a pivotal figure in the Civil Rights movement; homophobia does not lessen that fact. Martin Luther King, Jr. continued to support Rustin because he believed that a “threat to justice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere”. Homophobia in the Black community sickens and disgusts me, and if a n*gga can sit here and read sh*t on concreteloop about Black celebrity and Black life and success… then we have cetainly the f*ck benefited from the efforts of our brothers and sisters who struggled in history that we might have equality. I also get tired of these “quasi-intellectual pro-black super negroes” attacking saints like Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi. These men weren’t perfect, but what the f*ck have you done for the community lately? What have you done to improve the current education system? What effort have you made in increasing equality and promoting the infinite dignity and worth of each and every human being? You ain’t did sh*t!
And To ya Girl Megan,
Being Black does not mean that we should all conform to the image of what it means to be black. Black people are infiinitely diverse and yet somehow we keep thinking that unity can only happen if we all have the same mind or the same religion or the same beliefs about family and community. White people in this country have the privilege of expressing individual opinions, and yet black people continue to fall into a trap of thinking we know what is best for the whole race. Unity in this community is only gonna happen when we can better understand the black person who looks, talks, walks, and breathes like us… but does not think or believe like us.
I’m mad this post only has 29 comments, SMH. See we still have a long way to get..Good lookin’ out Concrete. While other urban blogs post garbage, you keep it informative and educate ur readers!
Great aRTICLE
I was familiar with Bayard Rustin…and since it’s Black History Month and it will probably air at some point, Rustin is actually played in the HBO movie “Boycott” about the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama, by Erik Dellums son of the renowned California congressman, who I believe is also openly gay.
The movie is on DVD as well, and it’s really, really good.
THANK YOU CL FOR POSTING THIS!!! I agree with TheBlakCrayon. The dream has not been fulfilled, not when the first (half) Black president of the USA is elected and did not and would not openly support gay marriage. It’s so ironic to me that Obama, a minority, would not stand up for gays during his campaign, especially when his presidential win comes as a direct result of the historical action, work and efforts of a gay man. IF IT WEREN’T FOR A HOMOSEXUAL (Rustin), THERE MAY NOT HAVE EVER BEEN A MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT OR MARCH ON WASHINGTON. And if the REVEREND MLK could work with, be friends with and learn from a homosexual, why can’t the rest of the Black community follow his example? If MLK was alive today, I am sure he would be speaking out against the injustices enacted upon the GLBT community, campaigning against prop 8, and working towards justice, tolerance and equality for ALL people.
I am so proud of CL for posting this on Bayard Rustin there is also a movie called “Brother Outsider: Bayard Rustin”..he makes me proud to be Black Male and Gay (in that order)
@Blakcrayon
Nigga be grown and address me if you have an issue with what I have to say. That’s why I asked if the sign behind him has come to pass, because any fool can see that it hasn’t, which means that the so-called civil rights movement was fundamentally flawed. You could’ve just kept it short and acknowledged that he didn’t do a damn thing. Many of you black female h*mo worshippers hate to admit that you don’t know what you’re talking about and you specialize in selling dreams and perpetuating the white man’s lies. Let’s understand something, whenever you see a black person on TV in a so-called civil capacity, they are being funded. If they are being funded they are being, or have been, directed and controlled. Bayard Rustin is no different and the only reason that his sexual orientation was an issue was because he didn’t hide it like all the other freakish politicians and public figures that he was involved with.
We’ve benefited because we can read a blog about negroes that have sold their souls, lmao? Are you seriously that stupid? Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi were “saints”? Why is that? Is it because they wanted to appease their oppressors? You’re a f*ckin idiot, lol. Did you know that Gandhi was a devil worshipper and an agent? The man was taught by that master witch Madame Blavatsky. So, by extension, King came and regurgitated all the nonsense that she taught Gandhi to dumbass black people like you. How do you “increase equality” you f*ckin turd? How do you do that? There are no two things equal in the universe. What they’ve done is they’ve made people forsake order and now they’re left to fabricate their own righteousness. Dumbass n*ggers like you will be talking and teaching that same bull$hit until America is destroyed.
JUDAH,
Let me just say that this… “You cannot lead the people, if you don’t love the people”, that means that if you are really concerned about Black people being ignorant and uneducated, why not present us with knowledge rather than being critical. In that post, all you did was insult me. If you have knowledge and you know the truth, why not share it with the people? If you know the way, why not lead us? People say that 5% of the world knows the truth and would have it be known another 10% knows the truth and wants to keep it secret and the other 85% of the world lives in darkness. You wanna be part of the 5 or the 95 percent of people? Don’t insult me, educate me. If you got light, help me see through the darkness. The thing is though that your actions let me know that you ain’t got the Truth… you might some little truths… but you ain’t headed to the capital “T”.
Thanks for this great article on Bayard Rustin, a man who is long overdue for recognition for his role in ushering in the Civil Rights Movement.
To Judah: you are truly misinformed about so many issues. Every time you post you rant about so-called “spirituality” and make lofty claims you try to pass off as “religion” and “truth”, when in reality they are just the products of your own imagination, and your misconceptions of history and religion(s). Please do yourself a favor and read up on some history, religion (not just Christianity, but be sure to research how Christianity was created), and on cultures that aren’t your own.
@Blakcrayon
See that sis? Now why did I have to put fire on you to get you to speak to me respectfully? You know why, because our people have become like scorpions. Look at your original post addressed towards me and how you came at me, carrying on and making assumptions as if you knew me or what you were talking about. Like I’ve said, many of our people don’t understand that these men were glorified because they played their part. That’s why when they were no longer necessary, they were bumped off or died in anonymity. There are many great black men and women that you will never hear of because they did not aid in the deception. If you want to learn, you have to open your ears and close your mouth. Don’t believe me, do your own research, check the statistics on our people and tell me that our people have improved since the so-called civil rights movement. Many black people are scared to do so because of the ramifications.
@Liberated Spirit
So if I rant, then correct me. I’m tired of ignorant, jealous negroes addressing me without making a counterpoint. Am I incorrect? I asked a basic question. Prove that schools for black children have improved since the civil rights movement. You can’t do it so you take out your frustration on me. Are you a h*mosexual? Is that the problem? You cannot name one culture that regained it’s freedom through the method prescribed by the so-called civil rights movement. Not one. It is basically an “If you can’t beat them, make them pity you into tolerating you.”, mentality which resolves around total absolvement of personal identity and assuming a supreme deferential mentality. Don’t talk about “religion” unless you know what “religion” is. If what I think is a product of my own imagination then refute it and liberate me, lol. No disrespect to you; but you don’t know what you think you know and if you are ever man enough to put them forth, you will be shown the right and exact understanding and how deluded you are.