Thursday, January 29, 2009

BAYARD RUSTIN BLACK HISTORY




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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