Repost: Black History Month: Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin was one of the most important, impassioned leaders of the civil rights movement, from its earliest incarnations in the 1950s until well into the 1980s. Yet his is a name that is rarely, if ever, mentioned.

Bayard Rustin's involvement was a behind-the-scenes involvement, though no less important than any of the other names usually associated with the fight for civil rights. In addition, the fact that Bayard Rustin was also a gay man, and had been a member of the American Communist party probably insured his name would seldom be mentioned.

He was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1912, to Florence Rustin, one of eight children of Julia and Janifer Rustin. Florence's child had been born out of wedlock; the father was Archie Hopkins. Julia and Janifer decided to raise young Bayard as their son--he did not know that his 'sister' Florence was his mother until he was in his early teens.

Julia Rustin was a member of the Society of Friends--the Quakers--and even though she attended the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the denomination of her husband, she raised her children on the tenets of the Quaker faith: the equality of all human beings before God, the necessity for nonviolence, the importance of dealing with everyone with love and respect.

After attending Wilberforce University and Cheyney State Teachers College, Bayard moved to New York City in 1937, where he would live the rest of his life. He enrolled in City College of New York, though he never received a degree. It was at City College that Rustin began to organize for the Young Communist League of City College; the communists' progressive stance on the issue of racial injustice appealed to him. with the Party's about-face in the issue of segregation in the American military, he became disillusioned with communism and broke with the Young Communist League.

He soon found himself following the words of A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and, at that time, heavily involved in the civil rights of African Americans. Bayard Rustin soon found himself heading the youth wing of a march on Washington that Randolph envisioned, but the march was cancelled when FDR issued Executive Order No. 8802, forbidding racial discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries.

Rustin was angered by Randolph's decision to cancel the projected march, and he transferred his efforts at organization to the peace movement, first in the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and then in the American Friends Service Committee, the Socialist Party, and the War Resisters League.

As a member of a government-recognized peace church--Rustin belonged to the Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting-- he was entitled to do alternative service rather than serve in the military. But Rustin was unable to accept what he considered the 'easy way out,' given that many young men who did not belong to any recognized peace church were given harsh sentences for refusing to serve in the armed forces.

In 1944, Rustin was found guilty of violating the Selective Service Act and was sentenced to three years in a federal prison. He was sent to the federal penitentiary in Ashland, Kentucky, where he set about to resist the pervasive segregation that was the norm in US prisons at that time. Faced with vicious racism from some of the white guards and prisoners, Rustin faced frequent cruelty with courage and completely nonviolent resistance.

After his release from prison, Rustin once more joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), which staged a journey through four Southern and border states in 1947 to test the application of the Supreme Court's recent ruling that discrimination in seating in interstate transportation was illegal.

Rustin's resistance to North Carolina's Jim Crow law against integration in transportation earned him twenty-eight days' hard labor on a chain gang, where he met with the usual racist taunts and tortures from his fellow white prisoners, as well as the guards.

From 1947 to 1952, Rustin traveled to India and then to Africa under the aegis of FOR to explore and understand more fully the concept of nonviolent demonstration, working within the Indian and Ghanaian independence movements.

In 1953, back in the US and lecturing for the American Association of University Women in Pasadena, Rustin was arrested for public indecency. It was the first time that Rustin's homosexuality had come into public attention, and at that time homosexual behavior in all states was a criminal offense.

Although the gay rights movement in the United States was still many years away, Rustin's conviction and his relatively open attitude about his homosexuality set the stage for him to become an elder gay icon, as well as an African American icon, in the years to come. Civil Right and gay rights became of a piece with his belief in the inherent dignity of Afro-Americans and other oppressed people.

A consequence of his arrest was that Rustin was released from his position at the FOR.

During this time, what he considered the lowest point of his life, Bayard Rustin began a twelve-year stint as executive secretary of the War Resisters League. He contributed greatly to a compilation of pacifist strategy--entitled Speak Truth To Power--published in The Progressive in 1959.

In 1956 Rustin was asked to provide Dr. Martin Luther King with some practical advice on how to apply Gandhian principles of nonviolence to the boycott of public transportation then taking shape in Montgomery, Alabama. On leave from the War Resisters League, Rustin spent time in Montgomery and Birmingham advising King, who had not yet completely embraced principles of nonviolence in his struggle.

By 1957, Rustin was playing a significant role in the birth of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and in the Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington that took place in May of 1957 to urge President Eisenhower to enforce the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling that US schools be desegregated.

The high point of Bayard Rustin's political career, obviously, was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which took place on August 28, 1963; where Martin Luther King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech. By all accounts Bayard Rustin was the March's chief architect.

With small inroads in desegregation, baby steps actually, finally being made, Rustin came to believe that the time for militant action was over. Now that the legal foundation for segregation had been irrevocably shattered, came the larger, more difficult task of forging an alliance of dispossessed groups in American society into a progressive force.

Rustin saw this coalition encompassing African Americans and other minorities, trade unions, liberals, and religious groups. Rustin's plan of action did not go further was due to, in the opinion of several political analysts, the war in Vietnam. The enormous monetary, psychological, and spiritual cost of war had eroded any chance of further progressive movement.

Rustin's opposition to 'identity politics' also came under criticism by exponents of the Black Power movement. His criticism of affirmative action programs and black studies departments in American universities was not a popular viewpoint among his fellow African Americans. Rustin found himself isolated from the movement for a time.

Another viewpoint which did not endear Bayard Rustin to leftists or radical Black Power adherents was his consistent support of Israel. In the wake of the Holocaust, Rustin believed very strongly that the Jews needed their own state.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Rustin worked as a delegate for Freedom house, monitoring elections and human rights abuses in places like Chile, El Salvador, Grenada, Haiti, Poland, and Zimbabwe. In all his efforts Rustin evinced a lifelong, unwavering conviction on behalf of the value of democratic principles.

It was Rustin's human rights expedition to Haiti in 1987 that drew the final curtain on his remarkable life. After his visit, under the aegis of Freedom House, to study prospects for democratic elections in Haiti, Rustin began to feel ill. His symptoms were initially misdiagnosed as intestinal parasites, but on August 21, 1987, Rustin was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital and diagnosed with a perforated appendix.

He died of cardiac arrest on August 24.

Although Bayard Rustin lived in the shadow of more charismatic civil rights leaders, like Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, he can lay claim to having been an indispensable, although mostly unsung, force behind the movement toward equality for America's black citizens, and more largely for the rights of human beings around the world.

Throughout his life, Bayard Rustin's Quakerism was a unifying force, and a strong plank in his personal philosophy, incorporating beliefs that were of central importance to him: that there is God in every person, that all are entitled to a decent life, and that a life of service to others is the way to happiness and true fulfillment.

Architecture Wednesday: The Aptos Retreat

The Aptos Retreat is a 2,800 square foot home away from home designed for a family of eight, with what the architect calls a “living” building and a “sleep” building that overlap at their roofs to create a sheltered outdoor space.”

Sited in the Santa Cruz Mountains, near the city of Santa Cruz, this 20-acre site has mountain and ocean views, even though it sits about five miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. The family wanted a casual, rustic setting that would incorporate sustainable features to minimize the home’s carbon footprint and to have a place for fun, and games … partying, cooking, tanning, swimming, archery, horseshoes, gardening and wood splitting. The 2800-square-foot Main House houses both the ‘live building’ and the ‘sleep building,’ with the sleep building nestled under the higher roof of the live building.

The live building contains the dining, living, and kitchen areas, plus a master suite upstairs. The central kitchen anchors the main space, which is flanked by dining and living. The kitchen island is eighteen feet  long and crafted of a three-inch thick single walnut slab cut from a  fallen tree. Fronting the living space are two, triple sets of eight by ten-foot sliding glass doors—32-feet-wide when fully opened—that open the space to the yard and the views.

The smaller sleep building, with two bedrooms and a shared bathhouse, angles out to form an L-shaped yard. In addition, there’s The Barn, a 1600-square-foot, Corten rusted steel warehouse outfitted for use as the “clubhouse.”  The first floor is set up for ping pong and large-screen TV watching, while the loft level is set up with a billiard table and sofa beds all around for additional slumber party needs.

The house and barn sit on the sloped meadow surrounded by redwood trees with distant ocean views to the south.  The swimming pool is below the main house, with a fire-pit to the side; an archery range is above the house, and the horseshoe pit is between the house and the barn.  There are two tent cabins set among the redwoods and serve as guest houses, with a sauna located between the tents and the sleep building.

As long as I can stay in the house, I’m all in …

As always,click to emBIGGERate.

HomeDSGN

Vacation Post: Bayard Rustin's Residence Added To The National Historic Register

Earlier this month the U.S. National Park Service added the Manhattan residence of famed gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin to its National Register of Historic Places.

Bayard Rustin — read more about him HERE and HERE — was, among other things, the lead organizer of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington led by Martin Luther King Jr. Bayard Rustin led for many years the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an organized labor advocacy organization; he worked for Freedom House, a human rights organization, and, in the mid-1980s he recognized the struggle for Lesbian and Gay civil rights and lobbied the New York City government to support the lesbian and gay rights bill.

He purchased apartment 9J in a high-rise apartment building in the West Chelsea section of Manhattan in 1962 and lived there until his death in 1987. In 1977, Bayard’s partner, Walter Naegle, moved into the apartment and continues to live there, preserving it almost exactly as Rustin left it.

From the National Park Service:

“Bayard Rustin, a gay African American Quaker, civil rights advocate, proponent of non-violence, and campaigner for social and economic justice, had an impact on many of the nation’s social justice achievements since the 1930s. In the course of his quarter-century residence in Penn South, Rustin organized and led the August 28, 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C.”

LGBT history advocate Mark Meinke said the addition of the Rustin residence to the National Register of Historic Places represents the seventh LGBT-related site to be recognized, “with more to come.”

Bayard Rustin was a hero to the African American Community, the LGBT community, the human community, and is so deserving of this particular honor.

The march goes on …

Washington Blade

Repost: LGBT History Month: Bayard Rustin*

*originally posted October 26, 2009

There are some who might say Bayard Rustin was born to fight injustice, and I'd be hard-pressed to disagree with them. He lived his life by five simple rules, and remained unbowed by the indignities hurled at him.

As a Black man, and a gay man, he knew first-hand about being treated as "less than," as someone many thought didn’t matter, an undesirable. But Bayard didn't worry about what others thought, he worried and worked for what was right, for African-Americans, the LGBT community, and any group he thought suffered at the hands of the powerful. One of the key African-American civil rights activists of the last century, Rustin's legacy has sadly been obscured over the alleged embarrassment of his homosexuality and his early involvement in the Communist Party.

Bayard Rustin was born on March 17, 1910, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a largely Quaker town that played an important role in the underground railroad. He was raised by his grandmother Julia, a devout Quaker, who was also a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]. In her home, with visitors like W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson, along with the town's history of anti-slavery activity, Rustin learned to stand up for himself, for African-Americans, and for all people who suffered indignities for reasons of race, or gender or sexual orientation.

A talented singer, Rustin moved to New York in 1931 where he performed with blues singer Josh White in cafes and clubs all over the city. He was a regular performer at the Café Society in Greenwich Village, which widened his social and intellectual contacts, helping him continue on his lifelong journey of activism.

Rustin became a member of the American Friends Service Committee, and joined the Communist Party of the United States of America [CPUSA], travelling the country to protest war and fascism, to speak out about social injustice. However, at the start of World War II, the CPUSA turned away from domestic issues and pressured Rustin to stop fighting racial injustice; when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin ordered the CPUSA to abandon all civil rights work and focus only on supporting U.S. involvement in the war. Rustin felt betrayed by the CPUSA, left the party and became critical of it, a stance he would maintain for the rest of his life.

In 1941, Rustin met A. Philip Randolph, an African-American labor leader, and A.J. Muste, the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation [FOR], a pacifist organization; the three organized the 1941 African-American March on Washington and Rustin worked with FOR over the next decade, developing programs that focused on race relations, which lead to the creation of the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE].

Rustin never hid his disdain for racism, or segregation, or for the Communist party's shift in policy, and he also never hid being gay, though it was often overlooked because of his discretion, and the work he was doing for the African-American community.

However, in California, in 1953, a public scandal undermined his authority and hindered his career for many years. After speaking to a group about FOR, Rustin was discovered by police in a car with two other men. He was arrested and charged with lewd conduct, vagrancy and sexual perversion — as consensual sex between men was called at the time — and spent two months in jail. He was dismissed from his position with FOR.

But the arrest, and the ensuing shame, didn't stop him from working for equality. After his ouster from FOR, Rustin joined the War Resisters League, where he worked with southern blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, to boycott city buses and end segregation in public transportation. It was there that he met Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rustin's credentials impressed Dr. King, but there was concern that his past ties to the Communist Party and his arrest, might overshadow Dr. King's work, and tarnish the movement. But Rustin wouldn't give up, and eventually became one of King's closest advisers, and heavily influenced him in the ways of nonviolent civil disobedience.  Rustin and King worked together to create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], which they hoped would further the use of nonviolent civil rights protests in the South.

In 1960, as Rustin was helping King lead a protest outside of the Democratic National Convention, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell pressured King to call off the protest, threatening to accuse Rustin and King of having a homosexual affair. Sadly, King gave in to Powell, and Rustin resigned from King's staff, devastated by Powell's ruthlessness and by what he saw as King's betrayal. Still, he continued to advise King and once again became a major player in the formation of the 1963 March on Washington, though, once again, the fact that Rustin was gay would be used to undermine his commitment to the struggle.

South Carolina Senator, and segregationist, Strom Thurmond tried to discredit the march because it was organized by a "communist, draft dodger, and homosexual”; Thurmond even went so far as to produce an FBI photograph of Rustin talking to King while King was bathing, to imply that there was a sexual relationship between the two men. Rustin and King denied the allegation, but the damage was done; despite King's support, NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins saw to it that Bayard Rustin received no credit for his work organizing the march.

The actions of these men — Powell, Thurmond, and Wilkins — while horrendous, didn't dissuade Rustin; in fact, the allegations against him only emboldened him. He was appointed chairman of the A. P. Randolph Institute, a liberal think tank; he openly protested the Vietnam War at a time when few were doing so, and became active in the gay rights movement. In the 70s, Bayard Rustin served on the board of trustees of the University of Notre Dame, worked as a human rights and election monitor for Freedom House, and testified on behalf of New York State's Gay Rights Bill.

In 1986, he gave a speech called "The New N_____s Are Gays," in which he asserted:

Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new "n_____s" are gays. . . . It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. . . . The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.

Bayard Rustin died on August 24, 1987, of a perforated appendix. A New York Times obituary said, "Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote:

The principal factors which influenced my life are:

1) nonviolent tactics;

2) constitutional means;

3) democratic procedures;

4) respect for human personality;

5) a belief that all people are one.

Words to live by; an example set. The march goes on.

On This Day In LGBT History

October 26, 1990 – A U.S. Army colonel was discharged and sentenced to 90 days in Leavenworth for appearing in drag at an AIDS benefit and kissing another man.

October 26, 1992 – Portland Oregon police chief Tom Potter testified before a state senate committee, saying many victims of anti-gay assaults do not report the crimes because of fear that their identities will be made public.

Repost: LGBT History Month: Bayard Rustin*

\*originally posted October 26, 2009

There are some who might say Bayard Rustin was born to fight injustice, and I'd be hard-pressed to disagree with them. He lived his life by five simple rules, and remained unbowed by the indignities hurled at him.

As a Black man, and a gay man, he knew first-hand about being treated as "less than," as someone many people would think didn't matter, as as undesirable. But Bayard Rustin didn't worry about what others thought, he worried and worked for what was right, for African-Americans, the LGBT community, and any group he thought suffered at the hands of those in power. One of the key African-American civil rights activists of the last century, Rustin's legacy has sadly been obscured over alleged embarrassment of his homosexuality and his early involvement in the Communist Party.

Bayard Rustin was born on March 17, 1910, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a largely Quaker town that had played an important role in the underground railroad. He was raised by his devoutly Quaker grandmother, Julia, who was also a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]. In her home, with visitors like W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson, along with the town's history of anti-slavery activity, Rustin soon learned to stand up for himself, for African-Americans, and for all people who suffered indignities for reasons of race, or gender or sexual orientation.

A talented singer, Rustin moved to New York in 1931 where he performed with blues singer Josh White, in cafes and clubs all over New York. He became a regular performer at the Café Society nightclub in in Greenwich Village, which widened his social and intellectual contacts, helping him continue on his lifelong journey of activism.

Rustin became a member of the American Friends Service Committee, and joined the Communist Party of the United States of America [CPUSA], travelling the country to protest war and fascism, to speak out about social injustice. However, at the start of World War II, the Communist Party turned away from domestic issues and pressured Rustin to stop his work fighting racial injustice, and when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin ordered the CPUSA to abandon all civil rights work and focus only on support for U.S. involvement in the war. Rustin felt betrayed by the CPUSA, and, as a consequence, he left the party and became critical of it, a stance that he would maintain for the rest of his life.

In 1941, Rustin met A. Philip Randolph, an African-American labor leader, and A.J. Muste, the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation [FOR], a pacifist organization; the three men organized the 1941 African-American March on Washington. Working with FOR over the next decade, Rustin developed programs that focused on race relations, leading to the creation of the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE].

Bayard Rustin didn't hide his disdain for racism, or segregation, or for the Communist party's shift in policy. He also didn't hide his homosexuality, and it was often overlooked because of his discretion, and the work he was doing for the African-American community.

However, in 1953, a public scandal undermined his authority and hindered his career for many years. While in California, to speak to a group about FOR, Bayard Rustin was discovered by police in a car with two other men. He was arrested and charged with lewd conduct, vagrancy and sexual perversion--as consensual sex between men was labeled at that time. He spent two months in jail and, as word of his "crime" spread, he was dismissed from his position with FOR.

But the arrest, and the ensuing shame, didn't stop Rustin from working for equality. After his ouster from FOR, he joined the staff of the War Resisters League, where he worked with southern blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, to boycott city buses and end segregation in public transportation. It was in Alabama that he met Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rustin's credentials impressed the civil rights leader, but there was concern that his past ties to the Communist Party, as well as his arrest in California, might overshadow Dr. King's work, and tarnish the movement's reputation. But Bayard Rustin wouldn't give up, eventually became one of King's closest advisers, and heavily influenced him in the ways of nonviolent civil disobedience. Rustin and King worked together to create the

Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], which they hoped would further the use of nonviolent civil rights protests in the South.

In 1960, as Rustin was helping King lead a protest outside of the Democratic National Convention, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell pressured King to call off the protest, threatening to accuse Rustin and King of having a homosexual affair. Sadly, King gave in to Powell, and Rustin resigned from King's staff, dvastated by Powell's ruthlessness and by what he saw as King's betrayal. Still, he cntinued to advise Dr. King and once again became a major player in the formation of the 1963 March on Washington, though, once again, the fact that Bayard Rustin was a gay man, would be used to undermine his commintment to the struggle.

South Carolina Senator, and segregationist, Strom Thurmond tried to discredit the 1963 march because it was organized by a "communist, draft dodger, and homosexual;" Thurmond even went so far as to produce an FBI photograph of Rustin talking to King while King was bathing, to imply that there was a sexual relationship between Rustin and King. The two men denied the allegation, but the damage was done; despite King's support, NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins saw to it that Bayard Rustin received no credit for his work organizing the march.

The actions of these men--Powell, Thurmond, and Wilkins--while horrendous, didn't dissuade Rustin from his work; in fact, the allegation against him only emboldened him. He was appointed chairman of the A. P. Randolph Institute, a liberal think tank; he openly protested the Vietnam War at a time when few were doing so, and became active in the gay rights movement. In the 70s, Bayard Rustin served on the board of trustees of the University of Notre Dame, worked as a human rights and election monitor for Freedom House, and testified on behalf of New York State's Gay Rights Bill.

In 1986, he gave a speech called "The New N_____s Are Gays," in which he asserted,
Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new "n_____s" are gays. . . . It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. . . . The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.

Rustin died on August 24, 1987, of a perforated appendix. A New York Times obituary said, "Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote:

'The principal factors which influenced my life are

1) nonviolent tactics;

2) constitutional means;

3) democratic procedures;

4) respect for human personality;

5) a belief that all people are one.'"

Words to live by; an example set.

The march goes on.

On This Day In LGBT History

October 26, 1990 – A U.S. Army colonel was discharged and sentenced to 90 days in Leavenworth for appearing in drag at an AIDS benefit and kissing another man.
October 26, 1992 – Portland Oregon police chief Tom Potter testified before a state senate committee, saying many victims of anti-gay assaults do not report the crimes because of fear that their identities will be made public.

LGBT History Month: Bayard Rustin

There are some who might say Bayard Rustin was born to fight injustice, and I'd be hard-pressed to disagree with them. He lived his life by five simple rules, and remained unbowed by the indignities hurled at him.

As a Black man, and a gay man, he knew first-hand about being treated as "less than," as someone many people would think didn't matter, as as undesirable. But Bayard Rustin didn't worry about what others thought, he worried and worked for what was right, for African-Americans, the LGBT community, and any group he thought suffered at the hands of those in power. One of the key African-American civil rights activists of the last century, Rustin's legacy has sadly been obscured over alleged embarrassment of his homosexuality and his early involvement in the Communist Party.

Bayard Rustin was born on March 17, 1910, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a largely Quaker town that had played an important role in the underground railroad. He was raised by his devoutly Quaker grandmother, Julia, who was also a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]. In her home, with visitors like W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson, along with the town's history of anti-slavery activity, Rustin soon learned to stand up for himself, for African-Americans, and for all people who suffered indignities for reasons of race, or gender or sexual orientation.

A talented singer, Rustin moved to New York in 1931 where he performed with blues singer Josh White, in cafes and clubs all over New York. He became a regular performer at the Café Society nightclub in in Greenwich Village, which widened his social and intellectual contacts, helping him continue on his lifelong journey of activism.

Rustin became a member of the American Friends Service Committee, and joined the Communist Party of the United States of America [CPUSA], travelling the country to protest war and fascism, to speak out about social injustice. However, at the start of World War II, the Communist Party turned away from domestic issues and pressured Rustin to stop his work fighting racial injustice, and when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin ordered the CPUSA to abandon all civil rights work and focus only on support for U.S. involvement in the war. Rustin felt betrayed by the CPUSA, and, as a consequence, he left the party and became critical of it, a stance that he would maintain for the rest of his life.

In 1941, Rustin met A. Philip Randolph, an African-American labor leader, and A.J. Muste, the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation [FOR], a pacifist organization; the three men organized the 1941 African-American March on Washington. Working with FOR over the next decade, Rustin developed programs that focused on race relations, leading to the creation of the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE].

Bayard Rustin didn't hide his disdain for racism, or segregation, or for the Communist party's shift in policy. He also didn't hide his homosexuality, and it was often overlooked because of his discretion, and the work he was doing for the African-American community.

However, in 1953, a public scandal undermined his authority and hindered his career for many years. While in California, to speak to a group about FOR, Bayard Rustin was discovered by police in a car with two other men. He was arrested and charged with lewd conduct, vagrancy and sexual perversion--as consensual sex between men was labeled at that time. He spent two months in jail and, as word of his "crime" spread, he was dismissed from his position with FOR.

But the arrest, and the ensuing shame, didn't stop Rustin from working for equality. After his ouster from FOR, he joined the staff of the War Resisters League, where he worked with southern blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, to boycott city buses and end segregation in public transportation. It was in Alabama that he met Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rustin's credentials impressed the civil rights leader, but there was concern that his past ties to the Communist Party, as well as his arrest in California, might overshadow Dr. King's work, and tarnish the movement's reputation. But Bayard Rustin wouldn't give up, eventually became one of King's closest advisers, and heavily influenced him in the ways of nonviolent civil disobedience. Rustin and King worked together to create the

Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], which they hoped would further the use of nonviolent civil rights protests in the South.

In 1960, as Rustin was helping King lead a protest outside of the Democratic National Convention, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell pressured King to call off the protest, threatening to accuse Rustin and King of having a homosexual affair. Sadly, King gave in to Powell, and Rustin resigned from King's staff, dvastated by Powell's ruthlessness and by what he saw as King's betrayal. Still, he cntinued to advise Dr. King and once again became a major player in the formation of the 1963 March on Washington, though, once again, the fact that Bayard Rustin was a gay man, would be used to undermine his commintment to the struggle.

South Carolina Senator, and segregationist, Strom Thurmond tried to discredit the 1963 march because it was organized by a "communist, draft dodger, and homosexual;" Thurmond even went so far as to produce an FBI photograph of Rustin talking to King while King was bathing, to imply that there was a sexual relationship between Rustin and King. The two men denied the allegation, but the damage was done; despite King's support, NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins saw to it that Bayard Rustin received no credit for his work organizing the march.

The actions of these men--Powell, Thurmond, and Wilkins--while horrendous, didn't dissuade Rustin from his work; in fact, the allegation against him only emboldened him. He was appointed chairman of the A. P. Randolph Institute, a liberal think tank; he openly protested the Vietnam War at a time when few were doing so, and became active in the gay rights movement. In the 70s, Bayard Rustin served on the board of trustees of the University of Notre Dame, worked as a human rights and election monitor for Freedom House, and testified on behalf of New York State's Gay Rights Bill.

In 1986, he gave a speech called "The New N_____s Are Gays," in which he asserted,
Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new "n_____s" are gays. . . . It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. . . . The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.

Rustin died on August 24, 1987, of a perforated appendix. A New York Times obituary said, "Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote:

'The principal factors which influenced my life are

1) nonviolent tactics;

2) constitutional means;

3) democratic procedures;

4) respect for human personality;

5) a belief that all people are one.'"

Words to live by; an example set.

The march goes on.

On This Day In LGBT History

October 26, 1990 – A U.S. Army colonel was discharged and sentenced to 90 days in Leavenworth for appearing in drag at an AIDS benefit and kissing another man.
October 26, 1992 – Portland Oregon police chief Tom Potter testified before a state senate committee, saying many victims of anti-gay assaults do not report the crimes because of fear that their identities will be made public.

Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin was one of the most important, impassioned leaders of the civil rights movement, from it's earliest incarnations in the 1950s until well into the 1980s. Yet his is a name that is rarely, if ever, mentioned.

Bayard Rustin's involvement was a behind-the-scenes involvement, though no less important than any of the other names usually associated with the fight for civil rights. In addition, the fact that Bayard Rustin was also a gay man, and had been a member of the American Communist party probably insured his name would seldom be mentioned.

He was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1912, to Florence Rustin, one of eight children of Julia and Janifer Rustin. Florence's child had been born out of wedlock; the father was Archie Hopkins. Julia and Janifer decided to raise young Bayard as their son--he did not know that his 'sister' Florence was his mother until he was in his early teens.

Julia Rustin was a member of the Society of Friends--the Quakers--and even though she attended the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the denomination of her husband, she raised her children on the tenets of the Quaker faith: the equality of all human beings before God, the necessity for nonviolence, the importance of dealing with everyone with love and respect.

After attending Wilberforce University and Cheyney State Teachers College, Bayard moved to New York City in 1937, where he would live the rest of his life. He enrolled in City College of New York, though he never received a degree. It was at City College that Rustin began to organize for the Young Communist League of City College; the communists' progressive stance on the issue of racial injustice appealed to him. with the Party's about-face in the issue of segregation in the American military, he became disillusioned with communism and broke with the Young Communist League.

He soon found himself following the words of A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and, at that time, heavily involved in the civil rights of African Americans. Bayard Rustin soon found himself heading the youth wing of a march on Washington that Randolph envisioned, but the march was cancelled when FDR issued Executive Order No. 8802, forbidding racial discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries.

Rustin was angered by Randolph's decision to cancel the projected march, and he transferred his efforts at organization to the peace movement, first in the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and then in the American Friends Service Committee, the Socialist Party, and the War Resisters League.

As a member of a government-recognized peace church--Rustin belonged to the Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting-- he was entitled to do alternative service rather than serve in the military. But Rustin was unable to accept what he considered the 'easy way out,' given that many young men who did not belong to any recognized peace church were given harsh sentences for refusing to serve in the armed forces.

In 1944, Rustin was found guilty of violating the Selective Service Act and was sentenced to three years in a federal prison. He was sent to the federal penitentiary in Ashland, Kentucky, where he set about to resist the pervasive segregation that was the norm in US prisons at that time. Faced with vicious racism from some of the white guards and prisoners, Rustin faced frequent cruelty with courage and completely nonviolent resistance.

After his release from prison, Rustin once more joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), which staged a journey through four Southern and border states in 1947 to test the application of the Supreme Court's recent ruling that discrimination in seating in interstate transportation was illegal.

Rustin's resistance to North Carolina's Jim Crow law against integration in transportation earned him twenty-eight days' hard labor on a chain gang, where he met with the usual racist taunts and tortures from his fellow white prisoners, as well as the guards.

From 1947 to 1952, Rustin traveled to India and then to Africa under the aegis of FOR to explore and understand more fully the concept of nonviolent demonstration, working within the Indian and Ghanaian independence movements.

In 1953, back in the US and lecturing for the American Association of University Women in Pasadena, Rustin was arrested for public indecency. It was the first time that Rustin's homosexuality had come into public attention, and at that time homosexual behavior in all states was a criminal offense.

Although the gay rights movement in the United States was still many years away, Rustin's conviction and his relatively open attitude about his homosexuality set the stage for him to become an elder gay icon, as well as an African American icon, in the years to come. Civil Right and gay rights became of a piece with his belief in the inherent dignity of Afro-Americans and other oppressed people.

A consequence of his arrest, was that Rustin was released from his position at the FOR.

During this time, what he considered the lowest point of his life, Bayard Rustin began a twelve-year stint as executive secretary of the War Resisters League. He contributed greatly to a compilation of pacifist strategy--entitled Speak Truth To Power--published in The Progressive in 1959.

In 1956 Rustin was asked to provide Dr. Martin Luther King with some practical advice on how to apply Gandhian principles of nonviolence to the boycott of public transportation then taking shape in Montgomery, Alabama. On leave from the War Resisters League, Rustin spent time in Montgomery and Birmingham advising King, who had not yet completely embraced principles of nonviolence in his struggle.

By 1957, Rustin was playing a large role in the birth of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and in the Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington that took place in May of 1957 to urge President Eisenhower to enforce the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling that US schools be desegregated.

The high point of Bayard Rustin's political career, obviously, was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which took place on August 28, 1963; where Martin Luther King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech. By all accounts Bayard Rustin was the March's chief architect.

With small inroads in desegregation, baby steps actually, finally being made, Rustin came to believe that the time for militant action was over. Now that the legal foundation for segregation had been irrevocably shattered, came the larger, more difficult task of forging an alliance of dispossessed groups in American society into a progressive force.

Rustin saw this coalition encompassing African Americans and other minorities, trade unions, liberals, and religious groups. Rustin's plan of action did not go further was due to, in the opinion of several political analysts, the war in Vietnam. The enormous monetary, psychological, and spiritual cost of war had eroded any chance of further progressive movement.

Rustin's opposition to 'identity politics' also came under criticism by exponents of the Black Power movement. His criticism of affirmative action programs and black studies departments in American universities was not a popular viewpoint among his fellow African Americans. Rustin found himself isolated from the movement for a time.

Another viewpoint which did not endear Bayard Rustin to leftists or radical Black Power adherents was his consistent support of Israel. In the wake of the Holocaust, Rustin believed very strongly that the Jews needed their own state.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Rustin worked as a delegate for Freedom house, monitoring elections and human rights abuses in places like Chile, El Salvador, Grenada, Haiti, Poland, and Zimbabwe. In all his efforts Rustin evinced a lifelong, unwavering conviction in behalf of the value of democratic principles.

It was Rustin's human rights expedition to Haiti in 1987 that drew the final curtain on his remarkable life. After his visit, under the aegis of Freedom House, to study prospects for democratic elections in Haiti, Rustin began to feel ill. His symptoms were initially misdiagnosed as intestinal parasites, but on August 21, 1987, Rustin was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital and diagnosed with a perforated appendix.

He died of cardiac arrest on August 24.

Although Bayard Rustin lived in the shadow of more charismatic civil rights leaders, like Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, he can lay claim to having been an indispensable, although mostly unsung, force behind the movement toward equality for America's black citizens, and more largely for the rights of human beings around the world.

Throughout his life, Bayard Rustin's Quakerism was a unifying force, and a strong plank in his personal philosophy, incorporating beliefs that were of central importance to him: that there is God in every person, that all are entitled to a decent life, and that a life of service to others is the way to happiness and true fulfillment.