Bayard Rustin
From Social Justice Wiki
By: Kevin Feeney, Ada McMahon, and D.A. Wallach
Contents |
Who Is Bayard Rustin?
Bayard Rustin was an openly gay intellectual activist, best remembered for his superb organizational skills during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Early in his career, in 1937, Rustin became a member of the Communist party, but left after the party shifted focus away from civil rights to address concerns of World War II. From there Rustin joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Congress of Racial Equality, two anti-communist, pacifist and socialist organizations that followed the philosophy of non-violent resistance. For refusing to enter the draft, Rustin was jailed from 1944 to 1946, but stayed active in the FOR throughout his sentence. Over the next few years, Rustin was arrested two more times: first for his work with the Journey of Reconciliation, a nonviolent protest against the Jim Crow laws, and then for a charge that was far more surprising to his supporters at the FOR. In 1953, Rustin served jail time for “sex perversion” in Pasadena, California. This was the first time that his sexual orientation posed a direct threat to his social activism. Immediately after the conviction, he was asked to leave the FOR, despite his effective work as a behind-the-scenes organizer.
A similar story arose in 1960, when Rustin, after having advised Martin Luther King Jr. for four years, was asked to resign from King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). But King wouldn’t let Rustin go so easily. King asked Rustin to serve as the primary organizer of The March on Washington in 1963, despite the attempts of King’s opponents to insinuate a sexual affair between the two activists. To keep such talk to a minimum, Rustin accepted little credit for his work on the March, although he did indeed play a huge role in its success. In 1965, following the Civil Rights Act, Rustin published his famous “From Protest to Politics” paper, advocating a shift from mass protest to mass political participation, particularly through an alliance with the Democratic Party. The philosophy was in direct conflict with the developing militant philosophies of some cultural nationalists, who criticized Rustin’s support of an integrationist strategy. Malcolm X initially debated Rustin on the subject of integration, and while they differed in terms tactical strategy, particularly when it came to the place of militancy in the increasingly political movement, both came to accept the need for some form of multiracial coalition. As for mainstream political participation, even Rustin’s faith in the Democratic Party dwindled when the war in Vietnam escalated and social programs at home began to suffer. Late in his career, Rustin remained an activist, moving his focus toward issues of gay and lesbian rights. He died in August of 1987.
Rustin Bibliography
Intellectual Orientation
Nonviolent Direct Action
From Protest to Politics