Bayard Rustin | |
|---|---|
 Rustin at a news briefing on theMarch on Washington in Washington, D.C., on August 27, 1963 | |
| Born | (1912-03-17)March 17, 1912 |
| Died | August 24, 1987(1987-08-24) (aged 75) New York City, U.S. |
| Education | Wilberforce University Cheyney University City College of New York |
| Organization(s) | Fellowship of Reconciliation Congress of Racial Equality War Resisters League Southern Christian Leadership Conference Social Democrats, USA (National Chairman) A. Philip Randolph Institute (President) Committee on the Present Danger Omega Psi Phi |
| Movement | Civil Rights Movement,Peace Movement,Socialism,Gay Rights Movement,Neoconservatism |
| Partner(s) | Davis Platt (1940s) Walter Naegle (1977–1987; Rustin's death) |
| Awards | Presidential Medal of Freedom |
Bayard Rustin (/ˈbaɪ.ərd/BY-ərd; March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an American political activist and prominent leader in social movements forcivil rights,socialism,nonviolence, andgay rights. Rustin was the principal organizer of theMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.[1]
Rustin worked in 1941 withA. Philip Randolph on theMarch on Washington Movement to press for an end toracial discrimination in the military and defense employment. Rustin later organizedFreedom Rides, and helped to organize theSouthern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthenMartin Luther King Jr.'s leadership; he taught King about non-violence. Rustin worked alongsideElla Baker, a co-director of theCrusade for Citizenship, in 1954; and before theMontgomery bus boycott, he helped organize a group called "In Friendship" to provide material and legal assistance to people threatened with eviction from their tenant farms and homes.[2] Rustin became the head of theAFL–CIO'sA. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia.
Rustin was agay man and, due to criticism over his sexuality, usually advised other civil rights leaders from behind the scenes. During the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes, speaking at events as an activist and supporter of human rights.[3]
Later in life, while still devoted to securing workers' rights, Rustin joined other union leaders in aligning with ideologicalneoconservatism,[4][5] earning posthumous praise from PresidentRonald Reagan.[6] On November 20, 2013, PresidentBarack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin thePresidential Medal of Freedom.[7]
Rustin was a member of the executive committee of the Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group.[8]
Rustin was born in 1912 inWest Chester, Pennsylvania, to Florence Rustin and Archie Hopkins, who were unmarried. As Florence was a single mother, Rustin was raised by his maternal grandparents, Julia (Davis) and Janifer Rustin, wealthy local caterers, as the ninth of their twelve children; growing up he believed his biological mother was his older sister.[9][10][11] Julia Rustin was aQuaker, although she attended her husband'sAfrican Methodist Episcopal Church. She was also a member of theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). NAACP leaders such asW. E. B. Du Bois andJames Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in the Rustin home. With these influences in his early life, in his youth Rustin campaigned against racially discriminatoryJim Crow laws.[12]
One of the first documented realizations Rustin had of his sexuality was when he mentioned to his grandmother that he preferred to spend time with males rather than females. She responded, "I suppose that's what you need to do".[13]
In 1932, Rustin enteredWilberforce University, ahistorically black college in Ohio operated by the AME Church.[14] Rustin was active in a number of campus organizations, including theOmega Psi Phi fraternity.[15] He was expelled from Wilberforce in 1936 after organizing a strike,[16] and later attended Cheyney State Teachers College (nowCheyney University of Pennsylvania). Cheyney honored Rustin with a posthumousDoctor of Humane Letters degree at its 2013 commencement.[17]
After completing an activist training program conducted by theAmerican Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Rustin moved toHarlem in 1937 and began studying atCity College of New York. There he became involved in efforts to defend and free theScottsboro Boys, nine young black men in Alabama accused of raping two white women. He was part of theYoung Communist League from 1936 to 1941, leaving after theCommunist Party USA reversed its anti-war policy in response toNazi Germany's invasion of theUSSR. This conflicted with Rustin's anti-war stance.[18] Soon after arriving in New York City, he became a member of Fifteenth Street Meeting of theReligious Society of Friends (Quakers).[citation needed]
Rustin was an accomplished tenor vocalist, an asset that earned him admission to both Wilberforce University and Cheyney State Teachers College with music scholarships.[19] In 1939, he was in the chorus of short-lived Broadway musicalJohn Henry. Fellow cast member and blues singerJosh White later invited Rustin to join his gospel and vocal harmony group Josh White and the Carolinians, with whom he made several recordings. With this opportunity, Rustin became a regular performer at theCafé Society nightclub inGreenwich Village.[20] A few albums on Fellowship Records featuring his singing, such asBayard Rustin Sings a Program of Spirituals, were produced from the 1950s through the 1970s.
During the 1930s, at the direction of theSoviet Union, theCommunist Party USA (CPUSA) and its members, including Rustin, were active in theearly civil rights movement.[21] FollowingJoseph Stalin's "theory of nationalism", they favored the creation of a separate nation for African Americans in theSoutheastern United States.[22] However, in 1941, afterNazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union,Communist International ordered the CPUSA to abandon its civil rights work and focus instead on supporting U.S. entry intoWorld War II.[23]
Disillusioned, Rustin began working instead with members ofNorman Thomas'sSocialist Party of America, particularlyA. Philip Randolph and pacifistA. J. Muste, leader of theFellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), who hired Rustin as a race relations secretary in the summer of 1941,[24] considering him to be a man of oratorical ability and intelligence who would sacrifice himself repeatedly for a good cause.[25]
Muste, Randolph, and Rustin proposed a march on Washington, D.C., in 1941 to protestracial segregation in the armed forces and widespreademployment discrimination. After meeting with PresidentFranklin Roosevelt in theOval Office, Randolph told President Roosevelt that African Americans would march in the capital unless desegregation occurred. To prove their good faith, the organizers canceled the planned march after Roosevelt issuedExecutive Order 8802 (theFair Employment Act), which banned discrimination in defense industries and federal agencies.
According to Daniel Levinson, Rustin had an "infinite capacity for compassion." In 1944, while imprisoned in North Carolina, Rustin displayed nonviolent tactics, allowing himself to get beaten repeatedly by a white inmate until he gave up. Rustin defied segregation during that time and practiced his tactic while incarcerated.[26]
Randolph's decision as leader of the organizers to cancel the march was made against Rustin's advice.[24] The armed forces, in which Black troops typically had white commanding officers,[27] remained racially segregated until 1948, when PresidentHarry S. Truman issued an Executive Order.
Randolph felt that FOR had succeeded in their goal and wanted to dissolve the committee.[when?] Again, Rustin disagreed with him and voiced his differing opinion in a national press conference, which he later said he regretted.[24]
Rustin traveled to California[when?] to help protect the property of the more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans (most of whom were U.S.-born citizens) who had beenimprisoned in internment camps. In the6–3Korematsu decision, the Supreme Court upheld the forcible internment. Impressed with Rustin's organizational skills, A. J. Muste appointed him as FOR's secretary for student and general affairs.
Rustin was also a pioneer in the movement to desegregate interstate bus travel. In 1942, he boarded a bus inLouisville, bound forNashville, and sat in the second row. A number of drivers asked him to move to the back, according to Southern practice ofJim Crow, but Rustin refused. The bus was stopped by police 13 miles north of Nashville and Rustin was arrested. He was beaten and taken to a police station but was released uncharged.[28]
He spoke about his decision to be arrested, and how that moment also clarified his witness as a gay person, in an interview with theWashington Blade in the 1980s:
As I was going by the second seat to go to the rear, a white child reached out for the ring necktie I was wearing and pulled it, whereupon its mother said, "Don't touch a nigger."
If I go and sit quietly at the back of that bus now, that child, who was so innocent of race relations that it was going to play with me, will have seen so many blacks go in the back and sit down quietly that it's going to end up saying, "They like it back there, I've never seen anybody protest against it." I owe it to that child, not only to my own dignity, I owe it to that child, that it should be educated to know that blacks do not want to sit in the back, and therefore I should get arrested, letting all these white people in the bus know that I do not accept that.
It occurred to me shortly after that that it was an absolute necessity for me to declare homosexuality because if I didn't I was a part of the prejudice. I was aiding and abetting the prejudice that was a part of the effort to destroy me.[29]
In 1942, Rustin assisted FOR staffersGeorge Houser andJames Farmer, as well as activistBernice Fisher, in forming theCongress of Racial Equality (CORE), which was conceived as a pacifist organization based on the writings ofMohandas Gandhi, who usednon-violent resistance againstBritish rule in India.[30][31]
As declaredconscientious objectors who refused induction into the military, Rustin, Houser, and other members of FOR and CORE were convicted of violating theSelective Service Act. From 1944 to 1946, Rustin was imprisoned inAshland Federal Prison in Kentucky, and later theLewisburg Federal Penitentiary, in Pennsylvania. At both, he organized protests against racially segregated housing and dining facilities. During his incarceration, he also organized FOR'sFree India Committee. After his release from prison, he was frequently arrested for protesting against British colonial rule, in both India and Africa.
Just before a trip to Africa while college secretary of the FOR, Rustin recorded a10-inch LP,Elizabethan Songs and Negro Spirituals, for the Fellowship Records label. He sangspirituals andElizabethan songs, accompanied on theharpsichord by Margaret Davison.[32]
In 1947, Rustin and Houser organized theJourney of Reconciliation. This was the first of theFreedom Rides to test the 1946Supreme Court ruling inMorgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia banningracial discrimination in interstate travel as unconstitutional. Rustin and CORE executive secretary George Houser recruited a team of fourteen men, divided equally by race, to ride in pairs through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky.[33] The NAACP opposed CORE'sGandhian tactics as too meek. Participants in the Journey of Reconciliation were arrested several times. Arrested withIgal Roodenko andJoe Felmet, Rustin served twenty-two days on achain gang inNorth Carolina for violating stateJim Crow laws regarding segregated seating on public transportation.[34][35] On June 17, 2022, Chapel HillSuperior Court Judge Allen Baddour, with full consent of the state, dismissed the 1947 North Carolina charges against the four Freedom Riders.[36][37]
In 1948, Rustin traveled to India to learn techniques ofnonviolent civil resistance directly from the leaders of the Gandhian movement. The conference had been organized beforeGandhi's assassination earlier that year. Between 1947 and 1952, Rustin also met with leaders of independence movements inGhana andNigeria. In 1951, he formed the committee to Support South African Resistance, which later became theAmerican Committee on Africa.
Rustin was arrested inPasadena, California, in January 1953 for sexual activity in a parked car with two men in their 20s.[29] Originally charged with vagrancy and lewd conduct, he pleaded guilty to a single, lesser charge of "sex perversion" (assodomy was officially referred to in California at the time, even if consensual) and served 60 days in jail. The Pasadena arrest was the first time that Rustin's homosexuality had come to public attention. He had been and remained candid in private about his sexuality, although homosexual activity was still criminalized throughout the United States.[38] Rustin resigned from theFellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) because of his convictions. They also greatly affected Rustin's relationship withA. J. Muste, the director of the FOR. Muste had already tried to change Rustin's sexuality earlier in their relationship with no success. Later in Rustin's life, they continued their relationship with more tension than they had previously.[39] Rustin became the executive secretary of theWar Resisters League. An American Legion chapter in Montana used Rustin's Pasadena conviction to try to cancel his lectures in the state.[38]
Rustin served as an unidentified member of theAmerican Friends Service Committee's task force to write "Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence",[40] published in 1955. This was one of the most influential and widely commented uponpacifist essays in the United States. Rustin had wanted to keep his participation quiet, as he believed that his known sexual orientation would be used by critics as an excuse to compromise the 71-page pamphlet when it was published. It analyzed theCold War and the American response to it, and recommendednon-violent solutions.
Rustin took leave from the War Resisters League in 1956 to advise ministerMartin Luther King Jr. of the Baptist Church on Gandhian tactics. King was organizing theMontgomery bus boycott. According to Rustin, "I think it's fair to say that Dr. King's view of non-violent tactics was almost non-existent when the boycott began. In other words, Dr. King was permitting himself and his children and his home to be protected by guns." Rustin convinced King to abandon the armed protection, including a personal handgun.[41] In a 1964 interview withRobert Penn Warren for the bookWho Speaks for the Negro?, Rustin also reflected that his integrative ideology began to differ from King's. He believed a social movement "has to be based on the collective needs of people at this time, regardless of color, creed, race."[42]
The following year, Rustin and King began organizing theSouthern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Many African-American leaders were concerned that Rustin's sexual orientation and past Communist membership would undermine support for the civil rights movement. After the organization of the SCLC, Rustin and King planned a civil rights march adjacent to the1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. This did not sit well with U.S. RepresentativeAdam Clayton Powell Jr., who threatened to leak to the press rumors of a fake affair between Rustin and King. King canceled the march, and Rustin left his position in the SCLC. King received criticism for this action fromHarper's magazine, which wrote about him: "Lost much moral credit ... in the eyes of the young." Although Rustin was open about his sexual orientation and his convictions were a matter of public record, the events had not been discussed widely beyond the civil rights leadership. Rustin did not let this setback change his direction in the movement.[13]
.jpg)
Despite shunning from some civil rights leaders,
[w]hen the moment came for an unprecedented mass gathering in Washington, Randolph pushed Rustin forward as the logical choice to organize it.[43]
A few weeks before theMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963,South Carolina SenatorStrom Thurmond railed against Rustin as a "Communist, draft-dodger, and homosexual", and had his entire Pasadena arrest file entered in the record.[43] Thurmond also produced aFederal Bureau of Investigation photograph of Rustin talking to King while King was bathing to imply that there was a same-sex relationship between the two, which both men denied.[13]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 "Eyes on the Prize; America, They Loved You Madly; Interview with Bayard Rustin" conducted in 1979 for theAmerica, They Loved You Madly, a precursor to theEyes on the Prize documentary in which he discusses theBrown decision, the reasons for increased civil rights activism after World War II, and his work to organize theMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. |
Rustin became involved in the March on Washington in 1962 when he was recruited by A. Philip Randolph. The march was planned to be a commemoration of the Emancipation Proclamation one hundred years earlier.[13] Rustin was instrumental in organizing the march. Aided byEleanor Holmes Norton and Rachelle Horowitz,[43] he drilled off-duty police officers as marshals, bus captains to direct traffic, and scheduled the podium speakers. Despite King's support, NAACP chairmanRoy Wilkins did not want Rustin to receive any public credit for his role in planning the march.[44] Wilkins said, "This march is of such importance that we must not put a person of his liabilities at the head." Because of this conflict, Randolph served as the director of the march and Rustin as his deputy. During the planning of the march, Rustin feared his previous legal issues would pose a threat to the march. Nevertheless, on September 6, 1963, a photograph of Rustin and Randolph appeared on the cover ofLife magazine, identifying them as "the leaders" of the March.[44] Rustin stated his thoughts on the march and said it "made Americans feel for the first time that we were capable of being truly a nation, that we were capable of moving beyond division and bigotry".[25]
In early 1964,Reverend Milton Galamison and other Harlem community leaders invited Rustin to coordinate a citywide boycott of public schools to protest theirde facto segregation. Prior to the boycott, the organizers asked theUnited Federation of Teachers Executive Board to join the boycott or ask teachers to join the picket lines. The union declined, promising only to protect from reprisals any teachers who participated. More than 400,000 New Yorkers participated in a one-day February 3, 1964, boycott demanding complete integration of the city's schools.[45] HistorianDaniel Perlstein notes that "newspapers were astounded both by the numbers of black and Puerto Rican parents and children who boycotted and by the complete absence of violence or disorder from the protesters."[45] It was, Rustin stated, and newspapers reported, "the largest civil rights demonstration" in American history. Rustin said that "the movement to integrate the schools will create far-reaching benefits" for teachers as well as students.[45]
Rustin organized a May March 18 which called for "maximum possible" integration. Perlstein recounts: "The UFT and other white moderates endorsed the May rally, yet only four thousand protesters showed up, and the Board of Education was no more responsive to the conciliatory May demonstration than to the earlier, more confrontational boycott."[45]
When Rustin was invited to speak at theUniversity of Virginia in 1964, school administrators tried to ban him, out of fear that he would organize a school boycott there.
In the spring of 1964, Martin Luther King was considering hiring Rustin as executive director of SCLC but was advised against it byStanley Levison, a longtime activist friend of Rustin's. He opposed the hire because of what he considered Rustin's growing devotion to the political theoristMax Shachtman. Other SCLC leaders opposed Rustin due to his sexuality.[46]
At the1964 Democratic National Convention, which followedFreedom Summer in Mississippi, Rustin became an adviser to theMississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP); they were trying to gain recognition as the legitimate, non–Jim Crow delegation from their state, where blacks had been officiallydisenfranchised since the turn of the century (as they were generally throughout the South) and excluded from the official political system. DNC leaders Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey offered only two non-voting seats to the MFDP, with the official seating going to the regular segregationist Mississippi delegation. Rustin and the AFL–CIO leaders urged the MFDP to take the offer. MFDP leaders, includingFannie Lou Hamer andBob Moses, angrily rejected the arrangement; many of their supporters became highly suspicious of Rustin. Rustin's attempt to compromise appealed to the Democratic Party leadership.[45]
After the passage of theCivil Rights Act of 1964, Rustin advocated closer ties between the civil rights movement and theDemocratic Party, specifically the party's base among the white working class, many of whom still had strong union affiliations. WithTom Kahn, Rustin wrote an influential article in 1964 called "From Protest to Politics", published inCommentary magazine; it analyzed the changing economy and its implications for African Americans. Rustin wrote presciently that the rise of automation would reduce the demand for low-skill high-paying jobs, which would jeopardize the position of the urban African-American working class, particularly in northern states. He believed that the working class had to collaborate across racial lines for common economic goals. His prophecy has been proven right in the dislocation and loss of jobs for many urban African Americans due to the restructuring of industry in the coming decades.Rustin believed that the African-American community needed to change its political strategy, building and strengthening a political alliance with predominately white unions and other organizations (churches, synagogues, etc.) to pursue a common economic agenda. He wrote that it was time to move from protest to politics. Rustin's analysis of the economic problems of the Black community was widely influential.[47]
Rustin argued that since black people could now legally sit in the restaurant after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they needed to be able to afford service financially. He believed that a coalition of progressive forces to move the Democratic Party forward was needed to change the economic structure.[48]
He also argued that the African-American community was threatened by the appeal ofidentity politics, particularly the rise of "Black power". He thought this position was a fantasy of middle-class black people that repeated the political and moral errors of previousblack nationalists, while alienating the white allies needed by the African-American community.Nation editor andHarvard Law ProfessorRandall Kennedy noted later that, while Rustin had a general "disdain of nationalism", he had a "very different attitude toward Jewish nationalism" and was "unflaggingly supportive ofZionism".[49]
Commentary editor-in-chiefNorman Podhoretz had commissioned the article from Rustin, and the two men remained intellectually and personally aligned for the next 20 years.[citation needed] Podhoretz and the magazine promoted theneoconservative movement, which had implications for civil rights initiatives as well as other economic aspects of the society. In 1985, Rustin publicly praised Podhoretz for his refusal to "pander to minority groups" and for opposing affirmative action quotas in hiring as well as black studies programs in colleges.[50]
Because of these positions, Rustin was criticized as a "sell-out" by many of his former colleagues in the civil rights movement, especially those connected tograssroots organizing.[51][52] They charged that he was lured by the material comforts that came with a less radical and more professional type of activism.[citation needed] BiographerJohn D'Emilio rejects these characterizations, and "portrays the final third of Rustin's life as one in which his reputation among his former allies was routinely questioned. After decades of working outside the system, they simply could not accept working within the system."[48] However, Randall Kennedy wrote in a 2003 article that descriptions of Rustin as "a bought man" are "at least partly true", noting that his sponsorship by theAFL–CIO brought him some financial stability but imposed boundaries on his politics.[49]
Kennedy notes that despite Rustin's conservative turn in the mid-1960s, he remained a lifelong socialist,[49] and D'Emilio argues that in the final phase of his life, Rustin remained on the left: "D'Emilio explains, even as Rustin was taking what appeared to be a more "conservative" turn, he remained committed to social justice. Rustin was making radical and ambitious demands for a basicredistribution of wealth in American society, including universal healthcare, the abolition of poverty, and full employment."[48]
Rustin increasingly worked to strengthen the labor movement, which he saw as the champion of empowerment for the African American community and for economic justice for all Americans. He contributed to the labor movement's two sides, economic and political, through the support of labor unions and social-democratic politics.He was the founder and became the Director of theA. Philip Randolph Institute, which coordinated the AFL-CIO's work on civil rights and economic justice. He became a regular columnist for the AFL-CIO newspaper.
On the political side of the labor movement, Rustin increased his visibility as a leader of the American movement forsocial democracy. In early 1972, he became a national co-chairman of the Socialist Party of America. In December 1972, when the Socialist Party changed its name toSocial Democrats, USA (SDUSA) by a vote of 73–34, Rustin continued to serve as national co-chairman, along withCharles S. Zimmerman.[53] In his opening speech to the December 1972 Convention, Co-Chairman Rustin called for SDUSA to organize against the "reactionary policies of the Nixon Administration"; Rustin also criticized the "irresponsibility and élitism of the 'New Politics' liberals".[53] In later years, Rustin served as the national chairman of SDUSA.
During the 1960s, Rustin was a member[54] of theLeague for Industrial Democracy.[55] He would remain a member for years, and became vice president during the 1980s.[56]
Like many liberals and some socialists, Rustin supported PresidentLyndon B. Johnson'scontainment policy againstcommunism, though criticizing specific conduct of the policy. In particular, to maintain independent labor unions and political opposition inVietnam, Rustin and others gave critical support to U.S. military intervention in theVietnam War, while calling for a negotiated peace treaty and democratic elections. Rustin criticized the specific conduct of the war, however, arguing in a fundraising letter sent to War Resisters League supporters in 1964 that he was "angered and humiliated by the kind of war being waged, a war of torture, a war in which civilians are being machine-gunned from the air, and in which American napalm bombs are being dropped on the villages."[57]
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin worked as a human rights andelection monitor forFreedom House.[58]
In 1970, Rustin called for the U.S. to send military jets to aid Israel againstArab states in theWar of Attrition; referring to aNew York Times article he wrote, Rustin wrote to Prime MinisterGolda Meir "...I hope that the ad will also have an effect on a serious domestic question: namely, the relations between the Jewish and the Negro communities in America." Rustin was concerned about unity between two groups that he argued faced discrimination in America and abroad, and also believed that Israel's democratic ideals were proof that justice and equality would prevail in the Arab territories despite the atrocities of war. His former colleagues in the peace movement considered it to be a profound betrayal of Rustin's nonviolent ideals.[59]
Rustin maintained his strongly anti-Soviet and anti-communist views later in his life, especially with regard to Africa. Rustin co-wrote withCarl Gershman (a former director ofSocial Democrats, USA and futureRonald Reagan appointee) an essay entitled "Africa, Soviet Imperialism & the Retreat of American Power", in which he decried Russian and Cuban involvement in theAngolan Civil War and defended the military intervention byapartheid South Africa on behalf of theNational Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). "And if a South African force did intervene at the urging ofblack leaders and on the side of the forces that clearly represent theblack majority in Angola, to counter a non-African army of Cubans ten times its size, by what standard of political judgment is this immoral?" Rustin accused the Soviet Union of a classic imperialist agenda in Africa in pursuit of economic resources and vital sea lanes, and called theCarter Administration "hypocritical" for claiming to be committed to the welfare of blacks while doing too little to thwart Russian and Cuban expansion throughout Africa.[60]
In 1976, Rustin joined the anti-communistCommittee on the Present Danger (CPD), which promotedTeam B's controversial intelligence claims about Soviet foreign policy, using them as an argument against arms control agreements such asSALT II.[61]
The plight of Jews in the Soviet Union reminded Rustin of the struggles faced by African Americans in the United States. Soviet Jews faced many of the same forms of discrimination in employment, education, and housing, while also being denied the chance to emigrate by Soviet authorities.[62][page needed] After seeing the injustice that Soviet Jews faced, Rustin became a leading voice in advocating for the movement of Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel. In 1966 he chaired the Ad hoc Commission on Rights of Soviet Jews organized by the Conference on the Status of Soviet Jews, leading a panel of six jurors in the commission's public tribunal on Jewish life in the Soviet Union.[63] The commission collected testimonies from Soviet Jews and compiled them into a report that was delivered to the secretary-general of the United Nations. The report urged the international community to demand that the Soviet authorities allow Jews to practice their religion, preserve their culture, and emigrate from the USSR at their will.[63] Through the 1970s and 1980s Rustin wrote several articles on the subject of Soviet Jewry and appeared at Soviet Jewry movement rallies, demonstrations, vigils, and conferences, in the United States and abroad.[64] He co-sponsored the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry. Rustin worked closely with SenatorHenry Jackson on theJackson–Vanik amendment, vital legislation that restricted United States trade with the Soviet Union in relation to its treatment of Jews.[65]
Rustin's relationships were mainly with men, both black and white.[26] Davis Platt, Rustin's partner from the 1940s,[66] said "I never had any sense at all that Bayard felt any shame or guilt about his homosexuality. That was rare in those days. Rare."[38] Hissexual orientation was openly accepted by his family.[26]
Rustin did not engage in any gay rights activism until the 1980s. He was urged to do so by his partner,Walter Naegle, who said that "I think that if I hadn't been in the office at that time, when these invitations [from gay organizations] came in, he probably wouldn't have done them."[67] He was an advocate for people withHIV/AIDS, and because of his public works, he may have “came out” to the public. Rustin no longer hid his sexual orientation from others.[68]
Because same-sex marriage was not officially recognized at the time, Rustin and Naegle undertook to solidify their partnership and protect their union legally through adoption: in 1982 Rustin adopted Naegle, 30 years old at the time. Naegle explained that Bayard:[69]
... was concerned about protecting my rights, because gay people had no protection. At that time, marriage between a same-sex couple was inconceivable. And so he adopted me, legally adopted me, in 1982.
That was the only thing we could do to kind of legalize our relationship. We actually had to go through a process as if Bayard was adopting a small child. My biological mother had to sign a legal paper, a paper disowning me. They had to send a social worker to our home. When the social worker arrived, she had to sit us down to talk to us to make sure that this was a fit home.
Rustin testified in favor of theNew York City Gay Rights Bill. In 1986, he gave a speech titled "The New Niggers Are Gays", in which he asserted:[70]
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 "niggers" 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.
Also in 1986, Rustin was invited to contribute to the bookIn the Life: A Black Gay Anthology. He declined, explaining:[71]
I was not involved in the struggle for gay rights as a youth ... I did not "come out of the closet" voluntarily—circumstances forced me out. While I have no problem with being publicly identified as homosexual, it would be dishonest of me to present myself as one who was in the forefront of the struggle for gay rights ... I fundamentally consider sexual orientation to be a private matter. As such, it has not been a factor which has greatly influenced my role as an activist.
Rustin died aged 75 at 12:02 A.M. on August 24, 1987, atLenox Hill Hospital from acardiac arrest after undergoing surgery forperitonitis and aperforated appendix.[72] He was survived by Walter Naegle, his partner of ten years.[73][74]
PresidentRonald Reagan issued a statement upon Rustin's death, praising his work for civil rights and "for human rights throughout the world".[6]
Rustin's personal philosophy is said to have been inspired by combiningQuaker pacifism withsocialism, and the theory of non-violent protest popularized byMahatma Gandhi.[10]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Rustin and Eugene Reed | |
| Vietnam: A Television History; Homefront USA; Interview with Bayard Rustin, 1982, 39:32,WGBH-TV[75] | |
| The Bayard Rustin Papers, 1:05:32,Library of Congress[76] |
According to journalist Steve Hendrix, Rustin "faded from the shortlist of well-known civil rights lions", in part because he was active behind the scenes, and also because of public discomfort with his sexual orientation and former communist membership.[43] In addition, Rustin's tilt toward neo-conservatism in the late 1960s led him into a disagreement with most civil rights leaders. But, the 2003 documentary filmBrother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, aSundance Festival Grand Jury Prize nominee,[77] and the March 2012 centennial of Rustin's birth have contributed to renewed recognition of his extensive contributions.
Rustin served as chairman ofSocial Democrats, USA, which,The Washington Post wrote in 2013, "was a breeding ground for manyneoconservatives".[78] French historianJustin Vaïsse classifies him as a "right-wing socialist" and "second age neoconservative", citing his role as vice-chair of theCoalition for a Democratic Majority, which was involved in the second incarnation of theCommittee on the Present Danger.[79][80]
According toDaniel Richman, former clerk forUnited States Supreme Court justiceThurgood Marshall, Marshall's friendship with Rustin, who was open about his homosexuality, played a significant role in Marshall's dissent from the court's 5–4 decision upholding the constitutionality of state sodomy laws in thelater overturned 1986 caseBowers v. Hardwick.[81]
Several buildings have been named in honor of Rustin, including theBayard Rustin Educational Complex located inChelsea, Manhattan[82] and the BayardRustin High School near his hometown ofWest Chester, Pennsylvania. Rustin is one of just two men who have both participated in thePenn Relays and had a school named in his honor that participates in the relays.[83] Other buildings include the Bayard Rustin Library at the Affirmations Gay/Lesbian Community Center inFerndale, Michigan; the Bayard Rustin Social Justice Center inConway, Arkansas; theBayard Rustin Center for Social Justice inPrinceton, New Jersey; and the Bayard Rustin Room atFriends House, London, UK.[84]
In 1968, two months after the King assassination,Montclair State University gave Rustin an honoraryDoctor of Letters degree.[85] In 1985,Haverford College awarded Rustin an honorarydoctorate in law.[86] In all, Rustin was the recipient of at least 15 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard, Yale, and Brown.[87]
In 1995, aPennsylvania State Historical Marker was placed on the grounds ofHenderson High School, which he attended.[88][89]
A 1998 anthology movie,Out of the Past, featured letters and archival footage of Rustin.[90]
TheWest Chester Area School District voted in 2002 to approve the creation ofBayard Rustin High School,[91] which opened four years later in 2006.[92][93]
In July 2007, a group of San Francisco Bay Area Black LGBT community leaders officially formed the Bayard Rustin Coalition (BRC), which promoted greater Black participation in the electoral process, advances civil and human rights issues, and promotes the legacy of Rustin.[94]
In 2011,Guilford College rededicated its Queer and Allied Resource Center as the Bayard Rustin Center for LGBTQA Activism, Awareness, and Reconciliation.[95][96] In 2012, Rustin was inducted into theLegacy Walk, an outdoor public display inChicago, Illinois celebratingLGBTQ history and people.[97][98] In 2013, Rustin was selected as an honoree in theUnited States Department of Labor Hall of Honor.[99][100]
On August 8, 2013, PresidentBarack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin thePresidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States. The citation in the press release stated,
Bayard Rustin was an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all. An advisor to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he promoted nonviolent resistance, participated in one of the first Freedom Rides, organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and fought tirelessly for marginalized communities at home and abroad. As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights.[101]
At theWhite House ceremony on November 20, 2013, President Obama presented Rustin's award to Walter Naegle, his partner of ten years at the time of Rustin's death.[7]
In 2014, Rustin was one of the inaugural honorees in theRainbow Honor Walk, awalk of fame in San Francisco notingLGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields".[102] In April 2018, theMontgomery CountyBoard of Education in Maryland voted to name theBayard Rustin Elementary School after Rustin.
Canadian writer Steven Elliott Jackson wrote a play that stages an imaginary meeting and one-night-stand between Rustin andWalter Jenkins of the Johnson administration calledThe Seat Next to the King. The play won the award for Best Play at the 2017Toronto Fringe Festival.[103][104] A full-length play with music, written by Steve H. Broadnax III,Bayard Rustin Inside Ashland, dramatizing Rustin'sWorld War II prison experience and its central role in his lifetime of activism, had its world premiere on May 22, 2022, atPeople's Light and Theatre Company inMalvern, Pennsylvania.[105]
In 2018, theBayard Rustin Center for Social Justice was established inPrinceton, New Jersey, with Naegle acting as Board Member Emeritus,[106] serving as a community activist center andsafe space for LGBTQ kids, intersectional families, and marginalized people.[107]
Rustin was one of fifty inaugural American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" inducted in June 2019 to theNational LGBTQ Wall of Honor, within theStonewall National Monument (SNM), the firstU.S. national monument dedicated toLGBTQ rights andqueer history,[108] in New York City'sStonewall Inn.[109][110]
In January 2020, California State SenatorScott Wiener, chair of theCalifornia Legislative LGBT Caucus, and AssemblywomanShirley Weber, chair of theCalifornia Legislative Black Caucus, called for GovernorGavin Newsom to issue a pardon for Rustin's 1953 Pasadena arrest, citing Rustin's legacy as a civil rights icon.[111] Newsom issued thepardon on February 5 while also announcing a new process for fast-tracking pardons for those convicted under historical laws criminalizing homosexuality.[112] On June 5, 2023, the Pasadena City Council adopted a resolution declaring that the "City of Pasadena celebrates and concurs in the Governor's 2020 pardon of Bayard Rustin".[113][114]
In 2021,Higher Ground Productions, founded byMichelle andBarack Obama, announced production ofRustin, a biographical film directed byGeorge C. Wolfe and starringColman Domingo in the title role.[115][116] The film premiered at theTelluride Film Festival on August 31, 2023, and was screened at theToronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2023. It received a limited theatrical release on November 3, 2023, followed by aNetflix release on November 17. Reviews were generally positive, with Domingo's performance garnering numerous accolades including Best Actor nominations for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award.
A street inNyack, New York, was renamed "Bayard Rustin Way" in 2022 to honor Rustin's memory.[117]
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