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BLACK HISTORY MONTH
For Black History Month:
Remembering Bayard Rustin
Civil rights pioneer was openly gay
during a danferous era for the LGBT
community
Bayard Rustin was an openly gay intellec
tual activist, important largely behind the
scenes in the civil rights movement of the
1960s and earlier and principal organizer of
the 1963 March on
Washington fon-
Jobs and Freedom.
He counseled
Martin Luther
King, Jr. on the
techniques of non
violent resistance,
and later in his life
advocated on
behalf of gay and
lesbian causes.
A year before
his death in 1987,
Rustin said: “The
barometer of
where one is on
human rights
questions is no
longer the black
community, it’s
the gay communi
ty. Because it is
the community which is most easily mis
treated.”
Early years
Rustin was born in West Chester, Pa. He
was raised by his maternal grandparents.
Rustin’s grandmother, Julia, was a Quaker,
• though she attended her husband’s A.M.E.
Church. He was also a member of 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 cam
paigned against raciallydiscriminatory Jim
Crow laws in his youth.
In 1932, Rustin entered Wilberforce
University. He left in 1936 before taking his
final exams. He also attended Cheyney State
Teachers College, now called Cheyney
University of Pennsylvania. After completing
an activist training program conducted by
Bayard Rustin served 30 days on a chain
gang in North Carolina for violating Jim
Crow laws.
the American Friends Service Committee,
Rustin moved to Harlem in 1937 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.
Later experiences
The Communist
Party USA (CPUSA)
was originally a strong
supporter of the civil
rights movement, but
in 1941, after Germany
Invaded the Soviet
Union, Joseph Stalin
ordered the CPUSA to
abandon civil rights
work and focus on sup
port for U.S. involve
ment in World War II.
Disillusioned by this
betrayal, Rustin began
working with anti-
Communist Socialists
such as A. Philip
Randolph, the head of
the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters,
and A. J.Muste, leader
of the Fellowship of Reconcihation (FOR).
The three of them proposed a march on
Washington to protest racial discrimination
in the armed forces, but the march was can
celed after President Franklin D. Roosevelt
issued Executive Order 8802 (the Fair
Employment Act), v/hkh banned discrimina
tion in defense industries and federal
bureaus. Rustin also went to California to
protect the property of Japanese-Americans
imprisoned in internment camps. Impressed
with Rustin’s organizational skfils, Muste
appointed him as FOR’s secretary for student
and general affairs.
In 1942, Rustin assisted two other
staffers of FOR, George Houser and James L.
Farmer, Jr., and a third activist, Berniece
Fisher, as they formed the Congress of
Racial Equality (CORE). Rustin, Houser,
see next page >
828-322-8103
101N. Center st.
Hickory, nc 28601
Open Thursday-sunday
9:30 pm - unto
www.ciuhcabaret.net
16 FEBRUARY 10.2007 • Q-NOTES