Changemaker: Bayard Rustin
“We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.”
— Bayard Rustin
In June we celebrate both Pride Month and Juneteenth. To honor this intersection of gay rights and racial justice, this month we highlight changemaker Bayard Rustin — Civil rights activist, advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, gay man, conscientious objector, and angelic troublemaker.
Rustin was the Deputy Director of the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. King delivered his iconic “I Have A Dream” speech, and appeared on the cover of Life Magazine a week later. But even though he was one of Dr. King’s most influential advisors and a tireless activist for equality his whole life, Bayard Rustin was often considered a liability to the civil rights movement due to his homosexuality, and his unwillingness to pretend to be someone he was not.
Rustin and King first worked together during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Rustin had just returned from India where he studied the teachings and nonviolence tenets of Mahatma Gandhi. This deepend the Quaker values of nonviolence and equality instilled in him by the grandparents who raised him, and while in Montgomery he convinced Dr. King to espouse nonviolence for his civil rights movement. After the success of the boycott, Rustin became one of King’s most trusted advisors.
However, Rustin and King became estranged over Rustin’s homosexuality, and Rustin resigned from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which he helped found. But several years later when A. Phillip Randolph asked Rustin to help plan a march on Washington in 1963, Rustin agreed and met with Dr. King to start planning. From the headquarters in New York, Rustin worked constantly on planning the march. Some members objected to Rustin leading the march, worried that his homosexuality would become a target, and wanted to oust him. But Randolph and King stood firm. Sure enough, less than a month before the march Strom Thurmond took to the Senate floor and denounced Rustin as a “Communist, draft-dodger and homosexual.” But, coming from a segregationist and affirmed bigot, the comments only served to galvanize the organizers of the march to stand by Rustin. The successful march was capped by Rustin taking the microphone to read the demands that civil rights leaders were going to take to President Kennedy.
Jailed several times for civil disobedience and for refusing the draft, Rustin’s ideals and passion helped shape the civil rights movement as we know it. His open homosexuality during a time of violent homophobia often kept those contributions from being acknowledged. He never tired of activism, and later in life became a staunch advocate for gay rights.
Although during his lifetime he was too often kept the background or swept under the rug, in 2013 Rustin was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions.
Learn more about Bayard Rustin in these links.
Go out and be an angelic troublemaker yourself!
