Bayard Rustin
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Biography
Bayard Rustin (1912-1987)
Referred to as “Mr. March on Washington”, Rustin was a close advisor to Martin Luther King and one of the most effective organizers of the civil rights movement. Rustin’s commitment to nonviolence began with his Quaker upbringing. While he was a student at the City College of New York in the 1930s, Rustin joined the Young Communists League (YCL) in an effort to emphasize civil rights, but eventually left the group in 1941 and was appointed youth organizer of the 1941 March on Washington. During this time, Rustin joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), where he organized campaigns and workshops on nonviolent direct action. During World War II, Bayard Rustin spent over two years in prison for refusing the draft. In 1947, Rustin was arrested again for CORE’s Journey of Reconciliation, which provided a model for the later Freedom Rides of 1961. After this imprisonment, Rustin published a report in several newspapers detailing his experience in prison on a brutal chain gang in North Carolina, which led to the reformation of the use of chain gangs in prisons. Several years later, Rustin traveled to Africa on a trip sponsored by FOR to work with West African independence movements. However, Rustin would be asked to resign from FOR in 1953 due to arrest and conviction on charges of ‘lewd vagrancy’, in which he was found having sex with two men in a car in Pasadena, California. Despite the persecution for his sexuality, Rustin maintained a sex-positive attitude, taking on lovers and remaining openly gay. Rustin became an advisor to King in 1956 during the Montgomery bus boycott. While other civil rights leaders looked down on Rustin’s background and queerness, King credited Rustin as a key strategist and provider of academic knowledge regarding nonviolent philosophies. Rustin was also instrumental in forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1956 and the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. In 1963 Rustin began organizing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which would bring over 200,000 participants to the US capital. He became involved in the LGBTQ+ movement and was an advocate for AIDS education until his death in 1987. Rustin is survived by his partner, Walter Naegle, who serves as the executive director of the Bayard Rustin Fund.