Bayard Rustin by Charlotte Whitely

Bayard Rustin

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-02 19:45:41 UTC

Born 17 March 1912 Rustin civil rights organizer and political activist, was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of Archie Hopkins and Florence “Cissy” Rustin.

Early Life

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-02 19:46:05 UTC

Rustin believed Cissy was his sister because Hopkins abandoned sixteen-year-old Cissy before their child was born. Not until Bayard was eleven he discovered that Cissy was his mother and that his “parents” Janifer Rustin, a caterer, and Julia Rustin, a nurse, were, in fact, his grandparents.

Citations

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-02 19:57:12 UTC

"Bayard Rustin." Encyclopedia of World Biography, Gale, 1998. U.S. History in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1631005745/UHIC?u=tryitilk12&xid=15e15e5f. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017.

Niven, Steven J.. "Rustin, Bayard Taylor." African American National Biography. Ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Oxford African American Studies Center. Sat Nov 04 10:49:35 EDT 2017. .

Connections with MLKJ

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-02 19:57:46 UTC

Joining Martin Luther King, Jr. first in the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, Rustin served for a half dozen years as a special assistant to King and played a major role in planning the establishment of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

With the Civil Rights Movement

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-04 14:38:51 UTC

A master logistician, Rustin organized many of the key civil rights demonstrations of the late 1950s and early 1960s. A. Philip Randolph again turned to him to orchestrate the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of August 28, 1963, which brought nearly a quarter of a million Americans to the Lincoln Memorial to petition for African American rights. In 1964, in the largest civil rights demonstration ever, he mobilized a boycott of the New York City public schools to protest racial imbalance. The eruption of violent race riots in the African American ghettoes of the nation and the emergence of the Black Power movement in the mid-1960s, however, forced Rustin from the forefront of African American protest and demonstrations.

Early Achievements

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-04 14:51:48 UTC

After graduating from West Chester High School as an honor student and three-letter star athlete, he moved about the United States doing odd jobs and periodically studying history and literature at Cheney State Teachers College and Wilberforce University. In the mid-1930s, searching for an organization that shared his opposition to war and racism, he joined the Young Communist League (YCL). later in 1938, he moved to Harlem as an organizer for the league, enrolling in the City College of New York and earning his livelihood by singing in nightclubs with Josh White and Huddie Ledbetter ("Leadbelly").

Life Long Partner?

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-04 15:40:10 UTC

Naegle and Rustin met when Naegle was on my way to Times Square. they both were on the same corner waiting for the light to change. Naegle said " He had a wonderful shock of white hair. I guess he was of my parents' generation. But we looked at each other and lightning struck. He was my life partner for 10 years." Because same-sex marriage was illegal Rustin adopted Naegle so Naegle would have protection when Rustin died. Because of their age difference Rustin. Rustin was going to die before Naegle.

Learning His Future Methods

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-04 15:40:54 UTC

After the end of World War II Rustin became chairman of the Free India Committee and later went to India to study the Gandhi movement's nonviolent civil disobedience. In 1947 he organized a Journey of Reconciliation to 15 cities in the South to publicize segregation in interstate transportation and to encourage African Americans to insist on the rights they had won in the courts. Arrested in North Carolina, Rustin served 22 days on a chain gang. (Two years later North Carolina abolished chain gangs.) In 1948 he directed A. Philip Randolph's Committee Against Discrimination in the Armed Forces, which helped to persuade President Harry S. Truman to issue an executive order banning racial segregation in the military.

His Books and Awards

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-04 15:45:49 UTC

Rustin was the author of Down the Line(1971), Strategies for Freedom (1976), and Which Way Out? A Way Out of the Exploding Ghetto (1967). Rustin received numerous honors, including the Eleanor Roosevelt Award, Liberty Bell Award, Eugene V. Debs Award, Howard University Law School J.F.K. Award, and Man of the Year Award from the Pittsburgh chapter of the NAACP. He also chaired such notable organizations as the Social Democrats, U.S.A.; the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; and the Black Americans to Support Israel Committee. On November 20, 2013, Naegle accepted the Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in honor of Rustin's work of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Death of a Man

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-04 16:06:48 UTC

In his nearly half a century struggle for peace, civil rights, and economic justice, Rustin was arrested more than 20 times. He never softened his principles. As late as 1980 he said, "You cannot give respectability to one terrorist group [meaning the Palestine Liberation Organization] without other groups benefiting from that respectability." Rustin died in New York City of a heart attack August 24, 1987.

A War less Man

charlotte_whitely18 — 2017-11-04 16:11:37 UTC

Rustin helped to form the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to challenge Jim Crow by nonviolent direct action. A conscientious objector to military service, Rustin was imprisoned for resisting the draft in 1943 and served nearly two and a half years in the Ashland Correction Institute and Lewisburg Penitentiary.