On the recommendation of A. Philip Randolph, a leader in both the trade union and civil rights movements, Rustin went to Montgomery in 1956 to advise King during the bus boycott. After graduating from West Chester High School as an honor student and three-letter star athlete, he drifted about the United States doing odd jobs and periodically studying history and literature at Cheney State Teachers College and Wilberforce University. Muste’s Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), an organization guided by the Gandhian principles of nonviolent protest that would later be deployed by civil rights leaders. Rustin again put the interests of the movement before his own, voluntarily stepping down from the SCLC. Organizer, Young Communist League, 1936-41 (resigned from party, 1941); Fellowship of Reconciliation, Chicago, IL, youth secretary, 1941, race relations director, 1942-53; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), field secretary and co-founder, 1942; jailed as a conscienti… Bayard Rustin (1910 – 1987) Politician Bayard Rustin was born March 17, 1910 in Chester, Pennsylvania and was raised by his grandfather, a caterer, and his grandmother, a Quaker who founded the black day nursery in Chester and was head of the local NAACP chapter. From this vantage point Rustin surveyed the violent upheavals and factionalism that soon characterized the movement for racial equality. The Oxford Companion to American Military History. He was the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was headed by A. Philip Randolph, the leading African-American labour-union president and socialist. https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rustin-bayard, "Rustin, Bayard Rustin became Muste’s chief acolyte, but his rise to leadership left him politically vulnerable, and in 1943 he was sentenced to three years in prison for refusing to register for selective service. The Bayard Rustin Fund: A Travel Support Fund for People of Color This fund is intended to be used to support People of Color's travel to FGC sponsored meetings and other activities, including the Summer Gathering. He was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1910, the youngest of nine children. Rustin became an honorary chairperson of the Socialist Party of America in 1972, before it changed its name to Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA); Rustin acted as national chairman of SDUSA during the 1970s. The bus boycott ended successfully in December of 1956 with the arrival in Montgomery of desegregation orders from the Supreme Court. In 1963, as Randolph renewed his plans for a massive March on Washington, he proposed Rustin as the coordinator for the national event. His father was a West Indian man with whom Florence had a stable relationship but never married. Toward the end of his life, he also became increasingly open about his homosexuality and spoke out in favor of equal rights for gays and lesbians. 1971. 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. . Awards: Man of the Year Award, NAACP Pittsburgh branch, 1965; Eleanor Roosevelt Award, Trade Union Leadership Council, 1966; Liberty Bell Award, Howard University Law School, 1967; John Dewey Award, United Federation of Teachers, 1968; Family of Man Award, National Council of Churches, 1969; John F. Kennedy Award, National Council of Jewish Women, 1971; Lyndon Johnson Award, Urban League, 1974; Murray Green Award, AFL-CIO, 1980; Stephen Wise Award, Jewish Committee, 1981; John La Farge Memorial Award, Catholic Interracial Council of New York, 1981; Defender of Jerusalem Award, 1987; honorary degrees from Clark College, Montclair State College, New School for Social Research, and Brown, Harvard, Columbia, New York, and Yale universities. . ." Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 17, 1912, Rustin served as Martin Luther King Jr.’s political adviser and as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. ." 2000. Troubles I’ve Seen, a Biography. Randolph offered Rustin temporary work with his March on Washington Movement, a project targeting racial discrimination in defense industries, and he further helped Rustin by arranging a meeting with A. J. Muste, the radical reformer who headed an international pacifist organization called the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). Rustin was particularly instrumental in the development of the nonviolent protest movement that evolved from the Montgomery bus boycott associated with Martin Luther King, Jr. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Following his release, in 1947, he proposed that a racially integrated group of sixteen FOR/CORE activists undertake a bus trip through the Upper South to test a recent Supreme Court decision on interstate travel. Car.) The papers, authored by Rustin and Levison, situated the events and provided a political and structural framework for the organization, emphasizing the need for a federation of southern civil rights leaders that would coordinate mass direct action, voter education, and outreach against racial oppression. Contemporary Black Biography. He was a proud Black man, a proud gay man, a master organizer, a public intellectual, a tireless resister, teacher and enactor of change. His continuing visible role in racial policies brought him additional arrests and beatings. Levine, Daniel. Civil rights leader Encyclopedia.com. D’emilio, John. This can only be achieved through a partnership approach and by building partnerships with our clients we provide the effective services that meet their needs. By the time of Rustin’s death in 1987 the goals and tactics of his political activity had undergone many changes, but his fundamental vision remained that of equal rights for all citizens in a fully democratic society. A Henry Louis Gate, Jr. blog post. Martin, Jonathan "Rustin, Bayard 1910–1987 Birmingham Protest March Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. In 1931 he left Pennsylvania to live with a relative in New York, where his vocal talent earned him irregular work as a cafe singer in Greenwich Village. The new organization, he felt, must be led by southern blacks, just as the boycott had been—which left Rustin himself in an awkward situation, as he was a northern black, an outsider even in the organization he helped create. Crisis (March 1985): 24–29, 32. carol v. r. george (1996)Updated bibliography. Again, Rustin’s diplomatic ability to smooth over conflicts among march leaders was key. Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. We innovate with outstanding artists and…, Community is a union for everyone. If you want to learn more, check out Brother Outsider: the Life of Bayard Rustin on PBS. Encyclopedia.com. ." (December 21, 2020). He had earlier blended strands of Gandhian nonviolence into his conception of pacifism. University of Bristol, School of Education, Barbican / Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Royal Academy of Engineering Engineering Engagement Programme. Randolph shared their concern, and, together with other northern civil rights leaders, prevailed upon Rustin to leave Montgomery. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Rustin, who died in 1987, has been granted a pardon by California Governor Gavin Newsom. "Bayard Rustin Award, and Man of the Year Award from the Pittsburgh chapter of the NAACP. The march was equally a personal triumph for Rustin, who in seven weeks had orchestrated the largest public protest in American history. When the party’s Central Committee insisted that Rustin stop his anti-segregation work, he resigned from the party. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, however, the American Communist party shifted its emphasis from the domestic to the international front and essentially halted its agitation for racial reform in the United States. Rustin organized the 1963 March on Washington and it was Rustin’s understanding and teaching of non-violence and unwavering commitment to non-discrimination that became the framework through which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lead. 42 (1787), https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/rustin-bayard-1910-1987, https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rustin-bayard, https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rustin-bayard, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/bayard-rustin, https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rustin-bayard-0, The Civil Rights Struggle: From Nonviolence to Black Power. Bayard Rustin was a brilliant strategist, pacifist, and forward-thinking civil rights activist during the middle of the 20th century. New York: Harper Collins. In a career spanning more than five decades, Rustin worked on behalf of equal rights with a variety of organizations—including the Communist party, labor unions, and pacifist groups—and exercised a leading role in the creation of two significant civil rights organizations: the Congress of Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. □. Rustin assisted in the founding of the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942. Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin. At the age of eleven Rustin made a startling discovery: the woman he had always been told was his sister, Florence, was in fact his mother, and the couple whom he knew as his parents were actually his grandparents. Throughout 1957 Bayard Rustin was at the center of this activity, organizing conferences, writing essays for discussion, and helping found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization that would play a central role in coming civil rights victories. Looking to enroll at Bayard Rustin Elementary? 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. After his release from the chain gang, Rustin traveled to India, where he was received by Mohandas K. Gandhi's sons. ." A Way Out of the Exploding Ghetto (1967); Down the Line (1971); and Strategies for Freedom (1976). Bayard Rustin He conceived the coalition of liberal, labor and religious leaders who supported passage of the civil rights and anti-poverty legislation of the 1960s and, as the first executive director of the AFL-CIO's A. Philip Randolph Institute, he worked closely with the labor movement to ensure African American workers' rightful place in the House of Labor. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania. (December 21, 2020). Arrested in North Carolina, Rustin served 22 days on a chain gang. He formed an organization called In Friendship in March 1956, and he publishing King’s writings in the journal Liberation. Rustin’s sexuality, or at least his embarrassingly public criminal charge, was criticized by some fellow pacifists and civil-rights leaders. We are proud of our reputation as a leading…, The Barbican exists to inspire people to discover and love the arts. Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. Encyclopedia.com. 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. "Bayard Rustin Story at a glance. Sponsored by CORE, this “Journey of Reconciliation” In 1942 FOR established a Department of Race Relations, with Rustin and another young black activist, James Farmer, serving as directors. His skills as an organizer, planner, and leader were highly valued by prominent leaders in the Civil Rights Movement; yet, Rustin was relegated to the background during the Movement. Under Rustin’s direction, the March on Washington proved to be a turning point in American history. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Whitney Young of the National Urban League sought to de-emphasize civil disobedience and militancy in fear that such action would threaten President Kennedy’proposed civil rights legislation. To avoid such attacks, Rustin served only rarely as a public spokesperson. King advised the march organizers that the SCLC’s primary concern was civil rights, not unemployment. He accumulated a colorful personal history, beginning with his youthful discovery that the woman he had assumed was his older sister was actually his mother. However, in 1953, following one of his speaking engagements in Pasadena, Rustin was charged with lewd conduct for engaging in gay sex. Because of focal changes effected by Randolph’efforts to cement the participation of King and other leaders, President Kennedy publicly endorsed the March in July. A master logistician, Rustin organized many of the key civil rights demonstrations of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and 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. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rustin-bayard-0, John Whiteclay Chambers II "Rustin, Bayard [1][2] He counseled Martin Luther King, Jr. on the techniques of nonviolent resistance. Jervis Anderson , Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 1997. Contemporary Black Biography. See more ideas about African american history, Black history, Bayard. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 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. Termed the Journey of Reconciliation, the trip was essentially peaceful, although participants encountered violence outside Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Rustin and three others were charged with violating the segregation laws. In April of 1969, when James Forman presented the Black Manifesto, a public call for reparations to the Afric…, James Luther Bevel (born 1936) was a civil rights activist of the 1960s who aligned himself with Martin Luther King, Jr. "On the Economic Condition of Blacks." Rustin joined the Young Communist League, whose leaders recognized him as a good organizer who could appeal to other young blacks; they appointed him a youth recruiter for the party. The only integrated social clubs in New York were operated by Communist organizers who hoped to enlist the support of blacks, and during this period Rustin became affiliated with the Communist party. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in the Rustin home. Increasingly, this work led Rustin away from a strict focus on civil rights and toward international human rights issues. Education: Wilberforce University, 1930-31; Cheyney State Normal School (now Cheyney State College), 1931-33; City College of New York, 1933-35. By the mid-1950s a grass-roots civil rights movement had begun to emerge in the South. © 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. See also Civil Rights Movement, U.S.; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Montgomery, Ala., Bus Boycott; Randolph, Asa Philip; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In the mid-1930s, seeking an organization that shared his opposition to war and racism, he joined the Young Communist League (YCL). Rustin began the most productive period of his career upon his release from prison in March 1947. Throughout much of his career, Rustin tried to control the potential negative impact his sexuality could have on the causes for which he worked. Rustin was attacked as a “pervert” or “immoral influence” by political opponents from segregationists to Black power militants, and from the 1950s through the 1970s. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. (December 21, 2020). During this period of active outreach, Rustin also became publicly vocal about his gay identity, challenging the civil rights establishment to adopt an agenda more inclusive of black gay men and lesbians and urging community leaders to respond to the ravages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I would celebrate Bayard Rustin each and every day but on the twenty fourth day of Black History Month 2016 I want to especially celebrate and remember the gay, Black, male and Quaker activist who introduced Dr. MLK, Jr. and the civil rights movement to Ghandi and non-violence. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. But with this participation came a number of political conflicts that Rustin and Randolph compelled to deal with. As a result, Rustin’s conception of the march was moderated. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. (December 21, 2020). Please join EDS at Union for a screening of Brother Outsider, on Wednesday, October 2 at 6:30 pm. New York: Columbia University Press. He had come to believe that it was time to move on to the political arena. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. The boycott’s success might be jeopardized by association with a man whose personal life and Communist connections were vulnerable to criticism. a Committee on Fair Employment Practices to enforce the order. He was on a humanitarian mission in Haiti when he died in 1987. Strategies for Freedom: The Changing Patterns of Black Protest, Columbia University Press, 1976. The Oxford Companion to American Military History. In 1964 Rustin was appointed executive director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a liberal “think tank” sponsored by the AFL-CIO labor organization in the hope of developing cures for social ills. Interracial in its membership, CORE’s activities focused on challenging racial discrimination in public accommodations and transportation. This award-winning film introduced millions of viewers around the world to Bayard Rustin — the visionary strategist and activist who has been called “the unknown hero” of the civil rights movement. He resigned from FOR, served a thirty-day jail sentence, and returned to New York. I just happened to be a participant in the March on Washington in August of 1963 & More. 1988. Now possessed of a reputation as an activist in the politics of race, Rustin was able to offer advice to the members of the FOR cell who became the nucleus for a new nonviolent action organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). With these influences in his early life, Rustin campaigned against racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws in his youth… Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). Rustin, Bayard. Rosa Louise Parks was nationally recognized as the “mother of the modern day civil rights movement” in America…. The boycott soon attracted the attention of the national press and of northern civil rights activists; to Bayard Rustin, the Montgomery bus boycott represented a chance to regain his former influence by joining what appeared certain to become a national movement. ." Adam Clayton Powell Jr., an African-American congressman, threatened to announce to the press a fabricated gay coupling between Rustin and King unless they halted plans for a march at the Democratic National Convention. 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