September 17, 2018 • 30 mins
The seasoned activist and Quaker Bayard Rustin was King’s mentor in nonviolence and the organizing genius behind the March on Washington in 1963. Many felt that Rustin was on his way to becoming the “American Gandhi.” There was just one problem: Rustin was gay, and as a result, would be forced to the sidelines of the civil rights struggle, and to the margins of American history.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's a hot summer day in August. A crowd of
more than two hundred thousand people is gathered before the
Lincoln Memorial in Washington, d C. You know the story,
You definitely know the speech. I have a dream. But
one day this nation will rise up, live out the
(00:28):
true meaning of its screen. But do you know the
man responsible for putting Martin Luther King Jr. Behind that podium,
the man who organized the march on Washington. You can
see him in video footage of the historic moment. He
is standing on Dr King's right, and you can even
hear him bellowing his approval when King reaches the end
of his famous speech, Free at last, Free at last,
(00:51):
Thank God a matter. The man next to Dr King
is Byard rust As we learned an episode one, Rustin
first came to King's aid during the Montgomery bus boycott.
The Quaker activist was King's mentor, and it was Rustin,
not King, who many fellow activists looked too early on
(01:12):
at the potential father of the civil rights movement. Bayard
Rustin was a master strategist, a tireless organizer, and an
outright force of nature in the civil rights movement and
more than any other person. He was responsible for injecting
(01:33):
non violent protest into the black freedom struggle. So why
have so many of us never heard of him? Well,
Rustin was not only a black man, he was a
gay man as well, and in twentieth century America, those
two facts would prove too difficult for even a man
as talented as Rustin to fully overcome. You don't off
(02:00):
to ride Jim Kow. No, you don't have to ride
Jim Kroll on June the Third High Court said when
you ride in the state Jim Crow is dead. You
don't have to ride Jim. I'm Sean braswell, and this
is the thread. This season, we are pulling the thread
on a powerful and revolutionary idea, non violent resistance. An
(02:24):
episode one, we saw how a young Martin Luther King Jr.
Elevated the U s Civil rights movement using non violence.
In this episode, we pull back the curtain on Bayard Rustin,
the man who helped King to take up the banner
of non violence in the first place. Byrd, Rustin's life
teaches us that sometimes it is the people that we
don't learn about in history class that make the biggest
(02:45):
impact on our lives. If you're joining us for the
first time, we encourage you to go back and listen
to episode one, when United Action turns the tide and
black and white sit side by side. Oh, someday we
will be. In nineteen fifty six, Martin Luther King Jr.
(03:09):
With the help of Buyard Rustin, unveiled a new weapon
to combat racial injustice in the United States. For several
weeks now, were the nigrot citizens of Montgomery have been
involved in a non violent protest against the injustices which
we have experienced on the buses a number of years.
(03:32):
Rust And discussed the effect of the Montgomery boycott in
a nineteen seventy nine interview. Oh. I think if there
had been any violence at all, they were prepared to
deal with that. But they could not deal with were
people who were not being violent, and there was a
kind of moral geoujitsu going on, a moral rustling, and
(03:53):
they didn't know how to put their hands on us
because it was so intensely non violent. This is Rustin.
Biographer John demilio I interviewed many of the pacifists who
worked with Rustin in the nineteen forties and early fifties,
and at some point. In almost every interview I did,
(04:15):
each one of them would say some equivalent to we
thought he would be the American Gandhi. Now think about that,
Think about what that means about how powerful they perceived
Rustin to be as a model of non violent activism.
Every fiber in Rustin's being was dedicated to the principles
(04:38):
of non violence, and more than any other person, he
was the one responsible for launching King's famous dream. Still,
Rustin makes no more than a cameo appearance in most
history books about the time. This is civil rights leader
Timothy Jenkins, who knew Rustin personally. No, I don't think
that the that the virusors historically fully appreciated for his importance,
(05:01):
and I don't think that he was appreciated fully at
it when he was alive. Rustin actually had an experience
similar to Rosa Parks on a segregated bus thirteen years
before he joined King in Montgomery. John Damilo explains he's
traveling to the South and on a bus in Tennessee.
He refuses to go to the back and puts himself
(05:25):
in the front of the bus, where he is sitting
next to white passengers in rows reserved for Whites. The
bus driver calls the police. Soon rest In here sirens.
Four police officers board the bus and approach Rustin. He
patiently explains to them that he has a right to
sit there. He points to a young white child sitting
(05:47):
nearby and says that if he moves to the back
of the bus, he will be quote depriving that child
of the knowledge that there is an injustice here. The
officers dragged Rustin from the bus. The police start beating him.
Rustin doesn't defend himself. Rustin, a tall, thirty year old
black man, extends his arms parallel to the ground. As
(06:07):
the officers begin to hit him with their clubs. He
tells them there's no need to beat him. He is
not resisting. When they take him to the police station,
there is more physical assault. The hallway leading to the
police captain's office is lined with officers on both sides.
Rustin is tossed from one to another. He endures more blows.
(06:28):
His clothes are ripped, and he doesn't resist. Rustin is
then taken into the captain's office, where he calmly asks,
what can I do for you? The angry captain leans
in and yells at Rustin quote, You're supposed to be
scared when you come in here, but buyared. Rustin wasn't scared.
At times, he was utterly fearless. Rustin's commitment to non
(06:52):
violence was total and complete. It wasn't simply a political
tactic that he used in a dem instration. It was
the way he intended to live his life, and he
expected himself too. And there are many instances in Rustin's
life where uh confronted with beatings by police or demonstrators.
(07:14):
He never fought back. Take this incident at a demonstration
in nineteen one, Rustin was attacked with a stick by
an angry spectator. He picked up a stick of his own.
Then he handed his attack or the second stick and
asked him if he wanted to use both. The disoriented
man threw the two sticks down and stormed away. Rustin
(07:36):
explained the logic of his non violent approach in a
later interview. There are three ways to deal with injustice.
One is to accept it slavishly, or one can insisted
with arms, or one can use non violence. The man
who believes in non violence is prepared to be harmed,
to be crushed, but he will never crush others Rustin
(08:04):
grew up in Westchester, Pennsylvania, which was very much a
Quaker town. It had been a stop on the underground
railroad in the nineteenth century. His grandmother, Julia, who raised him,
worked in the households of Quaker families, and so Quakerism
was a part of his life. Rustin was a good
(08:24):
athlete and a lover of the arts. He would often
recite classical poems allowed at school, even while at football practice.
In the late nineteen thirties, Rustin moved to New York.
He attended City College and paid his bills by singing
in Greenwich Village nightclubs. Then he landed his first real job.
He actually starts working for an organization called the Fellowship
(08:47):
of Reconciliation, which was um a pacifist organization whose membership
was mostly ministers committed to the philosophy and practice of
non islands. It's not a great time to be a
pacifist in the United States. The attack on Pearl Harbor
comes three months later. Most Americans rallied to support the
(09:10):
war effort. Rustin did not. I'm a Quaker, and as
everyone knows, Quakers for three years have on conscientious grounds
being against participating in the rule, but participation was mandatory,
so when he finally received the call uh to military service,
(09:32):
Rustin had made the decision that he was not going
to cooperate in any way with the military. Rustin was arrested.
He waived his right to trial, pled guilty, and received
a three year sentence. He was thirty one years old
when he entered Ashland Prison in Kentucky. He's classified almost
(09:53):
from the beginning as a notorious offender, which means that
are watching his every move. He's also a black man
in a primarily white movement going to a prison that
is racially segregated, and so Rustin, ever, the activist, is
(10:18):
now in federal prison, but is organizing prisoners to resist segregation.
Thanks to Rustin, the prison athletic program was soon integrated
and prisoners were allowed to move between the white and
colored sections of the prison. But not all of the
prisoners cared for Rustin's integration efforts. A number of the
(10:39):
prisoners are white Southerners themselves, and at a certain point
one of them is enraged at the way Rustin is
challenging segregation and goes after him with a stick. And
there are other people around and Rustin just puts his
(10:59):
hands up to try to protect his face from injury,
but doesn't resist in any way. When a fellow prisoners
try to protect him, he tells them no. Rustin's attacker
continued to rain violent blows on him, and again Rustin
calmly responded, you can't hurt me. The other prisoner received
(11:21):
no punishment for the incident. Rustin was disciplined by the warden.
His activism had not made him popular with prison officials.
They soon learned that the formidable organizer had an achilles heel,
at least given the time in which he lived. Rustin
is a gay man in an era where no one
(11:41):
accepts being gay, and the prison officials realized that they
can expose his sexuality, and they bring him up on
charges of sexual misconduct. Rustin's integration efforts came to a halt.
They put him in solid Harry confinement. It's a horrendous
(12:02):
experience for him. There are I found in the archives
two mug shots of Rustin. The first one, when he
arrives in prison. He looks so serene, as if you
can't do anything to me. The second one is taken
after he's been in isolation. For several months, and the
(12:25):
pain in his face is unmistakable. It was not the
last time in Rustin's life that his sexual orientation would
provoke such a response and derail his career. Buyard Rustin
was released from prison in nine and at that time
the U. S. Supreme Court handed down a decision holding
(12:46):
that segregation and interstate transportation was unconstitutional. Here was a
golden opportunity for Rustin to use non violence to test
the enforcement of the new law, and they create an
organization called CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality and so,
nearly fifteen years before the famous Freedom Writers hit the
road during the nineteen sixties, Rustin helped recruit a team
(13:09):
of fourteen men, divided equally by race, to ride in
pairs on buses throughout the South. Other black civil rights leaders,
including the Inn Double A. C. P, wanted no part
of the plan. The future Supreme Court Justice Third Good
Marshall told Rustin, you are insane to try this, just dumb.
Rustin knew the risks. His team endured twelve arrests and
(13:32):
numerous threats of violence along the way. In North Carolina,
four of the riders, including Rustin, were dragged from the
bus and arrested. Rustin would later serve time on a
chain gang as a result, but the organized acts of
non cooperation that Rustin and his team engaged in helped
lay the groundbook for future acts of non violent protests
(13:52):
during the civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties.
The journey was an important experiment um It also in
a sense demonstrated in that the country wasn't yet ready
or prepared to build a mass movement, and so it
became an example, a model of what you could do,
(14:16):
even if the impact wasn't dramatic. By the early nineteen fifties,
buyired Rustin was a reformer to be reckoned with, but
his sexual orientation continued to be a problem in the
activist community. Rustin never pretended to be a straight man,
(14:38):
but during the mid twentieth century in the United States,
it was not safe to come out as a gay one.
One never knows when the homosexual is about. He may
appear normal, and it may be too late when you
discover he is mentally ill. So keep with your group
and don't go off alone with strangers unless you have
the permission of your parents or teacher. Every state in
(15:01):
the nation criminalized homosexual behavior at the time. This is
civil rights leader Timothy Jenkins. Again. One of the things
that he felt he suffered was the double burden, or
as he sometimes so called it, the double cross of
being black and also being gay, and he appreciated that
(15:21):
the hostile forces on the question of race were also
hostile on the forces of sexual orientation, and uh he
felt that he was being discriminated against on both counts.
Such discrimination made it very difficult to have a social life.
John Damelio again also in those years, if you're gay
(15:46):
and the gay world is hidden and you're looking to
meet other gay men, you engage in what was called
at that time street cruising. And rust In, both as
a gay man and as a black man, was so
susceptible to the police, and a number of times in
(16:06):
the forties he was arrested for street cruising lewd conduct.
Then another incident occurred that would turn Rustin's world upside down.
In nine he's in California giving talks and meeting with
Quaker and Pacifist groups, and in the middle of the night,
(16:28):
the police in Pasadena find him in a parked car
with two white men and arrest all three of them
for performing lewd acts. Rustin's employers at the Fellowship of
Reconciliation punished him, so Rustin has let go. This is
not only a pacifist organization built on certain kinds of
(16:52):
moral principles, but as an organization primarily of ministers, and
here a key staff person has been arrested and convicted
of a rals charge. Rust And lost almost everything he had.
The man who had tried so hard to cast himself
as a principled activist had been branded a sex offender.
He has to suddenly start strategizing how to be an
(17:14):
activist who remains invisible to the public. It would take
rust In years to fight his way off the sidelines
of the civil rights struggle. Then in n he saw
an opportunity to get back in the game. That opportunity
with the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, a young, dynamic
(17:36):
preacher named Martin Luther King started to appear on the
national news. It was clear to many of those in
the civil rights struggle that the boycott represented a turning point.
As word of the bus boycott travels north. For Rustin,
this is his dream. He's been waiting half of a
(17:57):
lifetime for something like the US to happen instead of
an action that five people engage in and get arrested
and that's it. A whole community is joining together to
resist racial segregation. Rustin and other Northern Pacifists were worried
(18:18):
that the black community in Montgomery might resort to violence.
After King's house was bombed, Rustin decided to go to
Montgomery to lend his support. This is King biographer David
Garrow now in nineteen fifty six. Being an uncloseted homosexual,
especially within Black America, made someone untouchable in many quarters,
(18:45):
and so even though Byared hastens to Montgomery to advise King,
others in New York are are worried whether those aspects
of Bayard's history might be used a enst him. Rustin,
who recognized these concerns, kept a low profile. He did
(19:05):
not go out after dark alone. He often consulted with
King over the phone. Rustin soon found himself at the
heart of one of the most significant protests in American history.
Rustin sees his key work as helping to develop doctor
King as a nationally recognized leader. In the years following Montgomery,
(19:29):
Rustin made himself indispensable to King and to the Civil
rights movement. Rustin remained behind the scenes, but if you
look closely, you could discern his hand almost everywhere. Rustin
became an advisor to King. He also introduced King to
Northern activists, labor leaders, and other prominent individuals who became
major financial supporters of the movement. Timothy Jenkins again, I
(19:53):
came to know by Rustin as a voice for passive
resistance in a very important way, And of course he
inspired much of the leadership that led to the political
revolution of the South to pursue the course of of
tactics as opposed to just the demonstrations. Rustin fought his
(20:16):
way back from the margins to shape the principles and
methods of the civil rights movement. Then came his biggest
test yet. Up next, the eyes of America and the
world turned to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in
the summer of nineteen sixty three. The March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom is the single most significant demonstration
in US history, the event that launched Dr King's famous dream.
(20:40):
The man who organized that march was by Ed Ruston,
but only after he survived the efforts of some of
the most powerful men in America to bring the march
to its knees um. Because of his sexual orientation and
(21:13):
criminal record, Buyard Rustin tried to coordinate the March on
Washington under the radar. It wasn't easy, and by early August,
just weeks before the march, his role became more public
and at one point even the Washington Post, I think,
actually describes him as Mr. March on Washington. And the
(21:36):
FBI does an investigation. It gathers whatever material it can
find on Rustin, including his arrest in Pasadena on sex charges,
and provides that information to Strom Thurmond, who is a
white segregationist senator from South Carolina. And Thurman gets up
(21:58):
more than once on the floor of the Senate and
reads into the Congressional record all of this condemning information
about Rustin. The attack did not have its intended effect.
Rustin's fellow civil rights leaders leaped to his defense. What's
so important about three in Rustin's life and the history
(22:20):
of non violence is that because the march was so
visible and so important this time, when Rustin is attacked
for his sexuality, all of the organizational leaders come together
and explicitly stand by him and defend him so that
(22:45):
he doesn't lose his role as organizer of the march
on Washington. I remember about five thirty in the morning.
I was out on the mall and the press was
surrounding me, and I was saying, Mr Rust and Mr Rust,
and what's happening. You said, we're going to be a
quarter of a million people and are scarcely half doesn't here.
(23:06):
I remember taking out of my pocket a blank sheet
of paper and taking my watch out of the other pocket.
I looked at my watching the blank sheet of paper,
and I said, just when everything is going according to
oil And I was terrified that people weren't going to
show up, but they did. It was an event like
the nation had never witnessed before. The crowd two fifty
(23:28):
thousand people gathered on the mall, and they heard speeches
that were inspiring and sometimes they were rousing speeches as well.
Rusting himself addressed the massive crowd, magine that we have
(23:48):
effective civil rights legislation, no compromise, no Philip Uxter, and
that he didn't plude public accommodation. Din how it's a
greater education f f A PC and the like to vote.
What do you say but of course the main event
(24:11):
in the final speaker, thanks to Ruston's own plan, was
Martin Luther King. And it's just an astounding success. And
of course it gives Dr King an even more visible
platform to be a national leader. And there was not
a hint of violence anywhere. Rusting himself later summarized it. Now,
(24:32):
the single person was arrested in Washington that day. Now
the single person was drunk that day or picked up
for drunkenness. There were no major problems of any kind.
The march ended for me when we had finally made
sure we had not left one piece of paper, not
(24:54):
a cup, nothing, and buy ed. Rustin continued to fight
for justice in the decades ahead. In the nineteen eighties,
at the end of his life, he turned his attention
to gay rights through it all rest and consistently downplayed himself. Well,
my role was a very simple role. It was a
(25:16):
role of saying that Martin Luther King, I have certain skills.
I have skills which are good at analyzing problems. I
have skills of the wood and planning and executing. I
do not consider myself a leader. I consider myself a
spokesman for a given point of view. Barack Obama awarded
(25:39):
Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom in fifty years after
the historic March on Washington. The White House has announced
it will posthumously award the highest civilian honor in the
United States, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, to the trail
blazing civil rights active astpired Rustin. It was a fitting
honor for a man who gave so much to the
cause of freedom, working in the background, away from the headlines,
(26:04):
Rustin changed life for millions of people. Rustin's own outlook
and life, however, were largely shaped by another man, one
that he never met, but who also changed life for
millions of people on the other side of the globe.
(26:24):
During the nineteen twenties and thirties, the world grew captivated
by a small man in a loincloth taking on an
empire in India. It wasn't simply that Gandhi had a
personal commitment to non violence, but Gandhi was showing, at
least from a distance, that preaching and practicing non violence
(26:48):
could be a route to massive social change. Gandhi's commitment
and methods were a revelation for Rustin. He began a
lifelong campaign to introduce Gandhi's non violent tactic into the
struggle for racial justice in the United States. He finally
made it to India UH late forty eight, the very
beginning of forty nine, and unfortunately, when he finally did
(27:12):
make the trip, UH Gandhi had already passed away. But
it was a powerful trip for him, and if anything,
it increased the attractiveness of non violence as a route
to social change and political activism. Rustin traveled around India
for almost two months. He returned to the United States
(27:35):
and continued to preach Gandhian non violence to the black community.
Rustin liked to tell audiences that fighting injustice required quote
angelic troublemakers, Our power is in our ability to make
things unworkable. The only weapon we have is our bodies,
(28:00):
and we need to tuck them in places so wheels
don't turn. Eight years later, Buyed Rustin, the Ultimate Angelic Troublemaker,
put that principle into action, making sure that the wheels
did not turn in Montgomery, Alabama. Together, Rustin and Martin
Luther King Jr. Made things unworkable for those white leaders
(28:23):
in the South who wished to preserve a segregated society,
but the true ideological father of King and Rustin's nonviolent
movement was not Black or even America. In the next episode,
we journey to India and South Africa to explore the
remarkable life of Mahandas Gandhi, the man who proved that
non violence could achieve major political reforms and even take
(28:46):
down an entire empire. You don't have to ride him call. No,
you don't have to ride Jim Call on June the
Third High Court said, when you ride in the state
Jim who is dead? You don't know? The threat is
produced by Libby Coleman, Robert Coulos, Sophia Perpetua, and me
Sean braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show. This episode features
(29:10):
Bayard Rustin performing a song called you Don't have to
Ride Jim Crow. To learn more about the Thread, visit
AUSI dot com, slash the thread all one word, and
make sure to subscribe to the Thread on Apple podcasts,
follow us on I Heart Radio, or listen wherever you
get your podcasts. Check us out at AUSI dot com
or on Twitter and Facebook. If you love surprising, engaging
(29:31):
stories from history, look no further than the flashback section
of ausy dot com, that's o z y dot com. Free. Yes, someday,
real love be free. When United Action turns the tide
and black and white sit side by side. Oh Sunday,
(29:54):
real Oh be free
It's a hot summer day in August. A crowd of
more than two hundred thousand people is gathered before the
Lincoln Memorial in Washington, d C. You know the story,
You definitely know the speech. I have a dream. But
one day this nation will rise up, live out the
(00:28):
true meaning of its screen. But do you know the
man responsible for putting Martin Luther King Jr. Behind that podium,
the man who organized the march on Washington. You can
see him in video footage of the historic moment. He
is standing on Dr King's right, and you can even
hear him bellowing his approval when King reaches the end
of his famous speech, Free at last, Free at last,
(00:51):
Thank God a matter. The man next to Dr King
is Byard rust As we learned an episode one, Rustin
first came to King's aid during the Montgomery bus boycott.
The Quaker activist was King's mentor, and it was Rustin,
not King, who many fellow activists looked too early on
(01:12):
at the potential father of the civil rights movement. Bayard
Rustin was a master strategist, a tireless organizer, and an
outright force of nature in the civil rights movement and
more than any other person. He was responsible for injecting
(01:33):
non violent protest into the black freedom struggle. So why
have so many of us never heard of him? Well,
Rustin was not only a black man, he was a
gay man as well, and in twentieth century America, those
two facts would prove too difficult for even a man
as talented as Rustin to fully overcome. You don't off
(02:00):
to ride Jim Kow. No, you don't have to ride
Jim Kroll on June the Third High Court said when
you ride in the state Jim Crow is dead. You
don't have to ride Jim. I'm Sean braswell, and this
is the thread. This season, we are pulling the thread
on a powerful and revolutionary idea, non violent resistance. An
(02:24):
episode one, we saw how a young Martin Luther King Jr.
Elevated the U s Civil rights movement using non violence.
In this episode, we pull back the curtain on Bayard Rustin,
the man who helped King to take up the banner
of non violence in the first place. Byrd, Rustin's life
teaches us that sometimes it is the people that we
don't learn about in history class that make the biggest
(02:45):
impact on our lives. If you're joining us for the
first time, we encourage you to go back and listen
to episode one, when United Action turns the tide and
black and white sit side by side. Oh, someday we
will be. In nineteen fifty six, Martin Luther King Jr.
(03:09):
With the help of Buyard Rustin, unveiled a new weapon
to combat racial injustice in the United States. For several
weeks now, were the nigrot citizens of Montgomery have been
involved in a non violent protest against the injustices which
we have experienced on the buses a number of years.
(03:32):
Rust And discussed the effect of the Montgomery boycott in
a nineteen seventy nine interview. Oh. I think if there
had been any violence at all, they were prepared to
deal with that. But they could not deal with were
people who were not being violent, and there was a
kind of moral geoujitsu going on, a moral rustling, and
(03:53):
they didn't know how to put their hands on us
because it was so intensely non violent. This is Rustin.
Biographer John demilio I interviewed many of the pacifists who
worked with Rustin in the nineteen forties and early fifties,
and at some point. In almost every interview I did,
(04:15):
each one of them would say some equivalent to we
thought he would be the American Gandhi. Now think about that,
Think about what that means about how powerful they perceived
Rustin to be as a model of non violent activism.
Every fiber in Rustin's being was dedicated to the principles
(04:38):
of non violence, and more than any other person, he
was the one responsible for launching King's famous dream. Still,
Rustin makes no more than a cameo appearance in most
history books about the time. This is civil rights leader
Timothy Jenkins, who knew Rustin personally. No, I don't think
that the that the virusors historically fully appreciated for his importance,
(05:01):
and I don't think that he was appreciated fully at
it when he was alive. Rustin actually had an experience
similar to Rosa Parks on a segregated bus thirteen years
before he joined King in Montgomery. John Damilo explains he's
traveling to the South and on a bus in Tennessee.
He refuses to go to the back and puts himself
(05:25):
in the front of the bus, where he is sitting
next to white passengers in rows reserved for Whites. The
bus driver calls the police. Soon rest In here sirens.
Four police officers board the bus and approach Rustin. He
patiently explains to them that he has a right to
sit there. He points to a young white child sitting
(05:47):
nearby and says that if he moves to the back
of the bus, he will be quote depriving that child
of the knowledge that there is an injustice here. The
officers dragged Rustin from the bus. The police start beating him.
Rustin doesn't defend himself. Rustin, a tall, thirty year old
black man, extends his arms parallel to the ground. As
(06:07):
the officers begin to hit him with their clubs. He
tells them there's no need to beat him. He is
not resisting. When they take him to the police station,
there is more physical assault. The hallway leading to the
police captain's office is lined with officers on both sides.
Rustin is tossed from one to another. He endures more blows.
(06:28):
His clothes are ripped, and he doesn't resist. Rustin is
then taken into the captain's office, where he calmly asks,
what can I do for you? The angry captain leans
in and yells at Rustin quote, You're supposed to be
scared when you come in here, but buyared. Rustin wasn't scared.
At times, he was utterly fearless. Rustin's commitment to non
(06:52):
violence was total and complete. It wasn't simply a political
tactic that he used in a dem instration. It was
the way he intended to live his life, and he
expected himself too. And there are many instances in Rustin's
life where uh confronted with beatings by police or demonstrators.
(07:14):
He never fought back. Take this incident at a demonstration
in nineteen one, Rustin was attacked with a stick by
an angry spectator. He picked up a stick of his own.
Then he handed his attack or the second stick and
asked him if he wanted to use both. The disoriented
man threw the two sticks down and stormed away. Rustin
(07:36):
explained the logic of his non violent approach in a
later interview. There are three ways to deal with injustice.
One is to accept it slavishly, or one can insisted
with arms, or one can use non violence. The man
who believes in non violence is prepared to be harmed,
to be crushed, but he will never crush others Rustin
(08:04):
grew up in Westchester, Pennsylvania, which was very much a
Quaker town. It had been a stop on the underground
railroad in the nineteenth century. His grandmother, Julia, who raised him,
worked in the households of Quaker families, and so Quakerism
was a part of his life. Rustin was a good
(08:24):
athlete and a lover of the arts. He would often
recite classical poems allowed at school, even while at football practice.
In the late nineteen thirties, Rustin moved to New York.
He attended City College and paid his bills by singing
in Greenwich Village nightclubs. Then he landed his first real job.
He actually starts working for an organization called the Fellowship
(08:47):
of Reconciliation, which was um a pacifist organization whose membership
was mostly ministers committed to the philosophy and practice of
non islands. It's not a great time to be a
pacifist in the United States. The attack on Pearl Harbor
comes three months later. Most Americans rallied to support the
(09:10):
war effort. Rustin did not. I'm a Quaker, and as
everyone knows, Quakers for three years have on conscientious grounds
being against participating in the rule, but participation was mandatory,
so when he finally received the call uh to military service,
(09:32):
Rustin had made the decision that he was not going
to cooperate in any way with the military. Rustin was arrested.
He waived his right to trial, pled guilty, and received
a three year sentence. He was thirty one years old
when he entered Ashland Prison in Kentucky. He's classified almost
(09:53):
from the beginning as a notorious offender, which means that
are watching his every move. He's also a black man
in a primarily white movement going to a prison that
is racially segregated, and so Rustin, ever, the activist, is
(10:18):
now in federal prison, but is organizing prisoners to resist segregation.
Thanks to Rustin, the prison athletic program was soon integrated
and prisoners were allowed to move between the white and
colored sections of the prison. But not all of the
prisoners cared for Rustin's integration efforts. A number of the
(10:39):
prisoners are white Southerners themselves, and at a certain point
one of them is enraged at the way Rustin is
challenging segregation and goes after him with a stick. And
there are other people around and Rustin just puts his
(10:59):
hands up to try to protect his face from injury,
but doesn't resist in any way. When a fellow prisoners
try to protect him, he tells them no. Rustin's attacker
continued to rain violent blows on him, and again Rustin
calmly responded, you can't hurt me. The other prisoner received
(11:21):
no punishment for the incident. Rustin was disciplined by the warden.
His activism had not made him popular with prison officials.
They soon learned that the formidable organizer had an achilles heel,
at least given the time in which he lived. Rustin
is a gay man in an era where no one
(11:41):
accepts being gay, and the prison officials realized that they
can expose his sexuality, and they bring him up on
charges of sexual misconduct. Rustin's integration efforts came to a halt.
They put him in solid Harry confinement. It's a horrendous
(12:02):
experience for him. There are I found in the archives
two mug shots of Rustin. The first one, when he
arrives in prison. He looks so serene, as if you
can't do anything to me. The second one is taken
after he's been in isolation. For several months, and the
(12:25):
pain in his face is unmistakable. It was not the
last time in Rustin's life that his sexual orientation would
provoke such a response and derail his career. Buyard Rustin
was released from prison in nine and at that time
the U. S. Supreme Court handed down a decision holding
(12:46):
that segregation and interstate transportation was unconstitutional. Here was a
golden opportunity for Rustin to use non violence to test
the enforcement of the new law, and they create an
organization called CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality and so,
nearly fifteen years before the famous Freedom Writers hit the
road during the nineteen sixties, Rustin helped recruit a team
(13:09):
of fourteen men, divided equally by race, to ride in
pairs on buses throughout the South. Other black civil rights leaders,
including the Inn Double A. C. P, wanted no part
of the plan. The future Supreme Court Justice Third Good
Marshall told Rustin, you are insane to try this, just dumb.
Rustin knew the risks. His team endured twelve arrests and
(13:32):
numerous threats of violence along the way. In North Carolina,
four of the riders, including Rustin, were dragged from the
bus and arrested. Rustin would later serve time on a
chain gang as a result, but the organized acts of
non cooperation that Rustin and his team engaged in helped
lay the groundbook for future acts of non violent protests
(13:52):
during the civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties.
The journey was an important experiment um It also in
a sense demonstrated in that the country wasn't yet ready
or prepared to build a mass movement, and so it
became an example, a model of what you could do,
(14:16):
even if the impact wasn't dramatic. By the early nineteen fifties,
buyired Rustin was a reformer to be reckoned with, but
his sexual orientation continued to be a problem in the
activist community. Rustin never pretended to be a straight man,
(14:38):
but during the mid twentieth century in the United States,
it was not safe to come out as a gay one.
One never knows when the homosexual is about. He may
appear normal, and it may be too late when you
discover he is mentally ill. So keep with your group
and don't go off alone with strangers unless you have
the permission of your parents or teacher. Every state in
(15:01):
the nation criminalized homosexual behavior at the time. This is
civil rights leader Timothy Jenkins. Again. One of the things
that he felt he suffered was the double burden, or
as he sometimes so called it, the double cross of
being black and also being gay, and he appreciated that
(15:21):
the hostile forces on the question of race were also
hostile on the forces of sexual orientation, and uh he
felt that he was being discriminated against on both counts.
Such discrimination made it very difficult to have a social life.
John Damelio again also in those years, if you're gay
(15:46):
and the gay world is hidden and you're looking to
meet other gay men, you engage in what was called
at that time street cruising. And rust In, both as
a gay man and as a black man, was so
susceptible to the police, and a number of times in
(16:06):
the forties he was arrested for street cruising lewd conduct.
Then another incident occurred that would turn Rustin's world upside down.
In nine he's in California giving talks and meeting with
Quaker and Pacifist groups, and in the middle of the night,
(16:28):
the police in Pasadena find him in a parked car
with two white men and arrest all three of them
for performing lewd acts. Rustin's employers at the Fellowship of
Reconciliation punished him, so Rustin has let go. This is
not only a pacifist organization built on certain kinds of
(16:52):
moral principles, but as an organization primarily of ministers, and
here a key staff person has been arrested and convicted
of a rals charge. Rust And lost almost everything he had.
The man who had tried so hard to cast himself
as a principled activist had been branded a sex offender.
He has to suddenly start strategizing how to be an
(17:14):
activist who remains invisible to the public. It would take
rust In years to fight his way off the sidelines
of the civil rights struggle. Then in n he saw
an opportunity to get back in the game. That opportunity
with the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, a young, dynamic
(17:36):
preacher named Martin Luther King started to appear on the
national news. It was clear to many of those in
the civil rights struggle that the boycott represented a turning point.
As word of the bus boycott travels north. For Rustin,
this is his dream. He's been waiting half of a
(17:57):
lifetime for something like the US to happen instead of
an action that five people engage in and get arrested
and that's it. A whole community is joining together to
resist racial segregation. Rustin and other Northern Pacifists were worried
(18:18):
that the black community in Montgomery might resort to violence.
After King's house was bombed, Rustin decided to go to
Montgomery to lend his support. This is King biographer David
Garrow now in nineteen fifty six. Being an uncloseted homosexual,
especially within Black America, made someone untouchable in many quarters,
(18:45):
and so even though Byared hastens to Montgomery to advise King,
others in New York are are worried whether those aspects
of Bayard's history might be used a enst him. Rustin,
who recognized these concerns, kept a low profile. He did
(19:05):
not go out after dark alone. He often consulted with
King over the phone. Rustin soon found himself at the
heart of one of the most significant protests in American history.
Rustin sees his key work as helping to develop doctor
King as a nationally recognized leader. In the years following Montgomery,
(19:29):
Rustin made himself indispensable to King and to the Civil
rights movement. Rustin remained behind the scenes, but if you
look closely, you could discern his hand almost everywhere. Rustin
became an advisor to King. He also introduced King to
Northern activists, labor leaders, and other prominent individuals who became
major financial supporters of the movement. Timothy Jenkins again, I
(19:53):
came to know by Rustin as a voice for passive
resistance in a very important way, And of course he
inspired much of the leadership that led to the political
revolution of the South to pursue the course of of
tactics as opposed to just the demonstrations. Rustin fought his
(20:16):
way back from the margins to shape the principles and
methods of the civil rights movement. Then came his biggest
test yet. Up next, the eyes of America and the
world turned to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in
the summer of nineteen sixty three. The March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom is the single most significant demonstration
in US history, the event that launched Dr King's famous dream.
(20:40):
The man who organized that march was by Ed Ruston,
but only after he survived the efforts of some of
the most powerful men in America to bring the march
to its knees um. Because of his sexual orientation and
(21:13):
criminal record, Buyard Rustin tried to coordinate the March on
Washington under the radar. It wasn't easy, and by early August,
just weeks before the march, his role became more public
and at one point even the Washington Post, I think,
actually describes him as Mr. March on Washington. And the
(21:36):
FBI does an investigation. It gathers whatever material it can
find on Rustin, including his arrest in Pasadena on sex charges,
and provides that information to Strom Thurmond, who is a
white segregationist senator from South Carolina. And Thurman gets up
(21:58):
more than once on the floor of the Senate and
reads into the Congressional record all of this condemning information
about Rustin. The attack did not have its intended effect.
Rustin's fellow civil rights leaders leaped to his defense. What's
so important about three in Rustin's life and the history
(22:20):
of non violence is that because the march was so
visible and so important this time, when Rustin is attacked
for his sexuality, all of the organizational leaders come together
and explicitly stand by him and defend him so that
(22:45):
he doesn't lose his role as organizer of the march
on Washington. I remember about five thirty in the morning.
I was out on the mall and the press was
surrounding me, and I was saying, Mr Rust and Mr Rust,
and what's happening. You said, we're going to be a
quarter of a million people and are scarcely half doesn't here.
(23:06):
I remember taking out of my pocket a blank sheet
of paper and taking my watch out of the other pocket.
I looked at my watching the blank sheet of paper,
and I said, just when everything is going according to
oil And I was terrified that people weren't going to
show up, but they did. It was an event like
the nation had never witnessed before. The crowd two fifty
(23:28):
thousand people gathered on the mall, and they heard speeches
that were inspiring and sometimes they were rousing speeches as well.
Rusting himself addressed the massive crowd, magine that we have
(23:48):
effective civil rights legislation, no compromise, no Philip Uxter, and
that he didn't plude public accommodation. Din how it's a
greater education f f A PC and the like to vote.
What do you say but of course the main event
(24:11):
in the final speaker, thanks to Ruston's own plan, was
Martin Luther King. And it's just an astounding success. And
of course it gives Dr King an even more visible
platform to be a national leader. And there was not
a hint of violence anywhere. Rusting himself later summarized it. Now,
(24:32):
the single person was arrested in Washington that day. Now
the single person was drunk that day or picked up
for drunkenness. There were no major problems of any kind.
The march ended for me when we had finally made
sure we had not left one piece of paper, not
(24:54):
a cup, nothing, and buy ed. Rustin continued to fight
for justice in the decades ahead. In the nineteen eighties,
at the end of his life, he turned his attention
to gay rights through it all rest and consistently downplayed himself. Well,
my role was a very simple role. It was a
(25:16):
role of saying that Martin Luther King, I have certain skills.
I have skills which are good at analyzing problems. I
have skills of the wood and planning and executing. I
do not consider myself a leader. I consider myself a
spokesman for a given point of view. Barack Obama awarded
(25:39):
Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom in fifty years after
the historic March on Washington. The White House has announced
it will posthumously award the highest civilian honor in the
United States, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, to the trail
blazing civil rights active astpired Rustin. It was a fitting
honor for a man who gave so much to the
cause of freedom, working in the background, away from the headlines,
(26:04):
Rustin changed life for millions of people. Rustin's own outlook
and life, however, were largely shaped by another man, one
that he never met, but who also changed life for
millions of people on the other side of the globe.
(26:24):
During the nineteen twenties and thirties, the world grew captivated
by a small man in a loincloth taking on an
empire in India. It wasn't simply that Gandhi had a
personal commitment to non violence, but Gandhi was showing, at
least from a distance, that preaching and practicing non violence
(26:48):
could be a route to massive social change. Gandhi's commitment
and methods were a revelation for Rustin. He began a
lifelong campaign to introduce Gandhi's non violent tactic into the
struggle for racial justice in the United States. He finally
made it to India UH late forty eight, the very
beginning of forty nine, and unfortunately, when he finally did
(27:12):
make the trip, UH Gandhi had already passed away. But
it was a powerful trip for him, and if anything,
it increased the attractiveness of non violence as a route
to social change and political activism. Rustin traveled around India
for almost two months. He returned to the United States
(27:35):
and continued to preach Gandhian non violence to the black community.
Rustin liked to tell audiences that fighting injustice required quote
angelic troublemakers, Our power is in our ability to make
things unworkable. The only weapon we have is our bodies,
(28:00):
and we need to tuck them in places so wheels
don't turn. Eight years later, Buyed Rustin, the Ultimate Angelic Troublemaker,
put that principle into action, making sure that the wheels
did not turn in Montgomery, Alabama. Together, Rustin and Martin
Luther King Jr. Made things unworkable for those white leaders
(28:23):
in the South who wished to preserve a segregated society,
but the true ideological father of King and Rustin's nonviolent
movement was not Black or even America. In the next episode,
we journey to India and South Africa to explore the
remarkable life of Mahandas Gandhi, the man who proved that
non violence could achieve major political reforms and even take
(28:46):
down an entire empire. You don't have to ride him call. No,
you don't have to ride Jim Call on June the
Third High Court said, when you ride in the state
Jim who is dead? You don't know? The threat is
produced by Libby Coleman, Robert Coulos, Sophia Perpetua, and me
Sean braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show. This episode features
(29:10):
Bayard Rustin performing a song called you Don't have to
Ride Jim Crow. To learn more about the Thread, visit
AUSI dot com, slash the thread all one word, and
make sure to subscribe to the Thread on Apple podcasts,
follow us on I Heart Radio, or listen wherever you
get your podcasts. Check us out at AUSI dot com
or on Twitter and Facebook. If you love surprising, engaging
(29:31):
stories from history, look no further than the flashback section
of ausy dot com, that's o z y dot com. Free. Yes, someday,
real love be free. When United Action turns the tide
and black and white sit side by side. Oh Sunday,
(29:54):
real Oh be free
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