As we honor Martin Luther King, Jr., this national holiday weekend, I’d like to focus on his mentor and adviser Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), whose 100^th birthday we mark this year. For both African American men, Chicago served as important preparatory ground for grassroots activism and community building, and as preliminary training for national speeches and civil rights demonstrations.

Bayard Rustin outside the March on Washington office, around 1963. Photograph courtesy of Bennett Singer.

Bayard Rustin was an architect of the civil rights movement, and devoted his life to the fight against social and economic oppression. His life was inspiring, fascinating, and complicated. Rustin was a Pennsylvania native and Quaker, who felt an early calling to nonviolently promote equality among all races, religions, and classes of Americans. As a young man, he refused to enlist for World War II and was briefly a member of the Communist Party. Later, Rustin was a student of Mahatma Gandhi and eventually shared Gandhi’s methods of peaceful civil disobedience with King, whom he intimately served as elder advisor and mentor. He was the mastermind behind the landmark 1963 March on Washington, but in the years before and after the historic march, Rustin also organized a number of meetings and rallies in Chicago’s poverty-stricken communities, Grant Park, and Soldier Field.

Rustin fought for racial equality, primarily but not exclusively in support of his black brothers and sisters. But as a gay man who was open about his sexuality, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, he suffered from the homophobia of his associates in the movement and in society at large. His relationships defied taboos of love and desire, and of race. Two of his longest and most important relationships were with white men, including New Yorker named Walter Naegle (see below). Bayard Rustin’s guidance of Martin Luther King, with whom Rustin’s homosexuality caused tension, and his commitment to the fight for equality were often tested but never defeated. In the 1980s, near the end of his life, Rustin focused his activism toward LGBT rights.

For further reading on Rustin’s life and activism, I recommend UIC historian John D’Emilio’s moving biography Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. In the author’s words, Rustin’s life “reminds us that the most important stories from the past are often those that have been forgotten and that from obscure origins can emerge individuals with the power to change the world.” Inspiring words; an inspiring life.

Get More Involved:

Please join us on Monday, January 16 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. for free programs in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., featuring music and a performance of The MLK Project by the Writers’ Theatre.
> See a schedule of MLK day events at the Museum

If you wish to learn more about Bayard Rustin and his legacy, the Museum is screening the documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin in its entirety on Saturday, January 28^th as part of the “Anything But Straight” LGBT film series. Films will screen back to back from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and are free with Museum admission.
> Learn more about Anything But Straight: the LGBT film series

Another event not to be missed is our February 9^th Out at CHM program, “Bayard Rustin at 100: Remembering a Forgotten Hero”. It features a conversation between none other than Rustin’s life partner, Walter Naegle, and Bennett Singer, co-director of the film above.
> Purchase tickets to the Bayard Rustin program

Tags: Bayard Rustin, Civil Rights, Jill Austin, Martin Luther King Jr.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2012 at 11:24 am and is filed under Exhibitions, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.