Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin was an early and incalculably important force behind the U.S. Civil Rights movement of the Twentieth Century. Although his contributions to the movement remain largely unrecognized by the general public to this day, he was of invaluable assistance to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many of the other well-known heroes of the era. Rustin was a behind-the-scenes power during the 1956 Montgomery, Alabama, Bus Boycotts, and the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which Dr. King delivered his famed "I Have a Dream" speech. Born to a West Chester, Pennsylvania, Quaker family, Rustin made a lifelong study of the principles of peace and social change through nonviolent resistance and was an important influence on Dr. King's adoption of the precepts of Gandhi. Bayard Rustin's historical import is well-known to serious Civil Rights scholars, but he never became a household name at the level of many other Civil Rights strategists because many of the other leaders in the movement objected to Rustin's open homosexuality, both on the grounds that it might impede the already-difficult struggle for public acceptance of racial equality and for their own personal reasons. After the boycott, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell convinced Dr. King to break ties with Rustin by threatening to claim publicly (and falsely) that Rustin and Dr. King were sexually involved; some years later, Dr. King acknowledged Rustin's importance to the movement by rehiring him to plan the 1963 March on Washington. At that point, however, anti-Civil Rights activist and U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond unsuccessfully attempted to discredit the movement and derail the march through homophobic attacks on Rustin, with Thurmond proclaiming Rustin a "moral pervert" on the senate floor. After the march, Rustin directed the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, which worked for Civil Rights and labor equality, and he also became an advocate for Gay Rights. A gifted singer, he recorded several albums. Rustin died of a heart attack in 1987 and was survived by his longtime romantic partner, Walter Naegle.