A Hero Amongst Us....Bauard Rustin

King At The March Which Mr Rustin Put Together

For a while now I have wanted to write about people that I feel have effected the world in which we live but have failed to grab the attention of the mass media.  So every now & then I will be posting under the title "A Hero Amongst Us".  You folks have never been shy about emailing me your thoughts, both good & bad, so if you know of someone that might fit this mold please let me know RCRNewsBlog@gmail.com
We live in a world where people are still judged by the color of their skin, who they love, or where the worship. But for the most part the world today is a lot more tolerant place then it was years ago. Our President is half Black, TV shows like Will & Grace or Modern Family with characters that are openly Gay have been widely embraced by the American people, and our former Anglo Saxon dominated culture now reflex's the growing number of non Christians amongst us. Now image being a Gay, Black man in the middle of one largest civil rights movements the world has ever seen. Now image all this happening in America during the 1940’s, 50’s and the turbulate 60’s. This is the world that Bayard Rustin braved as he helped set in motion events that are still changing today's landscape of civil rights in America.

Bauard Rustin

Born in 1912 in Pennsylvania into a family heavily involved with the beginnings of the Black civil rights movement. At the age of 24 a young, hopeful Bayard moved to the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. If you were a Black man in the 30’s Harlem was the place to be. Mr. Rustin earned a living in nightclubs in this mecca of the Black community while also remaining active in the movement which was beginning to take on a more defined shape. Working in the nightclub biz to help pay the bills also allowed Mr. Rustin to travel around America and helped form a network of people that would prove very helpful in the years to come. During a trip to California Mr. Rustin was arrested on a vague “sex charge”…think George Michael. This term was used freely at the time to hunt down Gays. What no one knew at the time was that this arrest would later come back to haunt both Bauard as well as the civil rights movement as a whole.
In the 50’s Mr Rustin became more active in the movement and went to Alabama to help with the Montgomery bus boycott. This is when two strong, smart, determined, Black men crossed paths & formed a partnership that would redirect the course of American thinking on the terms of equal rights. Mr. Rustin meet Dr Martin Luther King Jr & became one of his trusted aides & advisers. Between 1956 -1960 Mr. Rustin worked tirelessly to raise Dr Kings national profile. Clearly his years of hard work paid off because not only are we still talking about Dr King today but even the closed mined, racist fools of yesteryear sat up and took notice. The Black civil rights movement had arrived in the hearts & minds of the American people and Bauard Rustin had played a key role in getting it there! But Mr. Rustin’s sexuality opened King and other leaders in the movement to criticism from people such as Senator Strom Thurmond. This ELECTED OFFICIAL (sorry for the caps but this upsets me) represented South Carolina from 1954 until 2003. First as a Democrat and, after 1964, as a Republican. He switched because of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. And as is the case with most crazy right wing nut jobs he jumped up and down calling Mr Rustin a sexually pervert and applied untold pressure to Dr King to get rid of this hard working, smart man. Bauard offered to resign from Dr Kings inner circle and to his shock Dr King accepted! This started 3 years of estrangement that ended with one of the greatest moments in American history.

2 Great Men Changing The World Together

In June of 1963 planning for “ March On Washington” had started. The plan was to bring the largest protest in American history to the nations Capitol demanding that legal discrimination in America come to an end..This clearly would entail a massive effort from many different sources and would require the leadership of someone of great inner strenght as well as a great deal of patience. That man was Bauard Rustin. After being asked back into the fold by leaders of the Black community Mr Rustin had just 2 months to pull off the moving, housing, feeding & organizing over 250,000 people! Well, we all know what happened next don’t we? Please tell me you do.... People came, King made his now famous “I Have A Dream Speech” and the tide began to change. Slowly at first, then in a tidal wave. But for some reason Bauard Rustin & his life’s work seems to have been lost to the sands of time. Sure President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor to Bauard Rustin on November 20, 2013. But by then Bauard had been dead for 16 years!  Shame on the Black community for failing to look past it's homophobia. Shame on the Gay community for failing to look back and remembering those that fought to get us where we are today. And shame on all of us for failing to see….A Hero Amongst Us!

Stay Fabulous!
Boy About Town
“The Gay community has a moral obligation to continue the fight…..” Bauard Rustin