Bayard Rustin: Reviving the legacy of the black, gay architect of the March on Washington
ESSAY - This black, gay man of iconic stature -- who planned the 1963 March on Washington -- would have been forgotten by civil rights history were it not for strenuous efforts...
Nonetheless, Rustin maintained his beliefs and remained outspoken on issues of civil rights as a matter of universal human rights, turning in the 1980s to the gay rights movement as the next measure of America as a civil society.
In an essay adapted from a speech Rustin delivered to a gay rights group at the University of Pennsylvania, he drew a very clear connection between the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement towards the end of his life.
“Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us,” Rustin said. “Nor was it our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America… such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest the hate. That’s our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiments.”
On the black-gay civil rights divide
Today, many would agree that it can be hard for African-Americans and gay Americans can see their common struggle. When asked why he thought some groups were sensitive to these kinds of comparisons, Singer is clear.
“It is absolutely important to underscore that those movements are different and it doesn’t do to conflate them,” he told theGrio, “but as President Obama put it in his inaugural speech, there are important connections to be drawn between Seneca Falls and Stonewall. I think Rustin would focus on the continuous struggle for universal economic equality and political engagement across movements.”
Sultan Shakir, Director of Youth and Campus Outreach for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve LGBT equality, shares Singer’s view.
“From where [he] sits,” Shakir said of Rustin’s wider view of activism, “in the fight for social justice, there is a need to identify allies wherever you can find them, in any space that you can. Any smart organizer understands that it has to be a broader movement if it is going to be really successful, wherever the talent comes from.”
The power of uniting in struggle
This point is well drawn by The Nation‘s Swados, who in his gripping profile of the organizers of the March on Washington decades ago, recognized that it took “the joint efforts of talents as diverse as Cleve Robinson and Anna Arnold Hedgeman… joining together… to produce the mighty torrent of humanity flowing through Washington.” He also referenced the shared interests of the labor movement, led by A. Phillip Randolph, and the Civil Rights Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., which led to greater success for both struggles through uniting.
Shakir goes further, pointing out that, “for both movements — [the civil rights and the gay rights movement] — creating allies is key, and there are plenty of community leaders — Al Sharpton and Ben Jealous -– who see the importance of identifying the intersections.”
The question, however, remains – where do we go from here? That is to say, while Rustin’s legacy is being honored by the Obama administration 26 years after his death, how is the preservation of that legacy of unifying movements being secured, and what are social justice groups doing to propagate his memory?
Surprisingly, Singer indicates that one way Rustin’s legacy is reaching people is through corporate diversity programs.
Keeping Rustin’s legacy alive — one step at a time
“A number of workplaces have been inviting us to show the film,” Singer told the Grio. “Government agencies, the Department of Justice, American Express, Google, lots of law firms, have all posted programs as part of diversity initiatives. Often it’s the first time black groups and LGBT groups at these organizations have collaborated.”
He also points to new legislation signed by California Governor Jerry Brown, adding lessons on LGBT history to social studies classes in California as a precedent that he hopes will ensure stories like Rustin’s are told with more consistency.
For organizations like HRC, Shakir explains that in their outreach, “Not only do [they] make an effort to look back on individuals like Rustin, who [were] asked to prioritize one social identity over another, [they] also ask [their] students to reflect inwardly on what parts of themselves they’ve been asked to make invisible.”
Meanwhile, NJBC has been working for the last two years on the Bayard Rustin 2013 Commemoration project to promote Rustin’s legacy by petitioning for the Medal of Freedom, and employing a “multi-tiered strategy to garner Rustin the recognition he deserves.”
What seems essential to all of these strategies is the need to continue to educate young people on Rustin’s legacy, if his contributions are to be known to posterity. Perhaps if we’re able to weave stories like his more equitably into the American tapestry, his greatest legacy will be opening our eyes to the need to acknowledge our overlapping identities, while proudly portraying them in the stunning truth of accurately recorded history.
Chase Quinn is a freelance writer, art critic, and budding novelist, who has worked with several leading human rights organizations in the U.S. and the U.K., promoting social and economic justice. Follow Chase on Twitter at @chasebquinn.
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