Bayard Rustin was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s closest advisors and a principal architect
of the American Civil Rights movement for racial equality. So why have you probably
never heard of his name before? Because he was gay.
To me this Quaker born pacifist Bayard Rustin is probably one of the most important Americans
that many of us have never heard of, myself included until just a few weeks ago when I
ran across his name and was like, 'Why have I never heard of him before?' No seriously
I was doing a lot of this. And the more I learned about Bayard Rustin the clearer it
became that a civil rights hero was almost erased from history all because of homophobia.
Who organized the first freedom ride in 1947 challenging segregation on interstate buses?
Rustin. Who helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956? Rustin. And around that
same time who introduced MLK Jr. to Gandhi's teachings of non-violence? Rustin! In 1957
who helped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference?
I'll give you one guess. It's Rustin. And who organized 1963's epic March on Washington
for jobs and freedom where 200,000 non-violent black protesters saw Martin Luther King Jr.
deliver his 'I have a dream' speech on the Lincoln Memorial steps? Rustin! Duh. But it
was also Bayard Rustin who was arrested and jailed for 6 months in 1953 on the charges
of sexual perversion for allegedly having sex with another man because at the time being
gay was essentially illegal in the United States. It wouldn't be until 1962 that Illinois
would become the first state to decriminalize sodomy and thus decriminalize being a gay
man. It wouldn't be until 1973that the psychiatric community would finally remove homosexuality
from its handbook of mental disorders. And in the wake of that arrest Rustin, who was
openly out to his friends and family including his grandmother who he came out to when he
was a teenage and she was basically like Bayard you do you, it's fine, he wrote that quote,
'Sex must be sublimated if I am to live in this world longer.' In other words Rustin
knew that he had to publicly closet his sexual orientation if he was also going to publicly
fight for civil rights and racial equality. But that still wasn't enough for organizations
like Fellowship for Reconciliation that ousted him after that 1953 arrest. And that also
wasn't enough in 1960 when Rustin was forced to resign from the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference after a black politician threatened to start a rumor that Rustin and MLK Jr. were
having a gay affair together. Nor was it enough in 1963 when Roy Wilkins of the NAACP resisted
Bayard Rustin's participation in organizing the March for Washington because he did not
want to have to defend homosexuality and promiscuity. Ironically it would be racist South Carolina
Senator Strom Thurmond coming out on the Senate floor and decrying this Rustin who is a draft
dodging communist gay man who was organizing this march and shouldn't they stop it, and
he also entered into Congressional record, fact, a photo of Martin Luther King Jr. in
the bathtub talking to Rustin as evidence of their possible homosexual affair that finally
Rustin received some support from his fellow civil rights activists. And toward the end
of his life in 1987 Bayard Rustin's activism re-ignited only this time championing gay
rights, his sexual orientation and sex no longer having to be sublimated. He adopted
his long term partner Walter Naegle because at that time gay men of course couldn't get
married and adoption was the closest that they could come to being legally bound as
family. An embodiment of intersectionality, Bayard Rustin once said, 'We need in every
community a group of angelic troublemakers.' And to that I would add we also need to rewrite
those troublemakers like Rustin back into history where they rightfully belong.