Bayard Rustin

Martin Luther King scholar Richard Deats -- who was also close friends with the King family and a member of the national commission to create the Dr. King Holiday -- was the featured guest on a national webinar hosted last week by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. An audio file of the program will soon be available on FOR's website for on-demand listening.

Gays Are the New Niggers: 40 years after the Stonewall riots, what Bayard Rustin means for American democracy

Those who declare “Gay is the New Black” want to link the gay rights movement to the civil rights movement. Yet the slogan is full of internal contradictions and historical incongruities. Comparing the experiences of black folks and gay folks in the U.S. has outraged intellectuals, religious leaders, and politicians inside the black community.

It has outraged, for instance, Rev. Irene Monroe. She identifies three cardinal sins of whiteness plaguing the gay-marriage movement:

Free Speech Radio News is a nationally-syndicated progressive political radio program that appears on more than 60 FM radio stations nationwide, including the Pacifica network (such WBAI in New York City and KPFA in Berkeley, CA). On tomorrow’s program (Thursday, April 9), the voices of both FOR Communications Co-Director Ruby Sinreich and long-time FOR leader George Houser will appear during a feature segment about the Journey of Reconciliation (JOR).

The feature was developed recently by FSRN’s North Carolina-based reporter/producer Lynda-Marie Taurasi, who attended the JOR commemoration that was held five weeks ago in Chapel Hill, NC, at the end of February. George Houser traveled from New York to participate in this commemoration, and Ruby Sinreich played a key role in helping the local activist community organize the program and affiliated events that week.

Last year, I blogged about the proposal to create a state historic marker at the site in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where members of the first freedom ride were arrested in in 1947. The marker has been approved and is being unveiled next week!  FOR is organizing and supporting several events in support of the marker.

The Journey of Reconciliation began on April 9, 1947. It was organized by the Congress of Racial Equality with the leadership of FOR staffers Bayard Rustin and George Houser. Like many other great institutions, CORE was born at FOR.  To learn more about this historic event, do read this short history by Dr. Yonni Chapman.

The current issue of The New Yorker includes several fascinating articles, two of which prompted me to write my first-ever letter to the editor to the publication. (I have decided that the sense of righteous indignation that prompted this act was proof that I am, truly, becoming a curmudgeon.) One of the two pieces focused on the invaluable role that copy editors play in their top-quality publication (and others of similar repute). The second essay was a lengthy review of several books by and about the legendary James Baldwin, and how racism and the quest for civil rights affected his life and work as well as that of other famous African-American writers.

My letter, which it appears will not be published (lacking the humorous quality that makes many accepted by the publication stand out), said:

We've written before about Bayard Rustin, FOR's racial justice organizer (and war resister) who led the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation and became a chief adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King on the use of nonviolent social change tactics.

Yesterday was the 22nd anniversary of Rustin's death. Artist Phil Blank has created a poster illustration of Rustin (at left, click to enlarge and read description), featuring the story of his 1947 arrest as part of the Journey of Reconciliation. (Read more about this historic action against segregation.)

As I have written before, FOR organizer Bayard Rustin had an impact on my small North Carolina hometown when he was arrested here during the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation.

Phill Blank is a Carrboro, NC artist who is known for his skillful and surreal portraits. His work is often inspired by Buddhist ideals or by local culture and history. Earlier this year, he created this illustration of Bayard Rustin:

Read on for the artist's statement published in the Carrboro Citizen:

It's not often that I get to cross-post entries to my work blog (here) and my local politics blog (in Chapel Hill, NC), but I am thrilled to do so today!

On Monday night, local activist and historian Dr. Yonni Chapman, PhD petitioned the Chapel Hill Town Council to support the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP's effort to have a historical marker placed at the location of the former bus station that was visited by Bayard Rustin and others during the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, which is now known as "the first freedom ride." What follows is an excerpt of his presentation (PDF). I recommend reading the proposal which has more context and details.

This is a really great story, and I am especially proud of the amount of support the riders saw from Rev. Charles Jones and other progressives in Chapel Hill, although it was in the face of some well-connected racists, from the bus driver to the judge, who made sure that Rustin and his supporters paid a price for challenging white privilege.

When I was minoring in African American Studies in college, I learned about civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. We were told that he was a close confidante, adviser, and assistant to Dr. King. Rustin was a dedicated and effective organizer, and some accounts even informed us that he was gay and had a history of association with the Communist Party.

What I never knew - until recently - was that he was also the Race Relations Secretary of FOR (from 1945 until he was unfortunately fired when his sexuality was publicly exposed in 1953). And I also didn't understand how important FOR was to informing King's strategies on nonviolent resistance. Here Rustin tells his story:

In August of 1945 I left Lewisburg Penitentiary, where I had been in jail as a conscientious objector. I had gone in to prison in 1942 for three years' term. Given good time, I was able to come out in August of 1945, at which time I went back to work for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, with which I had been associated since 1941. At this time I also was beginning to give a great deal of my time as director of the Civil Rights Department of the Fellowship of Reconciliation — FOR — to CORE [Committee on Racial Equality].

Today's New York Times featured a fabulous profile of long-time FOR leader George Houser. "Following a Kindly Light, and Casting One" by Peter Applebaum, appearing in his enjoyable "Our Town" Sunday column, highlighted a bit of the legacy of this extraordinary human who we are incredibly proud to call one of our own.