Bayard Rustin is an unknown entity in US history, but he shouldn’t be. Not only did he teach the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. his nonviolent ways and organize the protests King is infamous for; he also did so as a fairly open gay man in the 1940s America.
Helping Dr. King
Rustin can be thought of as King’s right-hand man. He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington as well as the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. He debated Malcolm X about nonviolence, learning such a technique from followers of Gandhi. He turned around and taught King everything he knew. He is, and should be, considered an architect of the civil rights movement.
The Closet: Open and Shut
His lack of recognition, however, becomes more understanable when one takes a look at his private life. Rustin was seen as being unashamed of his sexuality, even in the incredibly homophobic climate of 1940s America. According to 365gay.com, “[Rustin’s] comfort with his gayness ended in 1953 in Pasadena, Calif., when he was caught by the police in the backseat of a car with two other men.” After his conviction for the crime of ‘sexual perversion,’ Rustin was forced to tone himself down in the public realm. His charge became a tool King’s opponents, like Senator Strom Thurmond, would use against both King and Rustin, linking the civil rights movement with sexual and moral deviation.
Unfortunately, this 1953 incident would not fizzle out quietly, but would haunt King’s campaign until the end. “Though they were later reconciled, Rustin’s strongest falling out with King…came when Sen. Adam Clayton Powell threatened that he would accuse King and Rustin of having a sexual affair,” according to 365gay.com. Such a lofty allegation not only proves how virile the label of ‘homosexual’ was 50 some-odd years ago, but it also attests to just how close Rustin and King were; the two were no doubt linked for their mutual campaign against segregation, and were probably seen together often in public.
Advocate for the Underdog
Even after rights were secured for the Black population, Rustin continued his activism, serving such groups as the Soviet Jews and Israel, refugees and, to be sure, the gay and lesbian rights movement until his death in 1987. In one famous quote as reported by 365gay.com, Rustin said, “Indeed, if you want to know whether today people believe in democracy, if you want to know whether they are true democrats, if you want to know whether they are human rights activists, the question to ask is, ‘What about gay people?’ Because that is now the litmus paper by which this democracy is to be judged.”
In many ways, the Black movement of yesterday has become the gay movement of today. We don’t have the right to marry or adopt in the majority of America. We are the victims of hate crimes and discrimination. But we’ve never been denied the right to vote. We’ve never been enslaved. We’ve never been segregated from heterosexuals. The similarities are there, but it is by no means a complete parallel.
From Black to Rainbow
Nevertheless, the LGBT community can be seen as the modern Black community politically - we are an underrepresented minority group whom the presidential candidates either attempt to ignore, attempt to legislate against, or feably attempt to help.
Great men and women have too often been erased from the history books for being minorities or deviants in some way or another. Bayard Rustin, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s friend and adviser, should be commended for his selfless, important role in the Black civil rights movement. May he never be forgotten again.
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