Bayard Rustin: listen Monday noon / basic information
You may have heard recently on NPR (WHYY, 90.9 FM) of a special on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, at noon on Monday, January 17, about Bayard Rustin (1912-87), described as an “unsung hero” of the civil rights movement.
Rustin (his first name is pronounced BYard, not as often heard BAYard; his nickname was Bye) is not unsung in the West Chester area, where the newest of our three high schools is named after him. He is particularly not unsung in West Chester borough, where he was born, lived in his youth, and maintained ties during his life.
Brought up on the east side of West Chester, Rustin was an excellent student, athlete (including as a football star) and talented singer (later performing regularly in Greenwich village and for a couple of weeks in a Broadway musical starring Paul Robeson, also making a LP record).
Like another famed Cestrian, Samuel Barber he graduated from West Chester Senior High School (now Henderson); he also spent some time at what was then Cheyney State Teachers College.
Rustin and King in 1956, from rustin.org
A few years ago, the Chester County Historical Society showed the PBS documentary “Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin” (more info and excerpt: http://rustin.org/).
See also “A Closer Look at Bayard Rustin” by Walter Naegle (who commented and answered questions at the CCHS movie showing). Naegle was Rustin’s partner during the last ten years of Rustin’s life; it is a curious sign of those times to see Naegele referred to only as Rustin’s “administrative assistant and adopted son” (both of which he was) in the 8/25/87 New York Times obituary.
I can’t find a description of the Jan. 17 special at whyy.com, but here is one from NHPR:
Noon: State of the ReUnion: Who Is This Man?
MLK Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech has become the shorthand of the Civil Rights Movement— but we might never have heard it, if it were not for another man, who’s largely been forgotten by history: Bayard Rustin. In this program hour, we explore the life and legacy of Mr. Rustin, a black, gay, Quaker who brought Gandhian non-violent protest to the Civil Rights movement in America.
Rustin, a moving force in the movement to end the “back of the bus” tradition in the South, led the first Freedom Ride in 1947 (for the dramatic story see Fellowship of Reconciliation; he published the gripping account of his resulting imprisonment as “Twenty-two days on a chain gang.”
Rustin advised Martin Luther King Jr. and the organizers of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56, to which Rustin’s own pre-Rosa Parks bus protest had directly led. If Rustin had not influenced King to follow Gandhi’s non-violent philosophy (which Rustin had absorbed during visits to India), it is hard to say in what direction the civil rights movement might have turned.
Rustin listing ten demands to the quarter-million person crowd at the August 28, 1963, march, from rustin.org
For more on Rustin, see wn.com, including an excerpt (video #1) from his 1/23/62 debate with Malcolm X on “Separation or Integration,” in which Rustin memorably stated: “The problem can never be stated in terms of black and white.”
Also (video #4) a documentary of how he organized the August 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (in videos of which Rustin can be seen as the third person to King’s right hand).
Hear Rustin’s rousing history-based reasoning in “Bayard Rustin: Live Speech on the Freedom Budget,” December 11, 1967, at Forum Network, delivered in the context of the unrest and near-meltdown of US society in the late 1960’s.
Rustin himself wrote dozens of books and his bibliography comes to 100 items (see some here); for books about him, see rustin.org.
Try to listen Monday noon for more on this national leader from West Chester.
