BAYARD RUSTIN, THE QUIET CRUSADER

Bayard Rustin was one of the most prominent members of the African American Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 60's in the South. According to an excerpt from a video that can be found at biography.com/people/bayard-rustin-9467932, Rustin was a key organizer in the 1964 March on Washington and helped catapult Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the forefront of that march by working with other members of NAACP in New York City. Prior to that time Bayard had been involved with social issues and organizing in his life, and had been maliciously attacked and persecuted by the societal structure in place that held highly homophobic tendencies because of his openly gay sexual orientation. According to the Bio link about Rustin "In his personal philosophy, Rustin combined the pacifism of the Quaker religion, the non-violent resistance taught by Mahatma Gandhi, and the socialism espoused by the African-American labor leader A. Philip Randolph," participating in a number of civil and human rights demonstrations leading up to the infamous 1963 March that would eventually concrete him as the activist-organizer the world knows him as today.

According to an article on the A. Philip Randolph Institute website, which is actually an organization that Bayard Rustin helped found as a labor group for African-American trade union members, "In 1947, Bayard Rustin took part in a demonstration to test enforcement of the 1946 Irene Morgan case decision outlawing discrimination in interstate travel" (apri.org/ht/sp/i/227/pid/227). This protest took the form of a bus boycott and was known as the Journey of Reconciliation, setting the precedent for the Freedom Ride bus boycotts involving Rosa Parks that took place in the 1960's. Rustin worked as an organizer taking charge of "the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in 1957, the National Youth Marches for Integrated Schools in 1958 and 1959, and was the Deputy Director of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which, at the time, was the largest demonstration in the Nation's history" (APRI.org). He accomplished this last bit by working closely with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as other major civil rights leaders of the time to coordinate this massive feat.

As is related in the Bio article "Rustin met the young civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1950 and began working with King as an organizer and strategist in 1955. He taught King about Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent resistance and advised him on the tactics of civil disobedience," guiding the correct mood and course of action for peaceful protest, opposite the radical politics of more militant groups like the Black Panthers. Labeled an unsung hero of the movement by many, Rustin's additions to the cause of the civil rights struggle for African-Americans are innumerable. In my opinion, he most certainly deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor anyone can receive from our government, which President Obama awarded him post humorously in August of 2013.