Bayard Rustin, 'Angelic Troublemaker' (Part 1)

Bayard Rustin was an openly gay black man born in 1912. He spent his life working tirelessly for equal rights, peace, democracy, and economic equality, including being one of the primary planners of the 1963 March on Washington.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm tray Syne Wilson and I'm Holly Froy. So pretty
recently we got a complaint that we talked about too

(00:23):
many women, and we've gotten a complaint quite a few times.
So I did what we always do, and I counted,
but this time I had to be in my bonnet,
So I made a bunch of pie charts, and I
mean the pie charts show that there's never ever been
a year in the history of our time on the
show when we've talked about more women than men. Uh,

(00:44):
in spite of concerted effort to talk about a lot
of women. Um. And in response to this whole thing
of of of all the pie charts, a lot of
folks suggested that we only talk about women for the
rest of the year, which I get, I get that impulse.
I was already in the middle of working on these
two episodes when that whole thing happened. And it's actually
a really good example of why women are not the

(01:07):
only people that we try to make sure that we
talk about on this show. Because we're going to talk
about buyared rest in Today and Wednesday Byared Reston was
an openly gay Black man born in nineteen twelve, and
he spent his life working tirelessly for equal rights and
peace and democracy and economic equality, including being one of
the primary planners of the nineteen sixty three March on Washington.

(01:30):
And because of when he lived, rest in sexual orientation
became a really serious obstacle to the work that he
was trying to do. So we're going to talk about
him a sid a moment ago into parts. This part
will go up to the late nineteen forties, and then
part two will pick up from there, and a little
heads up for parents and teachers. By necessity, we talk
about Buyared rest in sex life more in this podcast

(01:52):
than you might normally expect from our show. There are
also several incidents we're going to talk about in which
he and the people around him were subject of violence.
So this might be one to pre screen before sharing
it with the kids, or if either of those things
are things that you are sensitive to. So we're gonna
hop right in. Uh. Typically when we talk about the

(02:13):
biography of a historical figure, we start at the beginning
with their birth and then we walk through what's known
of their early life, And while we're gonna get to that,
we're going to take a slightly different approach to introducing
Bayard Rustin. Rustin was a member of the religious Society
of Friends, or Quakers. In his own words, quote, my
activism did not spring from being black. Rather, it is

(02:36):
rooted fundamentally in my Quaker upbringing and the values instilled
in me by the grandparents who reared me. So before
we talk about what he did that, we're going to
talk about who he was and how that grew from
his Quaker religion. As in the case with pretty much
every denomination, there's not one monolithic way of being a Quaker.
There are lots of variations and nuances from region to

(02:58):
region and from one congregation to another. And this even
trickles down to whether a person prefers the word Quaker
or the word Friends to describe themselves inspired. Ruston referred
to himself as a Quaker, we will as well. A
core of Quaker teachings are values known as testimonies. There's
also some variation in how the testimonies are defined or explained,

(03:18):
and how people interpret them and incorporate them into their
lives day to day. As described by the American Friends
Service Committee, the six Quaker testimonies are peace, equality, community, integrity, simplicity,
and stewardship. In particular, Rustin spent his life trying to
embody peace, equality, and community. Throughout his life, Ruston resisted

(03:42):
and worked against oppression, inequality, and war, and he did
it all through non violent means. He believed that all
human beings are part of the same community, and that
a central trait of that global family was that every
person and it was fundamentally equal. This belief informed his
approach to social movements that he actively participated in in
the United States, in India, and in several African nations.

(04:06):
Although a lot of the work he's best known for
was with the civil rights movement, Rustin also joined the
gay rights movement as it became more public. In the
nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. He worked with refugees, observed elections,
and traveled to Africa repeatedly, both to work with local
independence movements and to protest nuclear weapons testing being conducted there.

(04:28):
He went to prison for his non violent opposition to
World War Two. All of these efforts united the themes
of non violence, equality, and a community of equals encompassing
all of humanity. There are several books and articles that
tie Rustin's integrity. Another of the Quaker testimonies to the
fact that he was an openly gay man and an

(04:48):
arrow in same sex behavior was illegal and when being
gay carried in an enormous stigma. But that's really only
part of the story. It's true that he never really
hid his orientation from people. When he was young, he
told his grandmother that he preferred to spend his time
with men, and her reply was, quote, I suppose that's
what you need to do. The people he worked with

(05:09):
in the Pacifists and civil rights movements in the forties
and fifties all knew that he was gay. This was
long before the Stone All Riots brought the gay rights
movement into a more mainstream i At the same time,
he struggled with his orientation and how best to ethically
exist in a culture that so clearly classified his attraction
to men as wrong. It's far from universal, but a

(05:32):
lot of written accounts of gay men who grew up
in the U S when he did talk about this
sense of shame, guilt, and secrecy in terms of his
sexual orientation. Ruston never seemed to have that, and being
unashamed of who he was was something his partners and
the people around him noticed and commented on. However, there

(05:53):
were definitely occasions when his sex life had a huge
negative consequence to his life and work, and sometimes it's
frankly oiled down to some poor decisions on his part.
He spent a lot of time wrestling with his sexual
orientation and how to make it compatible with what he
saw as his life's work when most of the world
saw it as immoral. So the idea that his simply

(06:14):
being out, or as out as a person could be
in that part of history was a mark of his
integrity is really oversimplified. I also want to take a
moment to say, we're not suggesting that people who were
not out did not have integrity, because life is more
complicated than that. Yes, indeed, uh, I mean we've we've

(06:36):
talked about it many times on this show, the period
of time in which it was not only marginalized and
looked down upon, but flat out illegal to be gay.
And he was not a perfect person, and there are
things we will discuss in these two episodes that seemed
contrary to the Quaker teachings that drove by ARD's activism,

(06:56):
but even so, being a Quaker was critically important to
his and Quaker philosophies of non violence and peace building
were concepts that he returned to again and again. Although
Quaker teachings had a profound impact on so many aspects
of Fired Ruston's life and character, we'd really be remiss
if we didn't also talk about the influence of the

(07:17):
African Methodist Episcopal Church as well. His grandfather was a
member of the A. M. E. Church, and his grandmother
eventually joined it as well, essentially to keep the family peaces,
causing some tension between them. For her to be a
Quaker in him to be in the A. M. E. Church,
so he was exposed to both religions and their traditions
in his childhood. Although the Society of Friends had been

(07:39):
a big part of the movement for abolition in the
United States and many had been active participants in the
Underground Railroad, many Quaker congregations were still predominantly white during
Ruston's formative years. Those that had black members often segregated
them into separate seating. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, on
the other hand had been found in eighteen sixteen as

(08:01):
a response to segregation in other Methodist churches. As a consequence,
the a M. E Church became a strong advocate for
black leadership and stress the need for black people to
take collective action to oppose racism and injustice, both from
the pulpit and in life. So and his life and
his work, Bired Ruston really combined the principles of Quaker

(08:24):
teachings with the advocacy focus of the a m along
with other philosophies and belief systems as well. Uh more
of those will reveal themselves as we talk about his life,
which we were going to start after a brief word
from a sponsor, So to get back to our story.

(08:46):
Bired Taylor Rustin was born on March March seventeenth, nineteen twelve,
in Westchester, Pennsylvania. The town of Westchester, which is not
far from Philadelphia, was established by Quakers in seventeen ninety nine.
It continued to have a predom monthly Quaker population, and
its black population grew as well, in part because of
its white Quaker community sheltering escaping slaves. Rustin's mother, Florence,

(09:10):
was sixteen when he was born, and his father, a
man named Archie Hopkins, was not in the picture. He
was raised by his grandparents, Jennifer and Julia Rusten, and
Florence was the eldest of their eight children. During his
earliest childhood years, the young Bayard thought his mother was
actually his sister. The Rustins were one of Westchester's most

(09:32):
respected black families. Jennifer was a steward at the Elks Lodge,
and one of its members rented him a ten room
home that allowed their large family to live pretty comfortably.
Julia's father was a pastor at one of Westchester's largest churches.
Julia herself did extensive community work. She was one of
the area's first members of the n double a CP.

(09:53):
If you do not know what that is, that is
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. After
it was founded in nineteen o nine. Some of the
nation's most prominent black leaders were guests in the rest
and Home, including W. E. B. D. Boys. Julia also
did lots of organizing and what might almost be considered
social work in her community, things like founding a nursery

(10:15):
for the children of black working families during the Great Migration.
As huge numbers of African Americans started moving north. She
also used their home to house black newcomers to the
area who had nowhere else to go. Bayard's elementary education
took place at a segregated Westchester school. The local high school, though,
was integrated, mainly because the community itself wasn't large enough

(10:38):
to support a separate high school for black children. He
was a really good student, and he pursued a wide
range of extracurricular activities. He won essay contests and oratory awards.
He was also a poet and a singer with a beautiful,
very clear tenor singing voice. There are still some recordings
that exist today of him and his adult life singing

(10:58):
spirituals and protests, songs and Rustin was also an athlete.
He lettered in track and football, and his teammates told
stories about his sportsmanship, how he helped people up and
sometimes recited poems to them after he had tackled them.
So although Westchester had long Quaker roots, and Quakers played
a big role in the abolition of slavery, there was

(11:20):
still a lot of racial division in the town. In
addition to segregate his schools, theaters, and other public spaces.
There was a lot of racial tension among families in town,
and at tensions among its various European immigrant groups. The
prejudice ran deep enough that young Bayard was not allowed
in the home of his best friend, John Cessna, and

(11:41):
he also worried that Tessna's parents would be angry if
he brought John over to his house. They wound up
having their hang out time in the local public library.
There are lots of stories from Rustin's high school years
about his first protest for equal rights, and since most
of this knowledge comes from interviews conductedly eater, it's difficult
to pin down with precision. There are stories about him

(12:04):
being arrested for sitting in the white section of a
local theater and for refusing to move after being denied
entry into a restaurant. While on a trip with the
football team, he protested the segregated locker facilities at the
integrated high school, and he succeeded in changing that policy
when he got the team to threaten to refuse to
play an upcoming championship. Regardless of exact details, it's clear

(12:28):
that he was already focused on fighting for equality while
he was still in school. Once he graduated, though, things
became a lot more difficult for him. He had truly
excelled in high school, but he wasn't able to get
a scholarship to attend college. His family could afford at
most to pay his way somewhere local to Westchester. Eventually,

(12:48):
through personal connections, he finally wound up with a music
scholarship to Wilberforce University, historically black university in Ohio. But
Wilberforce University wasn't really a good fit. A lot of
it's offered courses at the time were more technically invocationally
oriented than the more liberal arts curriculum that Rustin really wanted.

(13:08):
R OTC participation was mandatory, which directly conflicted with his pacifism.
This experience was one of the things that would lead
Ruston to formally become a Quaker. Accounts differ on how
this actually played out. Either he was asked to leave
the school because he arranged a strike over the quality
of the food, or he left because the school just
wasn't challenging him. Back home in Westchester, rest and enrolled

(13:33):
at Cheney State Teachers College, another historically black college. This
one was founded by Quakers for black students. And it
was certainly a better fit for Ruston, but he wound
up leaving the area entirely to go to New York
City at the invitation of his aunt Bessie. Although he
originally intended to study at City College, this more or
less spelled the end of his formal education. And we'll

(13:54):
start talking about what he did beyond college after another
brief word from a sponsor, so to get back to
buy Art Rustin's life. Although he did not wind up
graduating from City College as originally planned, he did become
involved with more organized protests and resistance soon after getting

(14:17):
to New York. For a time he was a member
of the Youth Communist League. When he joined it was
not long after the Scottsboro Boys trial. These were nine
black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women.
All the boys were convicted, and all but the youngest
was sentenced to death. The Communist Party led demonstrations and
raised money for the young men's legal defense. All of

(14:40):
these things, plus the party's focus on equal economic opportunity,
were really attractive to Rustin. However, when Nazi Germany invaded
the Soviet Union in nineteen forty one, the organization dropped
its focus on racial equality in the United States and
part due to concerns that protesting against segregation segre aation
of the United States military, would ultimately weaken its efforts

(15:04):
to aid the Soviet Union. The Youth Communist League also
specifically told Ruston to stop his activism against racism. He
wound up cutting his ties to the organization and to
the Communist Party completely. He didn't stop with his activism,
though he registered as a conscientious objector. He began working
with socialist labor leader A. Philip Randolph. He also met

(15:27):
pacifist A. J. Musty at an American Friends Services Committee meeting,
and eventually began working with his pacifist social movement organization,
the Fellowship of Reconciliation as a field secretary. Through the
Fellowship of Reconciliation and other organizations, Rustin started organizing anti
war and civil rights protests, including traveling to Puerto Rico

(15:47):
to study the struggles of conscientious objectors living there. Often
he was the only black person and an other otherwise
all white team from the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He toured
the United States, making anti war speeches and organizing, and
in his speeches, he often presented anti war activism and
equal rights for black people as inextricably linked. It made

(16:10):
no sense, according to his philosophy, for a black person
to join a segregated military and then fight injustice on
behalf of a nation that would not grant him equal rights.
Back at home, In Rustin boarded a bus from Louisville
to Nashville and took a seat in the second row
that was in the white section. The bus driver told

(16:32):
him to move to the back and also called him
a racial epithet in the process. Rustin refused, saying that
segregation was unjust and explained that, in his words quote,
if I were to sit in the back, I would
be condoning injustice for the rest of the journey. At
every stop, the driver tried to get Rustin to move,
and Restin refused. Then outside of Nashville, police pulled the

(16:56):
bus over and four officers physically removed rested, and then
beat him in front of the other passengers. And later interviews,
he said that when they were done, he stood up
and said, there is no need to beat me. I
am not resisting you. Through all these tours and speaking
his view on the war and the draft evolved. It

(17:17):
wasn't just that war was wrong. In his mind, conscription
itself was also wrong because it was dividing the whole
of mankind, which was supposed to be one community of equals,
into us and them. He also objected to the fact
that a person had to be a member of a
pacifist religion to become a conscientious objector. Non religious pacifists

(17:38):
were excluded. His experiences in civilian public service camps where
objectors were sent to also left a lot to be desired.
The camps themselves, like so many other places, were segregated,
so when the Draft Board ordered rest In to appear
for a physical and report to a civilian public service

(17:58):
camp on November thirteen, nine, he refused. He rescinded his
prior request to be granted conscientious objector status, and he
was imprisoned at Ashland Federal Correctional Institution in Kentucky beginning
in nineteen forty four. Once he got there, he tried
to integrate the prison, continually advocating integration to the warden.

(18:21):
Eventually he was allowed to teach a history class to
white inmates, and the warden had the gate that separated
the racial sections of the prison unlocked when Rustin used
this gate to enter the common area for white prisoners,
though another inmate, a former judge convicted on fraud charges,
beat him with a mop handle until it broke. Rustin's

(18:41):
wrist was broken in the attack on Several white conscientious
objectors who were nearby sustained minor injuries. Rustin, not his attacker,
was punished for it. I kind of want to take
a moment to say from this point, people tried to
brand fired Ruston as a draft dodger. That's not what
draft dodger means. Like a draft dodger is a person

(19:04):
who evades the draft by, for example, going to Canada.
That is not what Byared Rusten did. Byard rust And
refused the draft and served prison time. As a consequence,
Rustin's attempts to integrate the prison were derailed, unfortunately, by
a sexual misconduct investigation. This was an allegation that Reston
originally denied, but then he later acknowledged it is true.

(19:27):
He was also put into isolation for weeks, and some
of the other conscientious objectors who came to his defense
we're put into administrative segregation. This incident caused a huge
rift between Rustin and a j Mustie, who wrote him
a scathing letter blasting him for weakness for making such
a decision in the middle of efforts to integrate the prison.

(19:49):
He was deeply disappointed that Bayard had not only jeopardized
his work in the prison by engaging in sexual activities
with other inmates, but also that he had lied about it.
After a long series of meetings and interrogations, Ruston was
let out of isolation, where he resumed advocacy for integration
at the prison. After another series of protests and an

(20:11):
influx of new conscientious objectors to the prison that made
Ruston's advocacy seemed like more of a threat, he was
transferred to Louisbourg Penitentiary in uh In, Pennsylvania. He was
released in ninety seven after twenty eight total months incarcerated.
Throughout his time in prison, Rushton kept up a correspondence
with Davis Platt, his first long term partner. Rustin and

(20:33):
Platt had meant in nineteen forty three, and if anybody
in the peace movement had entertained doubts about Rustin's sexual orientation,
his relationship with Platt really dispelled them. Because prison correspondence
was monitored. They wrote their letters in code. These letters
progressed in their coded intimacy, especially after Ruston confessed to
his infidelity there and he vowed to be celibate for

(20:56):
the rest of his time in prison. The two uh
what even actually break up in ninety seven at Platt's
instigation because he wanted their relationship to be monogamous and
Rustin had a lot of partners after he get out
of prison. Ruston was part of the Journey of Reconciliation,
which was a project of the Congress of Racial Equality

(21:16):
or CORE. This is a precursor to the Freedom Rides,
and if you're interested in learning about the Freedom Rides,
there's a whole series of podcasts by past hosts on
those in the archive. The Journey of Reconciliation was meant
to test segregation laws after the nineteen forty six Supreme
Court ruling Morgan versus Virginia, which ruled that segregation was
illegal for buses that crossed state lines. Even though the

(21:39):
Supreme Court had ruled that segregating interstate buses was unconstitutional,
a lot of bus lines were either tacitly or explicitly
segregating them anyway, and a lot of writers, either not
aware of the ruling, not wanting to cause trouble, or
being genuinely fearful for their safety complied. The Journey of
recons Aviation was intended to put bus integration to the

(22:03):
test by sending both black and white riders out together
on buses to test the law. This was dangerous work,
and rested In the other writers faced continual opposition, including
violence and multiple arrests as they traveled through the South.
They were attacked and beaten by a mob of segregationists
in North Carolina, and it was rest In, not the attackers,

(22:24):
who was charged. He wound up returning to North Carolina
two years later after a lengthy series of appeals in
a botched defense to serve thirty days of hard labor
on a chain gang. He was released after twenty two days,
after which he spoke on the experience, as well as
publishing a lengthy report on the inhumane and abhorrent treatment

(22:46):
of the prisoners on the chain gang, and this report
eventually led to some reforms, both in North Carolina and
in some of the surrounding states. In the interim between
the Journey of Reconciliation, in his return to North Carolina
to service sentence, Rustin did a lot. He testified before
the Senate Armed Services Committee on the need to integrate

(23:07):
the armed forces, something that finally happened on July with
Executive Order one. There is uh, there's film footage I
think it is of this this testimony. It may be
a different one where like he keeps answering the question

(23:29):
and then he takes a drag on a cigarette like
he's dropping a microphone. It's amazing. Also in don't smoke,
that's it's real bad for you. This was in when
people didn't really know that. Also in nineteen forty eight,

(23:49):
the American Friends Service Committee assigned Rustin to be it's
representative at a pacifist seminar in India. He had been
studying the pacifist teachings of Mohandaskan also known as Mahatma
Gandhi for some time, especially how those teachings could be
applied to a non violent resistant movement. This turned into
a four month tour of study and advocacy in India

(24:12):
following a brief stay in London. Although Gandhi had been
assassinated that January, Rustin was able to study with people
who had worked directly with him. He also spent a
lot of time speaking directly to India's own civil rights leaders.
Gandhi had been the keystone of its non violent focus,
and after his assassination, movement leaders were worried that younger,

(24:34):
more radical participants would take the movement in a more
violent direction. They really hoped that Rustin, as a black man,
would have an influence and reach that white pacifists simply couldn't,
considering that India had just become independent from a white
British government. After his return from India, Rusten wrote quote,
we need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers.

(24:58):
The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we
need to tuck them in places the wheels don't turn,
Which is where I got the title of this episode.
Yeah uh, and that's actually where where Tracy his cliff
hung us. Yeah. Well, and I originally where we're going
to pick up next time is the probably lowest point

(25:21):
in Rustin's life, and I originally intended to get through
that in this episode, but the time does not equate.
That's a whole additional chapter of stories. Have one really
long episode and one relief short one. Well, yeah, so
we're gonna we're gonna end kind of a high point.

(25:41):
Like at this point in Rustin's career, people were calling
him the American Gandhi, and they like he was on
track to become an enormously prominent and well known um
civil rights pacifist leader. Like that he was. He was
on that path, and we're going to pick up next
time with what derailed him from that path. Uh, just

(26:06):
kind of a sad story. So brace for that. But
in the meantime, you got some listener mail. Do you
have listener mail hanging on? Uh? This listener mail is
is it's a little bit, a little bit from back.
I'm still catching up from having been out for a
little bit with my mail. Um. And so this is

(26:26):
from Mary or Pat possibly Mary Ellen Um, that's not
quite clear. So uh, she writes to us about white
weddings and she says, hello, Tracy and Holly, I just
listened to the episode on white weddings and you stated
that you didn't know whether plum cake was still considered
to be a wedding cake in the UK. I'm sure
loads of British listeners have written to tell you this,

(26:48):
but fruitcake is definitely still the traditional option when you're
looking to get a wedding cake here. Most people in
my husband's generation don't fancy it, but his parents and
older relatives all still say that you to be the
standard wedding confection. We even tried someone tasting for wedding cakes,
but we opted for something a bit less heavy. I'm
an American who met a British guy while living in Japan.

(27:10):
Having moved to England and done wedding planning here, I've
learned lots of surprising things, like the difference in traditions
like the cake. For example, it's common for the reception
to have two different meals. First is the wedding breakfast,
which despite the name, is just to sit down served
meal after the wedding ceremony. This has served to a
smaller group of people, as when the evening guests arrived

(27:32):
later there is usually a buffet style meal. Also, I
was prepared to have the best man and made of
honor give the toast, but I found out the traditional
way here these days is to have the father of
the bride the groom, and lastly the best man gives speeches.
I was learning a lot of little differences like that,
which surprised me as I thought American and British weddings
would be quite similar. Finally, just the side that I

(27:53):
thought you'd appreciate being fans of Queen Victoria. When my
husband and I got married at the City Hall here
in the northeast of the ceremony, room where weddings were
held was named quote the Victoria Room. Throughout the ceremony
we were under the stern gaze of Victoria's portrait. We
went back in after to snap a photo with her
Majesty as well. She said to that photo, thank you

(28:13):
so much, Mary, or perhaps Mary Ellen. That is a
sweet story. It is. Their photo is very sweet. And
I love the idea of Queen Victoria because in my
head I think about her letters to her daughters saying,
don't have kids right away? Oh yeah, I um, we heard. So.
It was funny because after that episode, most but not all,

(28:35):
of the notes that we got about wedding cake in
Britain were from similarly Americans who married someone um either uh,
like somebody who had moved to the United States and
their parents were still somewhere in the UK, or like
someone who had moved someone moved someone who had met
someone in front the UK and was like going there
to get married. We've basically heard a lot of American

(28:58):
perspectives about what it was like to try to plan
a wedding uh in somewhere in like the whole realm
of the British Isles. Um, having grown up with the
expectations that are kind of ingrained in you in the
United States and sort of being like, what do you
mean this fruit cake situation? I don't talk. This is

(29:19):
not a cake, um. And some of these letters were
quite charming, so thank you very much everyone who sent
them to us. If you would like to write to us,
we're a history podcast at how stuff Works dot com.
We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com slash miss
in history and on Twitter at miss in History. We're
also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash miss in history,

(29:41):
and on Instagram at missed in History. If you would
like to learn more about what we've talked about today,
you can come to our website. Put the word Gandhi
in the search bar. You will find several articles about Gandhi,
his life and work. You can also come to our website,
which is missed in history dot com where you will find,
for example, the pie charts I talked about at the
beginning of this episode. You'll find an archive every episode

(30:02):
we have ever done. You will find show notes for
all the episodes Holly and I have ever done, which
I will link to some of the recordings of buyed,
resting and singing, so you can do all that and
a whole lot more at how stuff works dot com
or missed in history dot com for more on this

(30:24):
and thousands of other topics because it how stuff works
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