It is hard to discuss Bayard Rustin without noting our current moment in history, when race and sexual orientation intersect in unprecedented, tumultuous ways.
The first black American president claims positions that would make him the greatest advocate for LGBT rights ever to grace the Oval Office, more gay-friendly than any of his white predecessors. Yet President Obama is paradoxically under closer scrutiny from LGBT groups than any former president was — both because the moment is so ripe for change and because he has yet done little to fulfill his promises.
Similarly, the aftermath of Proposition 8 in California last November brought group tensions to a head, when some pro-gay commentators placed the blame for the insidious law’s passage on the votes of black Californians. Same-sex marriage advocates lamented the lack of understanding from a group that has faced similar discrimination, and LGBT people of color (who obviously did not vote for Proposition 8 ) faced a cruel backlash from their white peers at a time when they, too, were reeling from the shock that their right to marry was revoked.
Progress happens when we put aside defensiveness and focus on the truth: that all people deserve to be treated with dignity, fair judgment, and respect. The life of Bayard Rustin (pictured above with Martin Luther King Jr.) proves that LGBT Americans and black Americans are indebted to each other, and are more alike than different, having been intertwined for generations.
Rustin, a gay black man born in Pennsylvania in 1912 to a NAACP-member mother, can be credited with bringing Mahatma Gandhi’s strategy of passive resistance to the doorstep of Martin Luther King, Jr. The powerful tactics are what successfully repealed Jim Crow and forever changed America.
In 1948 Rustin traveled to India and met with leaders of Gandhi’s Indian Independence Movement, which had used Hindu spirituality and pacifism to overthrow the British empire. Rustin’s own religious upbringing with the Quakers had given him familiarity with religious social activism — a century before the Quakers were known as abolitionists and operators of the Underground Railroad — and Rustin brought his organizing knowledge to the attention of King, who embraced him as a friend and advisor and worked with him on numerous campaigns.
But merging spirituality and social justice forced Rustin into some agonizing choices as a gay man in the Civil Rights movement; not all religious people were gay-friendly and welcoming to him. Meanwhile homosexuality was still illegal, and Rustin was a political liability in a time when activists were trying to overthrow segregation with popular support. Civil rights opponents knew of Rustin’s sexuality (he spent 60 days in jail for sodomy in 1953) and threatened to publicize it on several occasions, forcing Rustin to disassociate his name from campaigns.
In 1963, famous segregationist and South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond publicly insinuated that Rustin and King were in a sexual relationship, and produced an FBI photograph of the two men talken while King was bathing. The NAACP protected King by removing Rustin from recognition as an organizer of a major march in Washington at the time.
Rustin faced multiple incidents of opposition from black leaders; Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a congressman and fellow member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Rustin, forced Rustin out of the conference over his sodomy arrest, and other leaders were wary of Rustin’s involvement in their organizations.
But Rustin’s story proves that those at the very core of the Civil Rights movement — King and his innermost circle of prominent Black Civil Rights leaders — were allies to lesbians and gays and put themselves on the line in a time when associating with an openly gay man was anathema in American politics.
Rustin himself embodies the powerful synergy of the multiple backgrounds that made American Civil Rights successful; he had Hindu and Gandhian influences with an early seed of gay liberation, his native Quakerism, King’s charismatic Christianity and Black Populism and was aided by countless white allies, who King and Rustin embraced.
Rustin’s story also proves that when LGBT and other minority groups conflict, the ones who suffer the most are not our political opponents, but LGBT people of color who are caught between competing interests.
In 1986, a year before Rustin died, he gave a speech called “The New Niggers are Gays” in favor of a gay rights bill in the State of New York. The speech linked gay rights with the civil rights movement and argued that treatment of LGBT people should be a new “barometer for social change” in America.
In 2008, the cover story for the November 18 issue of The Advocate was titled “Gay is the New Black?” and upset many in the black community and their allies as seeming to appropriate the Civil Rights movement into itself while denying the ongoing struggle that black Americans face.
Some would say that is exactly what Rustin was trying to say two decades earlier, but I think the rhetorical environment surrounding both statements mattered more than the words themselves. Rustin wasn’t claiming that Blacks had achieved full equality in all realms and gays were next in line; he was saying that the nation’s attitude toward its most disenfranchised people indicates its progress. In 1986, Rustin saw attitudes towards lesbians and gays as having the farthest to go to achieve a full-throated public debate.
Systematic attitudinal problems towards any social group are social injustices that we are all equally responsible to fix. Concluding that not all people in another identity group are allies is no excuse to refuse to pursue justice for them. Bayard Rustin is the model: when some black leaders called him immoral or tried to disassociate from him because he was gay, he fought for black rights anyway, because that was the right thing to do.
The LGBT movement owes a debt of gratitude to the Civil Rights movement, which laid the language and the model for our own fight for freedom, though we should never seek to replace it or appropriate it without deference. We owe a debt of gratitude to leaders like King, who we know, through Rustin’s story, believed not just in black rights but in the rights for all disenfranchised people. And we owe a debt of gratitude to Bayard Rustin, who faced the hardest struggle of all by allying himself with those who were not always good allies back, setting a mighty example to live up to.
© 2009, Matt P.. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com
I just read the following Bayard quote a few weeks ago, and since then it’s provided me with what I feel is a more hopeful framework for viewing the conservative backlash against the progress we’ve made in recent months (marriage equality in Iowa, New Hampshire, Maine). It also provides the proper context in terms of the successes of the hate brigade, most notably the Prop 8 debacle:
“[T]he job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That’s our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment.â€
What an amazing essay! I think two important points need to be stated, though.
After the ’08 election,most polls showed it was NOT the African-American community in CA whose votes passed Prop 8. The votes of all people, white, hispanic, etc. in the Inland Empire and Central Valley sealed the Prop. 8 deal.
In addition, I sniff a hint of white privilege here. The movement for greater civil rights for African-Americans spanned almost 75 years, from the late 1800′s through the late 1960′s. I think us white gays might have to work a little harder and not expect so much so soon. These movements take time. Yes, we deserve these rights here and now in this moment, but it might not happen just yet.
No other comment than: THANK YOU SO MUCH!
It was a very interesting essay for me; as a well-educated Brit gay with an interest in LGBH and civil rights issues, I had never heard of Bayard Rustin. Shameful that he (along with many others) was pushed under the carpet, even if it was understandable at the time. I would also agree with Jeff’s point that change takes time. The LGBH community should not be so impatient with Obama: while it is true that he has not done much yet for LGBH issues, he has had a few other little things to worry about such as how to stop his country from going bankrupt, a smouldering Middle East, thousands of industrial jobs on the line, healthcare in tatters…. Give him time! I am confident that he will deliver – eventually.
As a gay black man I find it frustrating when “African American Leaders” speak for a group of people as a whole. If I side with the LGBT community on an issue I’m not black enough or if I side with African American community I’m not liberal enough. Black LGBT people are stuck in a weird position, politically. You have a heavy amount of religious and social pressure to be “black” before anything else. And often being black just means going by what ever our “leaders” say. I use that word leader very lightly, Rev. Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson have never said anything I particularly agree with. And I’m called radical for having my own opinion. I’m fine with that label, if it means I get to keep my free thought… If any group of people should understand bigotry and hatred it’s the african american people. It amazes me that so many are just repeating the same system of hate towards the LGBT community that has afflicted and continues to afflict them today. I’m not basing this observation off a prop 8 vote, I’m basing this off my life. Most black people celebrate MLK, but don’t live by the ideals he stood for. It’s such a backward way of thinking that I’ll never understand it.. and will continue to be an outsider as a result. I’m just glad that there are some who are willing to hold on to what they believe as individuals. Rustin was one of these people, maybe I’ll be one too.
^I don’t think mainstream black leaders are homophobic!
Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have their share of detractors. I personally don’t see what the fuss is about; the main issue with them is that they use the academic-styled definition of “racism,” – which is used loosely; everyone is a little bit racist, a lot of laws are a little bit racist, and everything should be discussed on that level – in a public setting, where, to most people, being accused of “racist” is like being accused of a sex crime. It’s not something that they’d like to think they all share a “little bit” of – the word means you’re donning a KKK robe and burning crosses, not that you regularly refer to black neighborhoods as the “bad neighborhood” which you think has more to do with poverty than race. So people who do the latter vehemently hate Sharpton and Jackson as extremists.
But one thing that Sharpton and Jackson are not is homophobies. They’ve chosen race as their issue, but you won’t here them using the Bible to bash gays even though they are ministers, and their politics are, across the board, liberal – on abortion, on immigration, on the war in Iraq, on civil liberties, and the like.
I think they’ve chosen one issue to telescope on and anyone who does that becomes unpopular. But people who look at Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton and decide that, as reverends and very political American black men, they must be homophobes – well those people are guilty of racism, for assuming a negative political attitude from these guys in a way depending on their color of skin.
I’m all in favor of male erotica, preferably between beloveds, so that emotional involvement (not just mutual masturbation in its various forms gets exploited). But your website promotes the most dangerous, irresponsible sexuality, not the least exaggerated cocks, anilingus (rimming), cum in mouth, and barebacking between men who obviously get well-paid to die young for you. (link)
More people die from HPV mouth cancer than tobacco and liquor combined, and it does NOT require cum. You should be ashamed of your social irresponsibility.
As a gay African-american man I am fascinated by this essay. I have never heard anything about this great man. I am very proud to be in the same groups with him. What an honor. We have to continue the fight for him all the others that started it and should not quit until we achieve equal rights. Let’s not settle for “separate but equal”. We all know it’s not.
nightcharm needs to start a non-sex page to lend more credibility to its articles that are like this! What a great article.