Newspaper Page Text
SOUTHERN
TAKING PRIDE IN OUR CULTURE
AUGUST 25-AUGUST 31/1994
One yean after
the resolution,
a look at life
for gays and
lesbians in
Cobb County
ADAM TAYLOR
PAGES
NEWS
AID Atlanta executive director
Becky Clayton Burton resigns pace j
Columbia, South Carolina gay center
gets new home 4
Federal Reserve Bank can
discriminate against gays,
ruling says neu
Survey says gays and lesbians
earn less mu
FEATURE
The founders ol NY's Gay Men's
Health Crisis remember the early
years ol the epidemic p«e
New fitness magazine aims lor
gay/lesbian readers PAGE 19
OUT & ABOUT
Considering marriage? Check with
"The Essential Guide to Lesbian and
Gay Weddings” first PAGE 28
The Atlanta Upera's "Norma"—
a tale of betrayal and blood lust pieesi
VOIIIME 7/NUMBER 27 PLEASE RECTCIE 75c WHERE S010
The man
behind
the March
Civil rights activist
Bayard Rustin,
a chief organizer of the
1963 March on Washington,
embodied the struggles against
racism and homophobia
by MICHAEL OSTROWSKI
As the 31st anniversary of the 1963 March on
Washington approaches on August 28, footage of
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s brilliant “I Have a Dream”
speech will flood TV screens, and historians and
politicians will attest to the importance of the march.
But, once again, Bayard Rustin, a gay African Ameri
can who was the March’s chief organizer, will likely
receive little attention.
Bayard (pronounced BUY-urd) Rustin, who died
in 1987 at the age of 75, was an intriguing figure in
the black civil rights movement, as much for what he
achieved as for what he was prohibited from becom
ing. A tall, elegant man with a dignified (albeit af
fected) English accent, Rustin was an outsider among
outsiders. As a man who was discriminated against
by people who were themselves fighting discrimina
tion, Rustin’s life provides a unique perspective from
which to view both the civil rights movement and
the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s.
Congressman John Lewis remembers Rustin as
“a man of deep commitment and a person of great
vision...the first person I ever met who really be
lieved in coalition politics.” He echoes most who
knew Rustin by saying, “He doesn’t get the credit
for what he did, the things he said, and the people he
influenced.”
When Rustin first met Martin Luther King, Jr. in
Montgomery, AL, in the winter of 1956, Rustin was
by all accounts a political pariah. Taylor Branch,
author of award-winning “Parting the Waters,
America in the King Years 1954-1963” wrote that
although Rustin was a longtime pacifist, political
activist and civil disobedient, he was also “unem
ployed, a bastard, a Negro, an ex-communist, an
ex-con, and a homosexual.” Yet for almost a decade,
this most unlikely of characters became one of the
civil rights movement’s chief architects.
As the black civil rights movement gained mo
mentum in the early 1960s, plans went into effect to
organize a massive march on Washington. A similar
march had been organized in early 1941 and, al
though never executed, had proven effective enough
to convince President Roosevelt to integrate defense
industry jobs. Major civil rights legislation was now
at stake, and leaders from each branch of the move
ment rallied their forces in the hopes of bringing
hundreds of thousands of people from every walk of
life to the nation’s capitol.
Bayard Rustin, 53 at the time, had never earned
more than $25 a week. Yet according to John Lewis,
his unique commitment to both civil rights and paci
fism made him “the natural choice” to be the March’s
director. Of the six men involved in the decision
making process, the three who exerted the most power
were Martin Luther King, Jr., NAACP chief Roy
Wilkins, and A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters. The aging Randolph, Rustin’s
mentor and organizer of the planned 1941 March on
Washington, was resolutely in favor of his protege’s
ascension to the directorship.
Although Rustin and King had been close friends
for years, the southern preacher had unceremoni
ously broken off public ties with Rustin in 1960,
after Rep. Adam Clayton Powell had threatened to
accuse King of having an affair with Rustin. Despite
King’s earlier break with him, Rustin recalled years
later in an interview that when the question of direc
torship emerged in 1963, “he [King] stood 100%
behind me. I think that was, in part, because times
were changing, but also because King felt unhappy
with what he had to do earlier.”
Despite support from other quarters, Roy Wilkins’
protests against Rustin would ultimately carry the
day. The NAACP chief cited three factors in his
stand against Rustin’s directorship. First, Rustin had
been labeled a draft dodger. This accusation ignored
Rustin’s Quaker beliefs and the fact that he was
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
WALTER NAEGLE