B  ayard Rustin (1912 – 1987) “shaped virtually every aspect of the modern civil rights movement as a theorist, strategist, and spokesman,” said his biographer Jerald Podair. He was “America’s signature radical voice during the 20th century [including] that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Rustin trained and mentored. ... he was a civil rights activist, a labor unionist, a socialist, a pacifist and, later in life, a gay rights advocate.”

Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and raised by his maternal grandparents. He grew up in a large house believing that his mother was his older sister. His early influences included his grandmother’s religious association with Quakers and her membership in the NAACP—National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in their home—all of which inspired a young Rustin to campaign against Jim Crow laws—discriminatory laws, rules, regulations, and customs meant to assert white supremacy.

His college education included Wilberforce College, Cheyney State Teachers College, and City College of New York. During these times, Rustin joined the American Friends Service Committee, worked to free the Scottsboro Boys—nine young black men in Alabama accused of raping two white women, and joined the Young Communist League—but quickly became disillusioned and resigned. As an accomplished tenor, he sang in a Broadway play and with Blues singer Josh White, performed in Greenwich Village nightclubs, and recorded spirituals from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Bayard Rustin’s evolving affiliations included the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas, work with pacifist A.J. Muste of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (who later named Rustin their college secretary for the FOR), and work to protect Japanese- Americans’ property during WWII. He also pioneered a movement to desegregate interstate bus travel. Rustin embraced the pacifist teachings of Mohandas Gandi and refused induction into the military by declaring his status as a conscientious objector, for which he was imprisoned from 1944 to 1946 for violating the Selective Service Act. In 1947, he was arrested for participation in a protest against segregated public transit; and in 1953, he was arrested on a morals charge for publicly engaging in homosexual activity.

His work as a civil rights organizer included the Freedom Rides, travel to India to learn more about non-violent resistance, secretary of the War Resisters League, and member of American Friends Service Committee. He is probably best remembered for his five-year special assistant and closer advisory position to Martin Luther King, Jr., which included Rustin’s 1956 advice to Dr. King on Gandhian tactics—convincing Dr. King to forego armed protection for the effective techniques of Gandhi’s non- violent approach. Rustin was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.”

His work as a civil rights organizer included the Freedom Rides, travel to India to learn more about non-violent resistance, secretary of the War Resisters League, and member of American Friends Service Committee. He is probably best remembered for his five-year special assistant and closer advisory position to Martin Luther King, Jr., which included Rustin’s 1956 advice to Dr. King on Gandhian tactics—convincing Dr. King to forego armed protection for the effective techniques of Gandhi’s non- violent approach. Rustin was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.”

Rustin’s work changed the course of history, for which he received numerous awards and honorary degrees during his career. He also authored four books: Time On Two Crosses, I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life, Down The Line, and Rustin: Strategies for Freedom: The Changing Patterns of Black Protest.