March on Washington

by Gary Younge, The Guardian, 8/23/13

Though he was chief strategist for King’s march, Rustin was kept in the background as some organizers considered him a liability. He died in 1987, and is sometimes forgotten in civil rights history

When civil rights leaders met at the Roosevelt Hotel in Harlem in early July 1963 to hammer out the ground rules by which they would work together to organise the March on Washington there was really only one main sticking point: Bayard Rustin.

Rustin, a formidable organiser and central figure in the civil rights movement, was a complex and compelling figure. Raised a Quaker, his political development would take him through pacifism, communism, socialism and into the civil rights movement in dramatic fashion. In 1944, after refusing to fight in World War Two, he had been jailed as a conscientious objector. It was primarily through him that the leadership would adopt non-violent direct action not only as a strategy but a principle. “The only weapons we have is our bodies,” he once said. “And we have to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn.”

Rustin was also openly gay, an attribute which was regarded as a liability in the early sixties in a movement dominated by clerics. His position became particularly vulnerable following his arrest in Pasadena, in 1953, when he was caught having sex with two men in a parked car. Charged with lewd vagrancy he plead out to a lesser ‘morals charge’ and was sent to jail for 60 days.

Some in the room that day believed all this made him too great a liability to be associated with such a high profile event. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, was candid. “I don’t want you leading that march on Washington, because you know I don’t give a damn about what they say, but publicly I don’t want to have to defend the draft dodging,” he said. “I know you’re a Quaker, but that’s not what I’ll have to defend. I’ll have to defend draft dodging. I’ll have to defend promiscuity. The question is never going to be homosexuality, it’s going to be promiscuity and I can’t defend that. And the fact is that you were a member of the Young Communist League. And I don’t care what you say, I can’t defend that.”

Wilkins did not get his way. Rustin would lead the march and do so brilliantly while Wilkins would be called upon to defend him and do so. Fifty years on the White House has announced that Bayard Rustin will be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. The award marks the end of a journey for Rustin, who died in 1987: from marginalisation in both life and history to mainstream official accolade just in time for the 50th anniversary of arguably his crowning achievement – organising the march on Washington….

read more and see many links at The Guardian

BY J. F. PIRRO, Main Line Today, 7/19/13

An integral part of the Civil Rights Movement and the march on Washington, Bayard Rustin and his influence is remembered by West Chester’s Bill Scott.

“Martin Luther King may have told us about his dream, but Bayard Rustin built the platform on which King stood.”

From an early age, Bill Scott was “hooked on Kennedy,” even attending JFK’s inauguration on his own at 15. Sympathetic with the Civil Rights Movement, the Conestoga High School graduate and Rutgers University student set out from home on Aug. 28, 1963, on a Presbyterian Interracial Council bus headed to the March on Washington.

Once Scott’s bus crossed the Maryland line, it joined a sea of others. “Going down, it was a mixed crowd, but mostly what we would’ve called colored folks or Negroes. We didn’t have the word black then,” recalls Scott, a onetime West Chester borough councilman who is now 68. “At one pit stop, someone said, ‘What if they don’t let us in?’ Another said, ‘Not today.’ There was no belligerence—just confidence. Everyone was cheerful, upbeat and excited. They understood that this was a significant thing.”…

As soon as he got there, Scott left his bus group and “weaseled” his way up front. He was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for King’s speech and other festivities, including performances by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. The 18-year-old college sophomore used his 35 mm Zeiss Ikon camera (a gift to his father after 35 years of service at Gulf Oil) to shoot 24 high-quality pictures. “I’m not saying that I could touch King, but I was within 15 feet,” he says. “When he spoke about having his dream, I was right there.”

After King spoke, Scott went to shake his hand, but the two sergeants at arms (on either side of King in every image from that day) made it clear that no one was to touch King. “[Bayard] Rustin was there, and he was getting a lot of hype,” says Scott. “I remember my dad telling me that he was from West Chester, just down the road from us. He was jumping all around. He was all over the place. He was palpably in charge. Martin Luther King may have told us about his dream, but Bayard Rustin built the platform on which King stood.”….

see the whole article and photos at Main Line Today. Photo by Bill Scott, 8/28/63: