"The decade spanned by the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school desegregation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will undoubtedly be recorded as the period in which the legal foundations of racism in America were destroyed." - Down the Line, the collected writings of Bayard Rustin.
http://www.socialdemocrats.org/protopol.htmlPresident-elect Barack Obama owes an historical debt to a courageous, gay, black man named Bayard Rustin, who, largely behind the scenes, helped pave the way for the modern civil rights movement of the 1950's and early 1960's.
"Arguably the high point of Bayard Rustin's political career was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which took place on August 28, 1963, the place of Dr. Martin Luther King's stirring "I Have a Dream" speech. Rustin was by all accounts the March's chief architect. To devise a march of at least one-quarter of a million participants and to coordinate the various sometimes fractious civil rights organizations that played a part in it was a herculean feat of mobilization.
...Although Bayard Rustin lived in the shadow of more charismatic civil rights leaders, he can lay real claim to have been an indispensable unsung force behind the movement toward equality for America's black citizens, and more largely for the rights of humans around the globe, in the twentieth century. Throughout his life, Rustin's Quakerism was a unifying force in his life and a strong plank in his personal philosophy, incorporating beliefs that were of central importance to him: that there is that of God in every person, that all are entitled to a decent life, and that a life of service to others is the way to happiness and true fulfillment."
http://www.quakerinfo.com/quak_br.shtml"When Rustin and Randolph organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, Senator Strom Thurmond railed against Rustin as a "Communist, draft-dodger, and homosexual" and produced an FBI photograph of Rustin talking to King while King was bathing, to imply that there was a same sex relationship between the two. Both men denied the allegation of an affair, but despite King's support, NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins did not allow Rustin to receive any public recognition for his role in planning the march."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_Rustin---------------------------------------------------------------------
On a day when gay and lesbian American citizens are reeling from attempts by a coalition of groups to destroy their families, it is important to remember that we are all truly united in a common cause: the expansion of freedom and the endless pursuit of human dignity.
There are African American gay men and women who feel betrayed today by their own families. They are caught in the crossfire of blame, anger and ignorance.
We all owe a huge debt to Bayard Rustin.
Without him, we would not have the Civil Rights Act of 1963, the Voting Rights Act of 1964 or President-Elect Barack Obama in 2008.
On a day of both joy and grief for many of us, maybe we can look to Bayard Rustin, once again, to point the way.
"...A year before his death in 1987, Rustin said: "The barometer of where one is on human rights questions is no longer the black community, it's the gay community.
Because it is the community which is most easily mistreated."Let us all work together, in his memory, black and white and latino and asian, gay and straight, to ensure that the decade between 2008 and 2018 is the one wherein the legal foundations of homophobia in America are irrevocably destroyed.