There are a lot of reasons many people don’t know the names of Black civil rights giants aside from Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X.
Some were killed before they made their mark, like Reverend George Lee; voter registration organizers Lamar Smith and Herbert Lee; and young, energetic civil rights activists James Earl Chaney, James Meredith and Samuel Leamon Younge Jr.
Other voices who had harsh things to say about white America were stifled or murdered.
But one particularly critical activist in the fight for racial equality was sidelined, canceled, and nearly erased not because he was killed or said the wrong things. Or because he was too militant. Or because he wasn’t charismatic enough.
It was because he was gay.
And America suffered because of that homophobia.
That man, Bayard Rustin, was born in 1912 and spent his entire life tirelessly fighting for justice and equality.
On November 3, 2023 Netflix released a long overdue film about his remarkable yet tragic life:
Rustin
Rustin was one of the main architects of Dr. King’s famous 1963 March on Washington and was even one of Dr. King’s mentors on nonviolence as a tool for change. The rest of his résumé is equally impressive.
He was at the forefront of promoting a nonviolent response and protests to America’s sins. He believed in building bridges. He played important roles in the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
He worked with civil rights leaders for the 1941 March on Washington. He helped organize the famed Freedom Rides.
In 1942 alone, Rustin traveled over 10,000 miles in 20 states to speak out against racism and bigotry.
Also a staunch critic of the Vietnam War, which historians virtually all agree was a colossal failure and mistake. He was also a strong proponent for American worker rights.
Even at the time of his death, he was volunteering in Haiti on a humanitarian mission.
There’s a sad backstory, though. In 1953, Rustin was arrested in California for having consensual sex with a man and sent to jail.
Everyone now knew Rustin was gay.
The criticism about his homosexuality that followed was swift, broad and nasty. He got it from the left and the right.
The right blasted him for being immoral.
And the left, even many in the civil rights movement, made sure his efforts remained behind the scenes going forward. Nobody wanted a gay man on the front lines.
Indeed, while Rustin’s equal rights efforts continued, those efforts sadly remained in the background and as an advisor behind closed doors for the rest of his life until he died in 1987. I started my college Black Studies courses that same year and was never taught about him.
If we stop to think about how hatred has deprived the world of so many great contributions, maybe we’d all step up our efforts to stomp out hate in all its forms — whether easy-to-spot overt racism, in our more ingrained systems and structures, or even in our unconscious biases based on years of segregated neighborhoods, imagery and bad education.
Despite contributions of Jews like Einstein, or the Jew who cured polio, or the Jew who figured out how to increase crop yield to feed the world, Hitler’s Germany still rid the planet of so many talented Jewish scientists, musicians, physicians, artists and philosophers. That child gassed by the Germans could have cured the next disease, like other Jews had done. We all lost out as a result.
America likewise killed, maimed, and abused so many great Black men and women, despite so many of their successes and contributions, like cutting edge agricultural methods, our traffic light and ways to transport food without spoilation. Yet America prevented (and still prevents) far too many others from achieving similar greatness. That Black child we never provided a good education could have saved our planet by creating new clean energy.
Rustin’s story is a depressing but stark reminder that when we keep people from achieving their highest level of excellence, we all suffer.
Imagine what Rustin could’ve accomplished if society loved him for who he was.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: History in HD on Unsplash
