Comments on: Happy 100th Birthday Bayard Rustin! Video, Photos

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 23:58:47 +0000

Hello my friend! I want to say that this post is
amazing, nice written and include almost all important infos.
I would like to peer extra posts like this .

By: Grady H. Hampton

Grady H. Hampton — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:25:23 +0000

My name is Grady H. Hampton im a 52 year old black male who would see Bayard Rustin at my cousins kitchen table doing my early childhood. He was my cousins God Father and a friend to my grandparents and parents it is important to me that his legacy not be forgotten. I feel that there some who do not want to allow his accomplishements which are greater then the public knows that need to be expressed in great detail publicly. I feel that this would be a inspiration to our young American community to strive to make America a graet country again. I welcome response.

By: Breaking: NAACP Board Endorses Marriage Equality

Breaking: NAACP Board Endorses Marriage Equality — Sat, 19 May 2012 21:16:40 +0000

[...] it’s the turn of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was co-founded by gay organizer Bayard Rustin, but threatened to fire SCLC/LA President Rev. Eric Lee over his opposition to Prop 8 and support [...]

By: Michael Bedwell

Michael Bedwell — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:28:04 +0000

Thanks for remembering one of my biggest heroes, for all the photos, and links. But I’m saddened by the many today who feel the need to rewrite his history, and those who echo them out of ignorance. Words matter, and, so, it does him and Truth a disservice to claim that he was “openly gay” when that connotes “out to the public at large” in the same way we think of Harry Hay, Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon, Frank Kameny, and Barbara Gittings & Kay Tobin. Yes, he never pretended to be straight, and many people he worked with in the civil rights and peace movements became aware he was gay after his 1953 arrest for lewd conduct. BUT he personally rejected any such credit in 1986, a year before he died: “I did not ‘come out of the closet’ voluntarily—circumstances forced me out. While I have no problem with being publicly identified as homosexual, it would be dishonest of me to present myself as one who was in the forefront of the struggle for gay rights. The credit for that belongs to others. While I support full equality, under the law, for homosexuals, I fundamentally consider sexual orientation to be a private matter. As such it has not be a factor which has greatly influenced my role as an activist.” [Quoted in "Lost Prophet, The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin" by John D'Emilio.] His first work as a publicly open gay person didn’t come until the year before that, when, at the encouragement of his partner, he began to do some speaking and writing about homophobia, both historically and contemporaneously such as in relation to the “Bowers v. Hardwick” Supreme Court decision and reactions to AIDS, and lobbying for New York City’s gay rights bill. I regret that he did not picket the White House for gay rights with Kameny and others in 1965, and that he didn’t join NY GAA for zaps in the early 70s when he virtually invented such styles of direct action in the US decades before. Yet make no mistake: I still believe he was a great, great man—one of the greatest in world history—to whom statues should be built, and his story retold in every public school history book—including that he was gay. But he was a lily that does not need gilding.