REPLAY: An Angelic Troublemaker

see him in video footage of the historic moment. He is standing on Dr King's right, and you can even hear him bellowing his approval when King reaches the end of his famous speech, Free at last, Free at last, Thank God a matter. The man next to Dr King is Byard rust As we learned an episode one, Rustin first came to King's aid during the Montgomery bus boycott. The Quaker activist was King's mentor, and it was Rustin, not King, who many fellow activists looked too early on

at the potential father of the civil rights movement. Bayard Rustin was a master strategist, a tireless organizer, and an outright force of nature in the civil rights movement and more than any other person. He was responsible for injecting non violent protest into the black freedom struggle. So why have so many of us never heard of him? Well, Rustin was not only a black man, he was a gay man as well, and in twentieth century America, those two facts would prove too difficult for even a man

as talented as Rustin to fully overcome. You don't off to ride Jim Kow. No, you don't have to ride Jim Kroll on June the Third High Court said when you ride in the state Jim Crow is dead. You don't have to ride Jim. I'm Sean braswell, and this is the thread. This season, we are pulling the thread on a powerful and revolutionary idea, non violent resistance. An episode one, we saw how a young Martin Luther King Jr. Elevated the U s Civil rights movement using non violence.

In this episode, we pull back the curtain on Bayard Rustin, the man who helped King to take up the banner of non violence in the first place. Byrd, Rustin's life teaches us that sometimes it is the people that we don't learn about in history class that make the biggest impact on our lives. If you're joining us for the first time, we encourage you to go back and listen to episode one, when United Action turns the tide and black and white sit side by side. Oh, someday we

will be. In nineteen fifty six, Martin Luther King Jr. With the help of Buyard Rustin, unveiled a new weapon to combat racial injustice in the United States. For several weeks now, were the nigrot citizens of Montgomery have been involved in a non violent protest against the injustices which we have experienced on the buses a number of years. Rust And discussed the effect of the Montgomery boycott in

a nineteen seventy nine interview. Oh. I think if there had been any violence at all, they were prepared to deal with that. But they could not deal with were people who were not being violent, and there was a kind of moral geoujitsu going on, a moral rustling, and they didn't know how to put their hands on us because it was so intensely non violent. This is Rustin. Biographer John demilio I interviewed many of the pacifists who worked with Rustin in the nineteen forties and early fifties,

and at some point. In almost every interview I did, each one of them would say some equivalent to we thought he would be the American Gandhi. Now think about that, Think about what that means about how powerful they perceived Rustin to be as a model of non violent activism. Every fiber in Rustin's being was dedicated to the principles of non violence, and more than any other person, he

was the one responsible for launching King's famous dream. Still, Rustin makes no more than a cameo appearance in most history books about the time. This is civil rights leader Timothy Jenkins, who knew Rustin personally. No, I don't think that the that the virusors historically fully appreciated for his importance, and I don't think that he was appreciated fully at it when he was alive. Rustin actually had an experience similar to Rosa Parks on a segregated bus thirteen years

before he joined King in Montgomery. John Damilo explains he's traveling to the South and on a bus in Tennessee. He refuses to go to the back and puts himself in the front of the bus, where he is sitting next to white passengers in rows reserved for Whites. The bus driver calls the police. Soon rest In here sirens. Four police officers board the bus and approach Rustin. He patiently explains to them that he has a right to

sit there. He points to a young white child sitting nearby and says that if he moves to the back of the bus, he will be quote depriving that child of the knowledge that there is an injustice here. The officers dragged Rustin from the bus. The police start beating him. Rustin doesn't defend himself. Rustin, a tall, thirty year old black man, extends his arms parallel to the ground. As the officers begin to hit him with their clubs. He tells them there's no need to beat him. He is

not resisting. When they take him to the police station, there is more physical assault. The hallway leading to the police captain's office is lined with officers on both sides. Rustin is tossed from one to another. He endures more blows. His clothes are ripped, and he doesn't resist. Rustin is then taken into the captain's office, where he calmly asks, what can I do for you? The angry captain leans in and yells at Rustin quote, You're supposed to be

scared when you come in here, but buyared. Rustin wasn't scared. At times, he was utterly fearless. Rustin's commitment to non violence was total and complete. It wasn't simply a political tactic that he used in a dem instration. It was the way he intended to live his life, and he expected himself too. And there are many instances in Rustin's life where uh confronted with beatings by police or demonstrators.

He never fought back. Take this incident at a demonstration in nineteen one, Rustin was attacked with a stick by an angry spectator. He picked up a stick of his own. Then he handed his attack or the second stick and asked him if he wanted to use both. The disoriented man threw the two sticks down and stormed away. Rustin explained the logic of his non violent approach in a later interview. There are three ways to deal with injustice. One is to accept it slavishly, or one can insisted

with arms, or one can use non violence. The man who believes in non violence is prepared to be harmed, to be crushed, but he will never crush others Rustin grew up in Westchester, Pennsylvania, which was very much a Quaker town. It had been a stop on the underground railroad in the nineteenth century. His grandmother, Julia, who raised him, worked in the households of Quaker families, and so Quakerism was a part of his life. Rustin was a good

athlete and a lover of the arts. He would often recite classical poems allowed at school, even while at football practice. In the late nineteen thirties, Rustin moved to New York. He attended City College and paid his bills by singing in Greenwich Village nightclubs. Then he landed his first real job.

He actually starts working for an organization called the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which was um a pacifist organization whose membership was mostly ministers committed to the philosophy and practice of non islands. It's not a great time to be a pacifist in the United States. The attack on Pearl Harbor comes three months later. Most Americans rallied to support the

war effort. Rustin did not. I'm a Quaker, and as everyone knows, Quakers for three years have on conscientious grounds being against participating in the rule, but participation was mandatory, so when he finally received the call uh to military service, Rustin had made the decision that he was not going to cooperate in any way with the military. Rustin was arrested. He waived his right to trial, pled guilty, and received a three year sentence. He was thirty one years old

when he entered Ashland Prison in Kentucky. He's classified almost from the beginning as a notorious offender, which means that are watching his every move. He's also a black man in a primarily white movement going to a prison that is racially segregated, and so Rustin, ever, the activist, is now in federal prison, but is organizing prisoners to resist segregation. Thanks to Rustin, the prison athletic program was soon integrated and prisoners were allowed to move between the white and

colored sections of the prison. But not all of the prisoners cared for Rustin's integration efforts. A number of the prisoners are white Southerners themselves, and at a certain point one of them is enraged at the way Rustin is challenging segregation and goes after him with a stick. And there are other people around and Rustin just puts his hands up to try to protect his face from injury,

but doesn't resist in any way. When a fellow prisoners try to protect him, he tells them no. Rustin's attacker continued to rain violent blows on him, and again Rustin calmly responded, you can't hurt me. The other prisoner received no punishment for the incident. Rustin was disciplined by the warden. His activism had not made him popular with prison officials. They soon learned that the formidable organizer had an achilles heel,

at least given the time in which he lived. Rustin is a gay man in an era where no one accepts being gay, and the prison officials realized that they can expose his sexuality, and they bring him up on charges of sexual misconduct. Rustin's integration efforts came to a halt. They put him in solid Harry confinement. It's a horrendous experience for him. There are I found in the archives two mug shots of Rustin. The first one, when he arrives in prison. He looks so serene, as if you

can't do anything to me. The second one is taken after he's been in isolation. For several months, and the pain in his face is unmistakable. It was not the last time in Rustin's life that his sexual orientation would provoke such a response and derail his career. Buyard Rustin was released from prison in nine and at that time the U. S. Supreme Court handed down a decision holding

that segregation and interstate transportation was unconstitutional. Here was a golden opportunity for Rustin to use non violence to test the enforcement of the new law, and they create an organization called CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality and so, nearly fifteen years before the famous Freedom Writers hit the road during the nineteen sixties, Rustin helped recruit a team of fourteen men, divided equally by race, to ride in

pairs on buses throughout the South. Other black civil rights leaders, including the Inn Double A. C. P, wanted no part of the plan. The future Supreme Court Justice Third Good Marshall told Rustin, you are insane to try this, just dumb. Rustin knew the risks. His team endured twelve arrests and numerous threats of violence along the way. In North Carolina, four of the riders, including Rustin, were dragged from the

bus and arrested. Rustin would later serve time on a chain gang as a result, but the organized acts of non cooperation that Rustin and his team engaged in helped lay the groundbook for future acts of non violent protests during the civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties. The journey was an important experiment um It also in a sense demonstrated in that the country wasn't yet ready or prepared to build a mass movement, and so it became an example, a model of what you could do,

even if the impact wasn't dramatic. By the early nineteen fifties, buyired Rustin was a reformer to be reckoned with, but his sexual orientation continued to be a problem in the activist community. Rustin never pretended to be a straight man, but during the mid twentieth century in the United States, it was not safe to come out as a gay one. One never knows when the homosexual is about. He may appear normal, and it may be too late when you

discover he is mentally ill. So keep with your group and don't go off alone with strangers unless you have the permission of your parents or teacher. Every state in the nation criminalized homosexual behavior at the time. This is

civil rights leader Timothy Jenkins. Again. One of the things that he felt he suffered was the double burden, or as he sometimes so called it, the double cross of being black and also being gay, and he appreciated that the hostile forces on the question of race were also hostile on the forces of sexual orientation, and uh he felt that he was being discriminated against on both counts. Such discrimination made it very difficult to have a social life.

John Damelio again also in those years, if you're gay and the gay world is hidden and you're looking to meet other gay men, you engage in what was called at that time street cruising. And rust In, both as a gay man and as a black man, was so susceptible to the police, and a number of times in the forties he was arrested for street cruising lewd conduct. Then another incident occurred that would turn Rustin's world upside down.

In nine he's in California giving talks and meeting with Quaker and Pacifist groups, and in the middle of the night, the police in Pasadena find him in a parked car with two white men and arrest all three of them for performing lewd acts. Rustin's employers at the Fellowship of

Reconciliation punished him, so Rustin has let go. This is not only a pacifist organization built on certain kinds of moral principles, but as an organization primarily of ministers, and here a key staff person has been arrested and convicted of a rals charge. Rust And lost almost everything he had. The man who had tried so hard to cast himself as a principled activist had been branded a sex offender. He has to suddenly start strategizing how to be an

activist who remains invisible to the public. It would take rust In years to fight his way off the sidelines of the civil rights struggle. Then in n he saw an opportunity to get back in the game. That opportunity with the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, a young, dynamic preacher named Martin Luther King started to appear on the national news. It was clear to many of those in the civil rights struggle that the boycott represented a turning point.

As word of the bus boycott travels north. For Rustin, this is his dream. He's been waiting half of a lifetime for something like the US to happen instead of an action that five people engage in and get arrested and that's it. A whole community is joining together to resist racial segregation. Rustin and other Northern Pacifists were worried that the black community in Montgomery might resort to violence. After King's house was bombed, Rustin decided to go to

Montgomery to lend his support. This is King biographer David Garrow now in nineteen fifty six. Being an uncloseted homosexual, especially within Black America, made someone untouchable in many quarters, and so even though Byared hastens to Montgomery to advise King, others in New York are are worried whether those aspects of Bayard's history might be used a enst him. Rustin, who recognized these concerns, kept a low profile. He did not go out after dark alone. He often consulted with

King over the phone. Rustin soon found himself at the heart of one of the most significant protests in American history. Rustin sees his key work as helping to develop doctor King as a nationally recognized leader. In the years following Montgomery, Rustin made himself indispensable to King and to the Civil rights movement. Rustin remained behind the scenes, but if you look closely, you could discern his hand almost everywhere. Rustin

became an advisor to King. He also introduced King to Northern activists, labor leaders, and other prominent individuals who became major financial supporters of the movement. Timothy Jenkins again, I came to know by Rustin as a voice for passive resistance in a very important way, And of course he inspired much of the leadership that led to the political revolution of the South to pursue the course of of

tactics as opposed to just the demonstrations. Rustin fought his way back from the margins to shape the principles and methods of the civil rights movement. Then came his biggest test yet. Up next, the eyes of America and the world turned to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the summer of nineteen sixty three. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is the single most significant demonstration in US history, the event that launched Dr King's famous dream.

The man who organized that march was by Ed Ruston, but only after he survived the efforts of some of the most powerful men in America to bring the march to its knees um. Because of his sexual orientation and criminal record, Buyard Rustin tried to coordinate the March on Washington under the radar. It wasn't easy, and by early August, just weeks before the march, his role became more public and at one point even the Washington Post, I think,

actually describes him as Mr. March on Washington. And the FBI does an investigation. It gathers whatever material it can find on Rustin, including his arrest in Pasadena on sex charges, and provides that information to Strom Thurmond, who is a white segregationist senator from South Carolina. And Thurman gets up more than once on the floor of the Senate and reads into the Congressional record all of this condemning information about Rustin. The attack did not have its intended effect.

Rustin's fellow civil rights leaders leaped to his defense. What's so important about three in Rustin's life and the history of non violence is that because the march was so visible and so important this time, when Rustin is attacked for his sexuality, all of the organizational leaders come together and explicitly stand by him and defend him so that he doesn't lose his role as organizer of the march on Washington. I remember about five thirty in the morning.

I was out on the mall and the press was surrounding me, and I was saying, Mr Rust and Mr Rust, and what's happening. You said, we're going to be a quarter of a million people and are scarcely half doesn't here. I remember taking out of my pocket a blank sheet of paper and taking my watch out of the other pocket. I looked at my watching the blank sheet of paper, and I said, just when everything is going according to oil And I was terrified that people weren't going to

show up, but they did. It was an event like the nation had never witnessed before. The crowd two fifty thousand people gathered on the mall, and they heard speeches that were inspiring and sometimes they were rousing speeches as well. Rusting himself addressed the massive crowd, magine that we have effective civil rights legislation, no compromise, no Philip Uxter, and that he didn't plude public accommodation. Din how it's a greater education f f A PC and the like to vote.

What do you say but of course the main event in the final speaker, thanks to Ruston's own plan, was Martin Luther King. And it's just an astounding success. And of course it gives Dr King an even more visible platform to be a national leader. And there was not a hint of violence anywhere. Rusting himself later summarized it. Now, the single person was arrested in Washington that day. Now the single person was drunk that day or picked up for drunkenness. There were no major problems of any kind.

The march ended for me when we had finally made sure we had not left one piece of paper, not a cup, nothing, and buy ed. Rustin continued to fight for justice in the decades ahead. In the nineteen eighties, at the end of his life, he turned his attention to gay rights through it all rest and consistently downplayed himself. Well, my role was a very simple role. It was a role of saying that Martin Luther King, I have certain skills. I have skills which are good at analyzing problems. I

have skills of the wood and planning and executing. I do not consider myself a leader. I consider myself a spokesman for a given point of view. Barack Obama awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom in fifty years after the historic March on Washington. The White House has announced it will posthumously award the highest civilian honor in the United States, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, to the trail

blazing civil rights active astpired Rustin. It was a fitting honor for a man who gave so much to the cause of freedom, working in the background, away from the headlines, Rustin changed life for millions of people. Rustin's own outlook and life, however, were largely shaped by another man, one that he never met, but who also changed life for millions of people on the other side of the globe.

During the nineteen twenties and thirties, the world grew captivated by a small man in a loincloth taking on an empire in India. It wasn't simply that Gandhi had a personal commitment to non violence, but Gandhi was showing, at least from a distance, that preaching and practicing non violence could be a route to massive social change. Gandhi's commitment and methods were a revelation for Rustin. He began a lifelong campaign to introduce Gandhi's non violent tactic into the

struggle for racial justice in the United States. He finally made it to India UH late forty eight, the very beginning of forty nine, and unfortunately, when he finally did make the trip, UH Gandhi had already passed away. But it was a powerful trip for him, and if anything, it increased the attractiveness of non violence as a route to social change and political activism. Rustin traveled around India

for almost two months. He returned to the United States and continued to preach Gandhian non violence to the black community. Rustin liked to tell audiences that fighting injustice required quote angelic troublemakers, Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable. The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don't turn. Eight years later, Buyed Rustin, the Ultimate Angelic Troublemaker, put that principle into action, making sure that the wheels

did not turn in Montgomery, Alabama. Together, Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. Made things unworkable for those white leaders in the South who wished to preserve a segregated society, but the true ideological father of King and Rustin's nonviolent movement was not Black or even America. In the next episode, we journey to India and South Africa to explore the remarkable life of Mahandas Gandhi, the man who proved that non violence could achieve major political reforms and even take

down an entire empire. You don't have to ride him call. No, you don't have to ride Jim Call on June the Third High Court said, when you ride in the state Jim who is dead? You don't know? The threat is produced by Libby Coleman, Robert Coulos, Sophia Perpetua, and me Sean braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show. This episode features Bayard Rustin performing a song called you Don't have to

Ride Jim Crow. To learn more about the Thread, visit AUSI dot com, slash the thread all one word, and make sure to subscribe to the Thread on Apple podcasts, follow us on I Heart Radio, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out at AUSI dot com or on Twitter and Facebook. If you love surprising, engaging stories from history, look no further than the flashback section of ausy dot com, that's o z y dot com. Free. Yes, someday, real love be free. When United Action turns the tide

and black and white sit side by side. Oh Sunday, real Oh be free