Better late than never, via commentor J.Ty. Hard to think of a more deserving recipient:
[Last] Thursday, the White House announced that Bayard Rustin, the trailblazing civil rights activist, will be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.The timing couldn’t be better. Rustin was a key advisor to Martin Luther King and the primary organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom — a job he seemed to have prepared for all his life. Many Americans will be celebrating that event’s 50th anniversary on August 28, and insisting that the country complete the march’s unfinished business of economic justice, full employment, voting rights, and equal opportunity.
Honoring Rustin with the Medal of Freedom tells us something about how far America has come as a nation in the past 50 years. After all, he had four strikes against him. He was a pacifist, a radical, black and gay. Controversy surrounded him all his life.
From the 1940s through the 1960s, Rustin marshaled his considerable talents — as an organizer, strategist, speaker and writer — to challenge the economic and racial status quo. Always an outsider, he helped catalyze the civil-rights movement with courageous acts of resistance. Rustin was a brilliant thinker and strategist, but given his political liabilities as a gay, black, radical pacifist, he also relied on his incredible charm to win converts to the causes of peace and civil rights. A remarkable tenor, he frequently sang gospel and blues songs for his audiences. Had he not become an organizer, he could have become a popular entertainer.
Rustin is not as well known as other civil rights leaders in large part because of his homosexuality and his brief flirtation, during his twenties, with Communism. Although highly respected in labor, pacifist, and civil rights circles, he was typically a behind-the-scenes organizer rather than a public figure…
I remember, back in the 60s, my union-dockmaster father telling me that Rustin had been written out of America’s political history because (I quote), “the chickenshit Goo-goos were afraid of being associated with a guy might get called a Commie.” The old man was temperamentally incapable of pacifism, but he respected honest pacifists and despised ‘tough guys’ whose only bravery was big talk cheerleading mob violence.
srv
He could be respected as a pacifist amongst ‘real’ men, but not as a gay. Things have changed, he could get away with being gay now, but still not as a pacifist amongst the vox populi or the post-mugwumps.
Peter
As a general rule, if an award is given posthumously and was not earned in the process of becoming posthumous, the timing could, in fact, be more perfect.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
So that’s why they were talking about him on NPR tonight. (Just caught a bit of it while en route from one place to another.)
By the time I was back in the car, they had moved on to this:
Exploring The Life, Legacy And Unfinished Work Of Julius L. Chambers
Larime the Gimp
OT: Anne, I need to reach you about a pet bleg, and can’t get the site’s contact form to work. Help?
Angela
I know pride is one of the deadlies, and I love that a fellow Quakers activism and life is honored with this award.
parsimon
I’m bummed that the Medal of Freedom was also recently given to Oprah Winfrey. I … have been losing respect for her, and while I’m sure not everyone else has, it cheapens the award.
Anne Laurie
@Larime the Gimp: Sent you an email, to the address on your form. Hoping you can reach me that way!
hitchhiker
Beautiful article in the new issue of Harpers about how wrong it is that we make Algebra II a requirement for college.
I can’t do it justice, except to say that I taught high schoolers how to do things like graph rational functions for twelve years, and left because I couldn’t take that task seriously anymore.
http://harpers.org/archive/2013/09/wrong-answer/
Srsly, go read it online if you have a subscription.
Yatsuno
@Larime the Gimp: [email protected], IIRC.
J.Ty
My favorite story of Rustin is how he ‘scared off’ a guy who was beating him with a stick at an anti-war rally by… handing him another stick and asking him to continue. Lots of good stories, of course, but that one really does it to me.
Sly
This wasn’t just a guy who was a hanger-on that’s easily forgotten; along with A. Phillip Randolph (someone who also gets short-shrift for a different reason) Bayard Rustin formed much of the intellectual and organizational center of the movement. It was Rustin who lobbied within the movement for a policy of complete non-violence, even in self-defense. And for his trouble, they had to sneak him out of Montgomery in the trunk of a car because the preachers didn’t want to be associated with a sinner.
A. Phillip Randolph also deserves heaps of credit for bucking the leaders from the Church and putting Rustin’s name forward as the logical choice to organize the March of Jobs and Freedom.
When Kennedy set up the Peace Corps and put Sargent Shriver in charge, Lyndon Johnson supposedly took Shriver aside and told him to run it like Johnson ran the Texas Youth Conservation Corps: “Keep out the three Cs.”
“Three Cs?” Shriver asked.
“The commies, the consumptives, and the cocksuckers.”
patroclus
Rustin had a fascinating life – I recently read a very good biography of him by John D’Emilio, a UIC professor. He was a pacifist during WWII, tried to lead a Freedom Ride in 1947 and got arrested and thrown into jail in North Carolina, was arrested for being gay several times, and was a Gandhi-style civil rghts leader WAY before his time. When he went down to visit Montgomery during the bus boycott (he had been in India and had read about), he got arrested for being a black outside agitator. He made good friends with the Kings and was an advisor but Adam Clayton Powell began circulating rumors that he and King were gay, so King reluctantly had to drop him (formally). But A. Philip Randolph then hired him full-time and from that position, he was able to organize the March on Washington. He then, after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act, went mainstream and was quite critical of SNCC (the Stokley Carmichael version) and the Black Panthers. He was always openly gay (he had several affairs), but he never was particularly active (although cordially supportive) in the emerging gay movement; having fought many many battles as a younger man. He really is an icon of the movement writ large and left a large legacy.
El Caganer
I thought we were looking forward, not backward.
Chris
As if anyone thought twice before calling Martin Luther King a Commie.
Lyrebird
Total respect!
Mnemosyne
@Sly:
Well, that and because they didn’t want him to be murdered by angry white supremacists.
Clark Johnson (formerly of “Homicide”) directed a really good HBO movie called Boycott with Jeffrey Wright as Martin Luther King Jr. and Erik Todd Dellums as Rustin. It’s done in a semi-documentary style that gives it a great sense of immediacy and Dellums steals the movie from Wright. His grin as they close the trunk of the car says it all.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
Mad props, Mr. Rustin.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, Rustin actually was a Commie (he joined the American Communist Party in1936), because in the pre-Civil Rights era, they were the only ones who so much as paid lip service to equal rights for African-Americans.
NotMax
Open Thread?
For the pet people (to whom the pic might be old news).
Steeplejack
@Peter:
LOL. Perfect.
J.Ty
@Mnemosyne: They also let gays, like, talk out loud and stuff. It was a weird mix in the early years. One of the reasons “having any involvement with Communists ever” was so damaging to Hollywood…
Steeplejack
@hitchhiker:
What is the gist of Baker’s argument? Doesn’t really help to give us a link that bangs up against a paywall.
Punchy
Where are all these bizarro tags coming from? Are these old ABL ones?
lojasmo
I blame Obama.
Off topic (open thread, mutafuccas) I get to have dinner with two of my favorite seattleites tomorrow.
lojasmo
@Punchy:
Fuck off.
Yatsuno
@lojasmo: And maybe breakfast.
2liberal
so where is the blog owner tonight ? Contemplating the meaning of life?
Anne Laurie
@Punchy: Actually, “Don’t Mourn, Organize” and “Gay Rights Are Human Rights” were my additions. Possibly “Rare Sincerity”, too also.
aangus
A powerful earthquake shook major cities across New Zealand on Friday, sending terrified office workers diving under their desks but with no initial reports of significant damage.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usb000j4iz#summary
FlipYrWhig
@patroclus: John D’Emilio is pretty kickass in his own right. Not Rustin level, but of course that’s rarefied air up there.
Yatsuno
@aangus: Checking in with an old friend from college on Book of Faces. Hoping things are good.
AxelFoley
@El Caganer:
I thought Obama hated teh gayz?
I Heart Breitbartbees
@AxelFoley: LOL! Obummerz hates all lefties! He’s no better than Rush Limbaugh!!!`111!!!! Emo left indeed. I voted for him in 2008 and went further left in 2012, but if I were in the Democratic People’s Republikkk of Floriduh, I would have voted for Obama in 2012 as well. I have a lot of criticisms of President Obama. I would grade him a C- on civil liberties, and that’s grading on the curve because his predecessor scored an F-. That said, he’s the best we had who could be elected. I have hopes, not for him, but for the type of presidents and Congress he will pave the way for.
I would also like a constitutional amendment that would change the House to a mixed-member proportional or list system to ensure the majority of seats go to the party that wins the majority of votes, with a minimum of 5% of the vote to win any seats. Even mandating that on a state by state basis would be good. Example: Alabama. President Obama won 38.36% of the vote to “Mr. 47%”s 60.55%. With 7 house seats, that would increase the ratio to 4 R 3 D. The current ratio is 6R 1D. Gerrymandering is fun the whole family can enjoy!