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Bayard Rustin seated at a 1963 pre-march news briefing, wearing a March on Washington button.
WonderStory

Bayard Rustin ran the day-to-day planning of the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech. He led a team of 200 activists and organisers and arranged the buses, trains, marshals and sound. As a gay Black man in an openly homophobic era, he was repeatedly kept out of public view.

Bayard Rustin / March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

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The story behind the card

The veteran labour leader A. Philip Randolph brought Rustin in to organise the march in 1962. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, wary of Rustin's past, would not let him take public credit, so Randolph became director and Rustin his deputy. Weeks before the march, Senator Strom Thurmond called Rustin a 'Communist, draft-dodger, and homosexual' and had the file on his 1953 arrest in Pasadena entered into the Congressional Record. That arrest had already forced Rustin out of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the pacifist group he worked for. In 1947 he had organised the Journey of Reconciliation, the first Freedom Ride against segregation on interstate buses. In the 1980s, with his partner Walter Naegle, he spoke out for gay rights. He died in 1987; in 2013 Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.

Türkçe oku
Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr.'ın “Bir hayalim var” konuşmasını yaptığı 1963 Washington Yürüyüşü'nün gündelik hazırlığını yürüttü. 200 kişilik eylemci ve örgütçü ekibiyle otobüsleri, trenleri, düzen görevlilerini ve ses sistemini o ayarladı. Homofobinin gizlenmediği bir dönemde Siyah ve eşcinsel olduğu için defalarca geri planda tutuldu.

Rustin'i yürüyüşü örgütlemesi için 1962'de deneyimli sendikacı A. Philip Randolph çağırdı. NAACP'nin lideri Roy Wilkins, Rustin'in geçmişinden çekindiği için adının öne çıkmasına karşı çıktı; bu yüzden yürüyüşün resmî yöneticisi Randolph oldu, Rustin de onun yardımcısı. Yürüyüşten birkaç hafta önce Senatör Strom Thurmond, Rustin'i “komünist, asker kaçağı ve eşcinsel” diye suçladı ve 1953'te Pasadena'da tutuklanmasıyla ilgili dosyayı Kongre'nin resmî tutanaklarına geçirtti. Bu tutuklama yüzünden Rustin, çalıştığı barışçı örgüt Fellowship of Reconciliation'dan zaten ayrılmak zorunda kalmıştı. 1947'de eyaletler arası otobüslerdeki ırk ayrımına karşı düzenlenen ilk Özgürlük Yolculuğu'nu, Journey of Reconciliation'ı o örgütlemişti. 1980'lerde, hayat arkadaşı Walter Naegle de yanındayken, eşcinsel haklarını açıkça savundu. 1987'de öldü; 2013'te Barack Obama ona ölümünden sonra Başkanlık Özgürlük Madalyası verdi.

Sources and further reading

Image details

Bayard Rustin at a news briefing on 27 August 1963, the day before the March on Washington.

Warren K. Leffler / U.S. News & World Report Collection, Library of Congress

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