GLR January-February Supplement 2024

coalitions. Agitating for passage of New York’s Gay Rights Bill in the 1980s, Rustin would declare gay people to be “the new barometer for social change.” The essays supplement existing scholarship with details on how Rustin translated vision into action as a pacifist, a civil rights leader, and an advocate for social and economic justice. Focusing on his relationships with fellow leaders in those strug gles, they offer fresh observations on Rustin’s experience as a gay man in an intensely homophobic era. In “Rustin’s Resist ance to War and Militarism,” for instance, sociologist Sharon Erickson Nepstad describes his “earliest forays into activism [as] provocative nonviolent direct action.” Born in 1912 to an unmarried teenager from a large family, Rustin absorbed an attitude of pacifism, tolerance, and inclu sion from the maternal grandmother who raised him. He grew up in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a station on the Underground Railroad, where a Quaker family had purchased his great-grand parents’ freedom, and Quaker values informed his approach to life. Rustin adamantly opposed war, for example, an attitude that landed him in federal prison during World War II for “re fusing military service and alternative civilian public service,” while exhorting others to do the same. Five essays explore Rustin’s connections with other lead ers, including his mentor, A. Philip Randolph, the intellectual and labor activist who founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black labor union in the U.S., in 1925. Another of his collaborators was African-American rights and grassroots activist Ella Baker, who joined Rustin to exploit the momen tum of early bus boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama. And there’s an essay on Malcolm X, the African-American Muslim minis ter and activist, who publicly challenged Rustin’s pacifist stance but later became a close friend. Disagreements marked other relationships too. “Rustin and King: Stony the Path They Trod,” by journalist and biographer Jonathan Eig, for example, describes the trouble Rustin had, try ing to convince Martin Luther King, Jr., who was twenty years younger, to adopt a nonviolent strategy for his nascent civil rights crusade. The task wasn’t easy. Eig recounts Rustin’s shock at finding guns (intended for self-defense) when he first visited King’s Montgomery home, and notes the unrelenting persistence needed to convince King that nonviolence was the morally right, as well as more powerful, approach. Rustin faced pushback for being a pacifist and even stronger resistance for being openly gay. Two essays explore this aspect of his life and experience. D’Emilio’s piece, “Troubles I’ve Seen: Rustin and the Price of Being Gay,” supplies a salient pré cis of the activist’s struggles during a time of blatant, intractable homophobia. “The decades during which he was most active as a radical fighter against racial injustice and for world peace— the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s—can reasonably be described as the worst time to be queer,” D’Emilio says, citing President Eisenhower’s 1953 executive order banning “sex perverts” from all federal and government contractor jobs. At the time, homo sexual behavior was criminalized in every state. Rustin was ap prehended more than once on “morals charges”—having sex with another man—and his arrest at a critical juncture cost him the backing of several civil rights leaders for a leadership role in the March on Washington. Fortunately, Randolph, who was overseeing the effort, knew Rustin’s involvement was critical

and quietly put him in charge, with astounding results. As D’Emilio notes, “before the internet, social media, and texting from mobile phones, he and his team succeeded in getting 250,000 people to the nation’s capital.” Rustin died in 1987. An insightful essay by his surviving partner Walter Naegle titled “The Legacy of Grandmother Julia Rustin” traces her influence. Julia and Janifer Rustin routinely welcomed Black luminaries to their West Chester home, among them James Weldon Johnson, who wrote the Black National An them “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and activist, educator, and feminist Mary McLeod Bethune. Julia’s Quaker upbringing re inforced her belief in nonviolence and inclusivity, values she in stilled in her grandson. Rustin saw his grandmother as “a dealer in relieving misery,” Naegle says, and must have sensed her open-mindedness when, as a young teenager, he took a chance and confided in Julia that he found himself attracted to his male classmates. Naegle reports that Rustin told him that her response had been: “Well, I suppose that’s what you need to do.” The essays in this lively, thought-provoking collection am plify what is known of Rustin’s trials and achievements. They offer inspiration for progressives and democratic socialists today by showing how Rustin lived openly and without apol ogy as gay man and a pacifist. The collection also amplifies Rustin’s voice, which rang out to ensure that marginalized voices would be heard. Reportedly, Rustin sometimes inter rupted heated meetings by breaking into song, and clips of him singing spirituals in his melodious tenor voice can be found on YouTube.

January–February 2024

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