By Emil Wilbekin March 17, 2025 (queerty.com)
Bayard Rustin, a Native Son who died in 1987, is often a hidden figure in history. Like many Black gay men who historically played prominent roles in impacting racial justice and politics, Rustin’s existence and contributions remain anonymous for many. On his 113th heavenly birthday, we remember the Black queer icon and speak his name.
Bayard Rustin’s vision as a leader in civil rights, gay rights, socialism, and nonviolence was radically profound — he was also light years ahead of his time. Rustin was a good friend, co-conspirator, and civil rights collaborator of James Baldwin. Much of Rustin’s perspective and ideology propelled his friend, fellow-freedom fighter, and collaborator Dr. Martin Luther King to prominence and pronounced influence. Rustin and A. Philip Randolph were co-architects of the 1963 March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom — where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
“Signs of Rustin’s influence on King and of King’s willingness to lean on Rustin were abundant,” wrote John D’Emilio in the Rustin biography Lost Prophet. “When SCLC convened late in September for its annual convention, Rustin’s language appeared throughout King’s address. ‘Citizens do not have the moral or political right to dream up or engage in fantastic gimmicks to arouse public attention. Demonstrations are tactics, not principles.’ King declared they had to look beyond public accommodations to jobs, housing, and quality education. ‘These areas require political action,’ he said.”
Rustin was a master strategist of social change who studied the workings of insurgent movements globally to better understand creating seismic shifts in altering institutional power and systemic policies. He wanted to shift the balance between white supremacy and racial justice, violence and cooperation, and wealth and poverty.
Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 17, 1912, Quaker beliefs influenced many of Rustin’s core principles. These principles included the belief that there is God in everyone, each human being is of unique worth, value all people equally, and place great reliance on conscience as the basis of morality.
Ironically, homophobia, respectability politics, and colonized American morality quieted Rustin’s existence and profound contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He was a Black gay man living his life out loud and proud when society shunned homosexuality and considered it immoral. In the mid-20th Century, every state in America criminalized homosexual behavior — gay men could be arrested for touching hands in public, spending the night together, or making out in parked cars
In 1953, police officers arrested Rustin on “moral charges” for having sex with another man in a parked car in Pasadena, CA, where he spent nearly two months in jail. Political opponents weaponized his gayness to sabotage his career as an activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement suppressing his deserved visibility and recognition.
In February 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom posthumously pardoned Bayard Rustin for that 1953 conviction. “In California and across the country, many laws have been used as legal tools of oppression, and to stigmatize and punish LGBTQ people and communities and warn others what harm could await them for living authentically,” Newsom said in a written statement.
In the decades following his death, Rustin’s story and his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement have started to receive more recognition. The play Civil Sex, which debuted in 1997, explored Rustin’s life as a Civil Rights activist. The Rustin documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin was released in 2003. In 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Medal of Freedom. Keiynan Lonsdale portrayed Rustin in an HBO Max docuseries called Equal in October 2020. And Colman Domingo starred as him in the award-winning Netflix film Rustin, which was released in 2023.
Native Son recognizes Rustin as a maverick, an innovator, and a freedom fighter who lived his life authentically in service to the Black gay community, civil rights, and equity. His bold and brilliant ideologies and visions are still relevant today amid the current racial reckoning and civil rights erasure and the work of Darren Walker, Rashad Robinson, Alphonso David, Malcolm Kenyatta, Keith Boykin, Jonathan McCory to name a few, is evidence of his enduring influence. We stand on Bayard Rustin’s shoulders and honor his commitment and courage to creating change for us.