For the 50th anniversary memories of the March ... a small addition
Admittedly, I'm not following all the nostalgia on the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice in 63. I used to teach "I Have a Dream" in speech, so if anyone really wants a 50-minute lecture on its rhetorical considerations, I will be glad to reproduce it, also out of nostalgia (though would probably gladly pare it down quite a bit without the part teasing comments out of first year students). Kinneavy, Aristotle, and the syllabus would figure in quite prominently, since it was usually the first day lecture...
However, I have yet to hear one point, at least on visual media. It makes me keep shouting back at the tv. In fact, had I not just googled to see how uncommon the information was, and got back tons for the key wors "Bayard Rustin, gay" I would have convinced I might have imagined the whole thing.
There are definitely bits of information floating around. The Washington Post today had a headline, "Meet Bayard Rustin, the gay socialist pacifist who planned the 1963 March on Washington." While that sounds a bit more in-your-face than the man himself was, it's a fair description. Rustin, in fact, was once a member of the Communist Party, finding none of the socialist-identified groups of the 30s seemed to care much about civil rights issues related to race, while the CP could be relied on. (I had much the same experience in the 70s, except by that time the CP was bigtime fail as well. As for female and gay rights, I vividly remember reading that the SWP announced there was "no revolutionary potential in women's rights," and several years later reading they changed their mind, but then insisted there was "no revolutionary potential in gay rights." And then, of course... well, co-optation's a different story, and I was way too young to understand. Stephanie Coontz is another of my heroes, anyway.)
The religious right is trying to rewrite the March into something they would have supported, They elide many facts about the event, but to me, this is one of the most significant: Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece now slithers around the country using her relationship with King to speak against abortion and gay rights. But King knew Bayard was gay; in fact, had been threatened by Adam Clayton Powell to be revealed as in a relationship with him; and nonetheless, kept working with him. (No evidence King actually was, btw; pure smear tactic, repeated several years later by Jesse Helms, I believe, at which point it backfired, because the civil rights leaders hated white Southern bigots more than they disapproved of homosexuality, so they kept supporting him. Something today's Black leaders might well learn from their forebears.)
But here's to a fine organizer and heroic Quaker who put together one of the biggest nonviolent demonstrations of the 20th century, and who was also one of the first famous men I ever heard of who was gay. Happy 50th anniversary, and thank you for passing through.
However, I have yet to hear one point, at least on visual media. It makes me keep shouting back at the tv. In fact, had I not just googled to see how uncommon the information was, and got back tons for the key wors "Bayard Rustin, gay" I would have convinced I might have imagined the whole thing.
There are definitely bits of information floating around. The Washington Post today had a headline, "Meet Bayard Rustin, the gay socialist pacifist who planned the 1963 March on Washington." While that sounds a bit more in-your-face than the man himself was, it's a fair description. Rustin, in fact, was once a member of the Communist Party, finding none of the socialist-identified groups of the 30s seemed to care much about civil rights issues related to race, while the CP could be relied on. (I had much the same experience in the 70s, except by that time the CP was bigtime fail as well. As for female and gay rights, I vividly remember reading that the SWP announced there was "no revolutionary potential in women's rights," and several years later reading they changed their mind, but then insisted there was "no revolutionary potential in gay rights." And then, of course... well, co-optation's a different story, and I was way too young to understand. Stephanie Coontz is another of my heroes, anyway.)
The religious right is trying to rewrite the March into something they would have supported, They elide many facts about the event, but to me, this is one of the most significant: Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece now slithers around the country using her relationship with King to speak against abortion and gay rights. But King knew Bayard was gay; in fact, had been threatened by Adam Clayton Powell to be revealed as in a relationship with him; and nonetheless, kept working with him. (No evidence King actually was, btw; pure smear tactic, repeated several years later by Jesse Helms, I believe, at which point it backfired, because the civil rights leaders hated white Southern bigots more than they disapproved of homosexuality, so they kept supporting him. Something today's Black leaders might well learn from their forebears.)
But here's to a fine organizer and heroic Quaker who put together one of the biggest nonviolent demonstrations of the 20th century, and who was also one of the first famous men I ever heard of who was gay. Happy 50th anniversary, and thank you for passing through.