He had to assemble a staff and shape them into a team able to perform under intense pressure. He had to build an organization out of nothing. The following eight weeks, writes D'Emilio, "were the busiest in Rustin's life. Photograph: Eddie Adams/APĭemonstrations in Washington DC are now a common occurrence but what Randolph and Rustin were proposing was audacious – 100,000 protesters descending on the Capitol – unprecedented. Rustin speaks at the March on Washington's national headquarters in August 1963. But there had been few takers from the civil rights movement for a national march until demonstrations erupted in Birmingham in Spring. The idea for a march on Washington had been hatched by his long term mentor, A Philip Randolph, who was 20 years his senior. With a vertical mop of salt-and-pepper hair and his tie hung loose on his chest, Rustin always cut a distinctive figure. Prejudice of another sort, still not named as such in mid-century America, had curtailed his opportunities and limited his effectiveness." He was still waiting for his day in the limelight, though likely believing it would never come.
The award marks the end of a journey for Rustin, who died in 1987: from marginalisation in both life and history to mainstream official accolade just in time for the 50th anniversary of arguably his crowning achievement – organising the march on Washington.īy the time the march was proposed, writes John D'Emilio, author of Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin: "He had recently turned 50. Fifty years on the White House has announced that Bayard Rustin will be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Rustin would lead the march and do so brilliantly while Wilkins would be called upon to defend him and do so. And I don't care what you say, I can't defend that." And the fact is that you were a member of the Young Communist League. The question is never going to be homosexuality, it's going to be promiscuity and I can't defend that.
"I know you're a Quaker, but that's not what I'll have to defend. "I don't want you leading that march on Washington, because you know I don't give a damn about what they say, but publicly I don't want to have to defend the draft dodging," he said. Some in the room that day believed all this made him too great a liability to be associated with such a high profile event. Charged with lewd vagrancy he plead out to a lesser 'morals charge' and was sent to jail for 60 days. His position became particularly vulnerable following his arrest in Pasadena, in 1953, when he was caught having sex with two men in a parked car. Rustin was also openly gay, an attribute which was regarded as a liability in the early sixties in a movement dominated by clerics.
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