Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm tray Syne Wilson and I'm Holly Froy. So pretty recently we got a complaint that we talked about too many women, and we've gotten a complaint quite a few times. So I did what we always do, and I counted, but this time I had to be in my bonnet, So I made a bunch of pie charts, and I mean the pie charts show that there's never ever been a year in the history of our time on the show when we've talked about more women than men. Uh, in spite of concerted effort to talk about a lot of women. Um. And in response to this whole thing of of of all the pie charts, a lot of folks suggested that we only talk about women for the rest of the year, which I get, I get that impulse. I was already in the middle of working on these two episodes when that whole thing happened. And it's actually a really good example of why women are not the only people that we try to make sure that we talk about on this show. Because we're going to talk about buyared rest in Today and Wednesday Byared Reston was an openly gay Black man born in nineteen twelve, and he spent his life working tirelessly for equal rights and peace and democracy and economic equality, including being one of the primary planners of the nineteen sixty three March on Washington. And because of when he lived, rest in sexual orientation became a really serious obstacle to the work that he was trying to do. So we're going to talk about him a sid a moment ago into parts. This part will go up to the late nineteen forties, and then part two will pick up from there, and a little heads up for parents and teachers. By necessity, we talk about Buyared rest in sex life more in this podcast than you might normally expect from our show. There are also several incidents we're going to talk about in which he and the people around him were subject of violence. So this might be one to pre screen before sharing it with the kids, or if either of those things are things that you are sensitive to. So we're gonna hop right in. Uh. Typically when we talk about the biography of a historical figure, we start at the beginning with their birth and then we walk through what's known of their early life, And while we're gonna get to that, we're going to take a slightly different approach to introducing Bayard Rustin. Rustin was a member of the religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. In his own words, quote, my activism did not spring from being black. Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker upbringing and the values instilled in me by the grandparents who reared me. So before we talk about what he did that, we're going to talk about who he was and how that grew from his Quaker religion. As in the case with pretty much every denomination, there's not one monolithic way of being a Quaker. There are lots of variations and nuances from region to region and from one congregation to another. And this even trickles down to whether a person prefers the word Quaker or the word Friends to describe themselves inspired. Ruston referred to himself as a Quaker, we will as well. A core of Quaker teachings are values known as testimonies. There's also some variation in how the testimonies are defined or explained, and how people interpret them and incorporate them into their lives day to day. As described by the American Friends Service Committee, the six Quaker testimonies are peace, equality, community, integrity, simplicity, and stewardship. In particular, Rustin spent his life trying to embody peace, equality, and community. Throughout his life, Ruston resisted and worked against oppression, inequality, and war, and he did it all through non violent means. He believed that all human beings are part of the same community, and that a central trait of that global family was that every person and it was fundamentally equal. This belief informed his approach to social movements that he actively participated in in the United States, in India, and in several African nations. Although a lot of the work he's best known for was with the civil rights movement, Rustin also joined the gay rights movement as it became more public. In the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. He worked with refugees, observed elections, and traveled to Africa repeatedly, both to work with local independence movements and to protest nuclear weapons testing being conducted there. He went to prison for his non violent opposition to World War Two. All of these efforts united the themes of non violence, equality, and a community of equals encompassing all of humanity. There are several books and articles that tie Rustin's integrity. Another of the Quaker testimonies to the fact that he was an openly gay man and an arrow in same sex behavior was illegal and when being gay carried in an enormous stigma. But that's really only part of the story. It's true that he never really hid his orientation from people. When he was young, he told his grandmother that he preferred to spend his time with men, and her reply was, quote, I suppose that's what you need to do. The people he worked with in the Pacifists and civil rights movements in the forties and fifties all knew that he was gay. This was long before the Stone All Riots brought the gay rights movement into a more mainstream i At the same time, he struggled with his orientation and how best to ethically exist in a culture that so clearly classified his attraction to men as wrong. It's far from universal, but a lot of written accounts of gay men who grew up in the U S when he did talk about this sense of shame, guilt, and secrecy in terms of his sexual orientation. Ruston never seemed to have that, and being unashamed of who he was was something his partners and the people around him noticed and commented on. However, there were definitely occasions when his sex life had a huge negative consequence to his life and work, and sometimes it's frankly oiled down to some poor decisions on his part. He spent a lot of time wrestling with his sexual orientation and how to make it compatible with what he saw as his life's work when most of the world saw it as immoral. So the idea that his simply being out, or as out as a person could be in that part of history was a mark of his integrity is really oversimplified. I also want to take a moment to say, we're not suggesting that people who were not out did not have integrity, because life is more complicated than that. Yes, indeed, uh, I mean we've we've talked about it many times on this show, the period of time in which it was not only marginalized and looked down upon, but flat out illegal to be gay. And he was not a perfect person, and there are things we will discuss in these two episodes that seemed contrary to the Quaker teachings that drove by ARD's activism, but even so, being a Quaker was critically important to his and Quaker philosophies of non violence and peace building were concepts that he returned to again and again. Although Quaker teachings had a profound impact on so many aspects of Fired Ruston's life and character, we'd really be remiss if we didn't also talk about the influence of the African Methodist Episcopal Church as well. His grandfather was a member of the A. M. E. Church, and his grandmother eventually joined it as well, essentially to keep the family peaces, causing some tension between them. For her to be a Quaker in him to be in the A. M. E. Church, so he was exposed to both religions and their traditions in his childhood. Although the Society of Friends had been a big part of the movement for abolition in the United States and many had been active participants in the Underground Railroad, many Quaker congregations were still predominantly white during Ruston's formative years. Those that had black members often segregated them into separate seating. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, on the other hand had been found in eighteen sixteen as a response to segregation in other Methodist churches. As a consequence, the a M. E Church became a strong advocate for black leadership and stress the need for black people to take collective action to oppose racism and injustice, both from the pulpit and in life. So and his life and his work, Bired Ruston really combined the principles of Quaker teachings with the advocacy focus of the a m along with other philosophies and belief systems as well. Uh more of those will reveal themselves as we talk about his life, which we were going to start after a brief word from a sponsor, So to get back to our story. Bired Taylor Rustin was born on March March seventeenth, nineteen twelve, in Westchester, Pennsylvania. The town of Westchester, which is not far from Philadelphia, was established by Quakers in seventeen ninety nine. It continued to have a predom monthly Quaker population, and its black population grew as well, in part because of its white Quaker community sheltering escaping slaves. Rustin's mother, Florence, was sixteen when he was born, and his father, a man named Archie Hopkins, was not in the picture. He was raised by his grandparents, Jennifer and Julia Rusten, and Florence was the eldest of their eight children. During his earliest childhood years, the young Bayard thought his mother was actually his sister. The Rustins were one of Westchester's most respected black families. Jennifer was a steward at the Elks Lodge, and one of its members rented him a ten room home that allowed their large family to live pretty comfortably. Julia's father was a pastor at one of Westchester's largest churches. Julia herself did extensive community work. She was one of the area's first members of the n double a CP. If you do not know what that is, that is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. After it was founded in nineteen o nine. Some of the nation's most prominent black leaders were guests in the rest and Home, including W. E. B. D. Boys. Julia also did lots of organizing and what might almost be considered social work in her community, things like founding a nursery for the children of black working families during the Great Migration. As huge numbers of African Americans started moving north. She also used their home to house black newcomers to the area who had nowhere else to go. Bayard's elementary education took place at a segregated Westchester school. The local high school, though, was integrated, mainly because the community itself wasn't large enough to support a separate high school for black children. He was a really good student, and he pursued a wide range of extracurricular activities. He won essay contests and oratory awards. He was also a poet and a singer with a beautiful, very clear tenor singing voice. There are still some recordings that exist today of him and his adult life singing spirituals and protests, songs and Rustin was also an athlete. He lettered in track and football, and his teammates told stories about his sportsmanship, how he helped people up and sometimes recited poems to them after he had tackled them. So although Westchester had long Quaker roots, and Quakers played a big role in the abolition of slavery, there was still a lot of racial division in the town. In addition to segregate his schools, theaters, and other public spaces. There was a lot of racial tension among families in town, and at tensions among its various European immigrant groups. The prejudice ran deep enough that young Bayard was not allowed in the home of his best friend, John Cessna, and he also worried that Tessna's parents would be angry if he brought John over to his house. They wound up having their hang out time in the local public library. There are lots of stories from Rustin's high school years about his first protest for equal rights, and since most of this knowledge comes from interviews conductedly eater, it's difficult to pin down with precision. There are stories about him being arrested for sitting in the white section of a local theater and for refusing to move after being denied entry into a restaurant. While on a trip with the football team, he protested the segregated locker facilities at the integrated high school, and he succeeded in changing that policy when he got the team to threaten to refuse to play an upcoming championship. Regardless of exact details, it's clear that he was already focused on fighting for equality while he was still in school. Once he graduated, though, things became a lot more difficult for him. He had truly excelled in high school, but he wasn't able to get a scholarship to attend college. His family could afford at most to pay his way somewhere local to Westchester. Eventually, through personal connections, he finally wound up with a music scholarship to Wilberforce University, historically black university in Ohio. But Wilberforce University wasn't really a good fit. A lot of it's offered courses at the time were more technically invocationally oriented than the more liberal arts curriculum that Rustin really wanted. R OTC participation was mandatory, which directly conflicted with his pacifism. This experience was one of the things that would lead Ruston to formally become a Quaker. Accounts differ on how this actually played out. Either he was asked to leave the school because he arranged a strike over the quality of the food, or he left because the school just wasn't challenging him. Back home in Westchester, rest and enrolled at Cheney State Teachers College, another historically black college. This one was founded by Quakers for black students. And it was certainly a better fit for Ruston, but he wound up leaving the area entirely to go to New York City at the invitation of his aunt Bessie. Although he originally intended to study at City College, this more or less spelled the end of his formal education. And we'll start talking about what he did beyond college after another brief word from a sponsor, so to get back to buy Art Rustin's life. Although he did not wind up graduating from City College as originally planned, he did become involved with more organized protests and resistance soon after getting to New York. For a time he was a member of the Youth Communist League. When he joined it was not long after the Scottsboro Boys trial. These were nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women. All the boys were convicted, and all but the youngest was sentenced to death. The Communist Party led demonstrations and raised money for the young men's legal defense. All of these things, plus the party's focus on equal economic opportunity, were really attractive to Rustin. However, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in nineteen forty one, the organization dropped its focus on racial equality in the United States and part due to concerns that protesting against segregation segre aation of the United States military, would ultimately weaken its efforts to aid the Soviet Union. The Youth Communist League also specifically told Ruston to stop his activism against racism. He wound up cutting his ties to the organization and to the Communist Party completely. He didn't stop with his activism, though he registered as a conscientious objector. He began working with socialist labor leader A. Philip Randolph. He also met pacifist A. J. Musty at an American Friends Services Committee meeting, and eventually began working with his pacifist social movement organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation as a field secretary. Through the Fellowship of Reconciliation and other organizations, Rustin started organizing anti war and civil rights protests, including traveling to Puerto Rico to study the struggles of conscientious objectors living there. Often he was the only black person and an other otherwise all white team from the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He toured the United States, making anti war speeches and organizing, and in his speeches, he often presented anti war activism and equal rights for black people as inextricably linked. It made no sense, according to his philosophy, for a black person to join a segregated military and then fight injustice on behalf of a nation that would not grant him equal rights. Back at home, In Rustin boarded a bus from Louisville to Nashville and took a seat in the second row that was in the white section. The bus driver told him to move to the back and also called him a racial epithet in the process. Rustin refused, saying that segregation was unjust and explained that, in his words quote, if I were to sit in the back, I would be condoning injustice for the rest of the journey. At every stop, the driver tried to get Rustin to move, and Restin refused. Then outside of Nashville, police pulled the bus over and four officers physically removed rested, and then beat him in front of the other passengers. And later interviews, he said that when they were done, he stood up and said, there is no need to beat me. I am not resisting you. Through all these tours and speaking his view on the war and the draft evolved. It wasn't just that war was wrong. In his mind, conscription itself was also wrong because it was dividing the whole of mankind, which was supposed to be one community of equals, into us and them. He also objected to the fact that a person had to be a member of a pacifist religion to become a conscientious objector. Non religious pacifists were excluded. His experiences in civilian public service camps where objectors were sent to also left a lot to be desired. The camps themselves, like so many other places, were segregated, so when the Draft Board ordered rest In to appear for a physical and report to a civilian public service camp on November thirteen, nine, he refused. He rescinded his prior request to be granted conscientious objector status, and he was imprisoned at Ashland Federal Correctional Institution in Kentucky beginning in nineteen forty four. Once he got there, he tried to integrate the prison, continually advocating integration to the warden. Eventually he was allowed to teach a history class to white inmates, and the warden had the gate that separated the racial sections of the prison unlocked when Rustin used this gate to enter the common area for white prisoners, though another inmate, a former judge convicted on fraud charges, beat him with a mop handle until it broke. Rustin's wrist was broken in the attack on Several white conscientious objectors who were nearby sustained minor injuries. Rustin, not his attacker, was punished for it. I kind of want to take a moment to say from this point, people tried to brand fired Ruston as a draft dodger. That's not what draft dodger means. Like a draft dodger is a person who evades the draft by, for example, going to Canada. That is not what Byared Rusten did. Byard rust And refused the draft and served prison time. As a consequence, Rustin's attempts to integrate the prison were derailed, unfortunately, by a sexual misconduct investigation. This was an allegation that Reston originally denied, but then he later acknowledged it is true. He was also put into isolation for weeks, and some of the other conscientious objectors who came to his defense we're put into administrative segregation. This incident caused a huge rift between Rustin and a j Mustie, who wrote him a scathing letter blasting him for weakness for making such a decision in the middle of efforts to integrate the prison. He was deeply disappointed that Bayard had not only jeopardized his work in the prison by engaging in sexual activities with other inmates, but also that he had lied about it. After a long series of meetings and interrogations, Ruston was let out of isolation, where he resumed advocacy for integration at the prison. After another series of protests and an influx of new conscientious objectors to the prison that made Ruston's advocacy seemed like more of a threat, he was transferred to Louisbourg Penitentiary in uh In, Pennsylvania. He was released in ninety seven after twenty eight total months incarcerated. Throughout his time in prison, Rushton kept up a correspondence with Davis Platt, his first long term partner. Rustin and Platt had meant in nineteen forty three, and if anybody in the peace movement had entertained doubts about Rustin's sexual orientation, his relationship with Platt really dispelled them. Because prison correspondence was monitored. They wrote their letters in code. These letters progressed in their coded intimacy, especially after Ruston confessed to his infidelity there and he vowed to be celibate for the rest of his time in prison. The two uh what even actually break up in ninety seven at Platt's instigation because he wanted their relationship to be monogamous and Rustin had a lot of partners after he get out of prison. Ruston was part of the Journey of Reconciliation, which was a project of the Congress of Racial Equality or CORE. This is a precursor to the Freedom Rides, and if you're interested in learning about the Freedom Rides, there's a whole series of podcasts by past hosts on those in the archive. The Journey of Reconciliation was meant to test segregation laws after the nineteen forty six Supreme Court ruling Morgan versus Virginia, which ruled that segregation was illegal for buses that crossed state lines. Even though the Supreme Court had ruled that segregating interstate buses was unconstitutional, a lot of bus lines were either tacitly or explicitly segregating them anyway, and a lot of writers, either not aware of the ruling, not wanting to cause trouble, or being genuinely fearful for their safety complied. The Journey of recons Aviation was intended to put bus integration to the test by sending both black and white riders out together on buses to test the law. This was dangerous work, and rested In the other writers faced continual opposition, including violence and multiple arrests as they traveled through the South. They were attacked and beaten by a mob of segregationists in North Carolina, and it was rest In, not the attackers, who was charged. He wound up returning to North Carolina two years later after a lengthy series of appeals in a botched defense to serve thirty days of hard labor on a chain gang. He was released after twenty two days, after which he spoke on the experience, as well as publishing a lengthy report on the inhumane and abhorrent treatment of the prisoners on the chain gang, and this report eventually led to some reforms, both in North Carolina and in some of the surrounding states. In the interim between the Journey of Reconciliation, in his return to North Carolina to service sentence, Rustin did a lot. He testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the need to integrate the armed forces, something that finally happened on July with Executive Order one. There is uh, there's film footage I think it is of this this testimony. It may be a different one where like he keeps answering the question and then he takes a drag on a cigarette like he's dropping a microphone. It's amazing. Also in don't smoke, that's it's real bad for you. This was in when people didn't really know that. Also in nineteen forty eight, the American Friends Service Committee assigned Rustin to be it's representative at a pacifist seminar in India. He had been studying the pacifist teachings of Mohandaskan also known as Mahatma Gandhi for some time, especially how those teachings could be applied to a non violent resistant movement. This turned into a four month tour of study and advocacy in India following a brief stay in London. Although Gandhi had been assassinated that January, Rustin was able to study with people who had worked directly with him. He also spent a lot of time speaking directly to India's own civil rights leaders. Gandhi had been the keystone of its non violent focus, and after his assassination, movement leaders were worried that younger, more radical participants would take the movement in a more violent direction. They really hoped that Rustin, as a black man, would have an influence and reach that white pacifists simply couldn't, considering that India had just become independent from a white British government. After his return from India, Rusten wrote quote, we need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers. The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places the wheels don't turn, Which is where I got the title of this episode. Yeah uh, and that's actually where where Tracy his cliff hung us. Yeah. Well, and I originally where we're going to pick up next time is the probably lowest point in Rustin's life, and I originally intended to get through that in this episode, but the time does not equate. That's a whole additional chapter of stories. Have one really long episode and one relief short one. Well, yeah, so we're gonna we're gonna end kind of a high point. Like at this point in Rustin's career, people were calling him the American Gandhi, and they like he was on track to become an enormously prominent and well known um civil rights pacifist leader. Like that he was. He was on that path, and we're going to pick up next time with what derailed him from that path. Uh, just kind of a sad story. So brace for that. But in the meantime, you got some listener mail. Do you have listener mail hanging on? Uh? This listener mail is is it's a little bit, a little bit from back. I'm still catching up from having been out for a little bit with my mail. Um. And so this is from Mary or Pat possibly Mary Ellen Um, that's not quite clear. So uh, she writes to us about white weddings and she says, hello, Tracy and Holly, I just listened to the episode on white weddings and you stated that you didn't know whether plum cake was still considered to be a wedding cake in the UK. I'm sure loads of British listeners have written to tell you this, but fruitcake is definitely still the traditional option when you're looking to get a wedding cake here. Most people in my husband's generation don't fancy it, but his parents and older relatives all still say that you to be the standard wedding confection. We even tried someone tasting for wedding cakes, but we opted for something a bit less heavy. I'm an American who met a British guy while living in Japan. Having moved to England and done wedding planning here, I've learned lots of surprising things, like the difference in traditions like the cake. For example, it's common for the reception to have two different meals. First is the wedding breakfast, which despite the name, is just to sit down served meal after the wedding ceremony. This has served to a smaller group of people, as when the evening guests arrived later there is usually a buffet style meal. Also, I was prepared to have the best man and made of honor give the toast, but I found out the traditional way here these days is to have the father of the bride the groom, and lastly the best man gives speeches. I was learning a lot of little differences like that, which surprised me as I thought American and British weddings would be quite similar. Finally, just the side that I thought you'd appreciate being fans of Queen Victoria. When my husband and I got married at the City Hall here in the northeast of the ceremony, room where weddings were held was named quote the Victoria Room. Throughout the ceremony we were under the stern gaze of Victoria's portrait. We went back in after to snap a photo with her Majesty as well. She said to that photo, thank you so much, Mary, or perhaps Mary Ellen. That is a sweet story. It is. Their photo is very sweet. And I love the idea of Queen Victoria because in my head I think about her letters to her daughters saying, don't have kids right away? Oh yeah, I um, we heard. So. It was funny because after that episode, most but not all, of the notes that we got about wedding cake in Britain were from similarly Americans who married someone um either uh, like somebody who had moved to the United States and their parents were still somewhere in the UK, or like someone who had moved someone moved someone who had met someone in front the UK and was like going there to get married. We've basically heard a lot of American perspectives about what it was like to try to plan a wedding uh in somewhere in like the whole realm of the British Isles. Um, having grown up with the expectations that are kind of ingrained in you in the United States and sort of being like, what do you mean this fruit cake situation? I don't talk. This is not a cake, um. And some of these letters were quite charming, so thank you very much everyone who sent them to us. If you would like to write to us, we're a history podcast at how stuff Works dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com slash miss in history and on Twitter at miss in History. We're also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash miss in history, and on Instagram at missed in History. If you would like to learn more about what we've talked about today, you can come to our website. Put the word Gandhi in the search bar. You will find several articles about Gandhi, his life and work. You can also come to our website, which is missed in history dot com where you will find, for example, the pie charts I talked about at the beginning of this episode. You'll find an archive every episode we have ever done. You will find show notes for all the episodes Holly and I have ever done, which I will link to some of the recordings of buyed, resting and singing, so you can do all that and a whole lot more at how stuff works dot com or missed in history dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff works dot co.

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm tray Syne Wilson and I'm Holly Froy. So pretty recently we got a complaint that we talked about too many women, and we've gotten a complaint quite a few times. So I did what we always do, and I counted, but this time I had to be in my bonnet, So I made a bunch of pie charts, and I mean the pie charts show that there's never ever been a year in the history of our time on the show when we've talked about more women than men. Uh, in spite of concerted effort to talk about a lot of women. Um. And in response to this whole thing of of of all the pie charts, a lot of folks suggested that we only talk about women for the rest of the year, which I get, I get that impulse. I was already in the middle of working on these two episodes when that whole thing happened. And it's actually a really good example of why women are not the only people that we try to make sure that we talk about on this show. Because we're going to talk about buyared rest in Today and Wednesday Byared Reston was an openly gay Black man born in nineteen twelve, and he spent his life working tirelessly for equal rights and peace and democracy and economic equality, including being one of the primary planners of the nineteen sixty three March on Washington. And because of when he lived, rest in sexual orientation became a really serious obstacle to the work that he was trying to do. So we're going to talk about him a sid a moment ago into parts. This part will go up to the late nineteen forties, and then part two will pick up from there, and a little heads up for parents and teachers. By necessity, we talk about Buyared rest in sex life more in this podcast than you might normally expect from our show. There are also several incidents we're going to talk about in which he and the people around him were subject of violence. So this might be one to pre screen before sharing it with the kids, or if either of those things are things that you are sensitive to. So we're gonna hop right in. Uh. Typically when we talk about the biography of a historical figure, we start at the beginning with their birth and then we walk through what's known of their early life, And while we're gonna get to that, we're going to take a slightly different approach to introducing Bayard Rustin. Rustin was a member of the religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. In his own words, quote, my activism did not spring from being black. Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker upbringing and the values instilled in me by the grandparents who reared me. So before we talk about what he did that, we're going to talk about who he was and how that grew from his Quaker religion. As in the case with pretty much every denomination, there's not one monolithic way of being a Quaker. There are lots of variations and nuances from region to region and from one congregation to another. And this even trickles down to whether a person prefers the word Quaker or the word Friends to describe themselves inspired. Ruston referred to himself as a Quaker, we will as well. A core of Quaker teachings are values known as testimonies. There's also some variation in how the testimonies are defined or explained, and how people interpret them and incorporate them into their lives day to day. As described by the American Friends Service Committee, the six Quaker testimonies are peace, equality, community, integrity, simplicity, and stewardship. In particular, Rustin spent his life trying to embody peace, equality, and community. Throughout his life, Ruston resisted and worked against oppression, inequality, and war, and he did it all through non violent means. He believed that all human beings are part of the same community, and that a central trait of that global family was that every person and it was fundamentally equal. This belief informed his approach to social movements that he actively participated in in the United States, in India, and in several African nations. Although a lot of the work he's best known for was with the civil rights movement, Rustin also joined the gay rights movement as it became more public. In the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. He worked with refugees, observed elections, and traveled to Africa repeatedly, both to work with local independence movements and to protest nuclear weapons testing being conducted there. He went to prison for his non violent opposition to World War Two. All of these efforts united the themes of non violence, equality, and a community of equals encompassing all of humanity. There are several books and articles that tie Rustin's integrity. Another of the Quaker testimonies to the fact that he was an openly gay man and an arrow in same sex behavior was illegal and when being gay carried in an enormous stigma. But that's really only part of the story. It's true that he never really hid his orientation from people. When he was young, he told his grandmother that he preferred to spend his time with men, and her reply was, quote, I suppose that's what you need to do. The people he worked with in the Pacifists and civil rights movements in the forties and fifties all knew that he was gay. This was long before the Stone All Riots brought the gay rights movement into a more mainstream i At the same time, he struggled with his orientation and how best to ethically exist in a culture that so clearly classified his attraction to men as wrong. It's far from universal, but a lot of written accounts of gay men who grew up in the U S when he did talk about this sense of shame, guilt, and secrecy in terms of his sexual orientation. Ruston never seemed to have that, and being unashamed of who he was was something his partners and the people around him noticed and commented on. However, there were definitely occasions when his sex life had a huge negative consequence to his life and work, and sometimes it's frankly oiled down to some poor decisions on his part. He spent a lot of time wrestling with his sexual orientation and how to make it compatible with what he saw as his life's work when most of the world saw it as immoral. So the idea that his simply being out, or as out as a person could be in that part of history was a mark of his integrity is really oversimplified. I also want to take a moment to say, we're not suggesting that people who were not out did not have integrity, because life is more complicated than that. Yes, indeed, uh, I mean we've we've talked about it many times on this show, the period of time in which it was not only marginalized and looked down upon, but flat out illegal to be gay. And he was not a perfect person, and there are things we will discuss in these two episodes that seemed contrary to the Quaker teachings that drove by ARD's activism, but even so, being a Quaker was critically important to his and Quaker philosophies of non violence and peace building were concepts that he returned to again and again. Although Quaker teachings had a profound impact on so many aspects of Fired Ruston's life and character, we'd really be remiss if we didn't also talk about the influence of the African Methodist Episcopal Church as well. His grandfather was a member of the A. M. E. Church, and his grandmother eventually joined it as well, essentially to keep the family peaces, causing some tension between them. For her to be a Quaker in him to be in the A. M. E. Church, so he was exposed to both religions and their traditions in his childhood. Although the Society of Friends had been a big part of the movement for abolition in the United States and many had been active participants in the Underground Railroad, many Quaker congregations were still predominantly white during Ruston's formative years. Those that had black members often segregated them into separate seating. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, on the other hand had been found in eighteen sixteen as a response to segregation in other Methodist churches. As a consequence, the a M. E Church became a strong advocate for black leadership and stress the need for black people to take collective action to oppose racism and injustice, both from the pulpit and in life. So and his life and his work, Bired Ruston really combined the principles of Quaker teachings with the advocacy focus of the a m along with other philosophies and belief systems as well. Uh more of those will reveal themselves as we talk about his life, which we were going to start after a brief word from a sponsor, So to get back to our story. Bired Taylor Rustin was born on March March seventeenth, nineteen twelve, in Westchester, Pennsylvania. The town of Westchester, which is not far from Philadelphia, was established by Quakers in seventeen ninety nine. It continued to have a predom monthly Quaker population, and its black population grew as well, in part because of its white Quaker community sheltering escaping slaves. Rustin's mother, Florence, was sixteen when he was born, and his father, a man named Archie Hopkins, was not in the picture. He was raised by his grandparents, Jennifer and Julia Rusten, and Florence was the eldest of their eight children. During his earliest childhood years, the young Bayard thought his mother was actually his sister. The Rustins were one of Westchester's most respected black families. Jennifer was a steward at the Elks Lodge, and one of its members rented him a ten room home that allowed their large family to live pretty comfortably. Julia's father was a pastor at one of Westchester's largest churches. Julia herself did extensive community work. She was one of the area's first members of the n double a CP. If you do not know what that is, that is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. After it was founded in nineteen o nine. Some of the nation's most prominent black leaders were guests in the rest and Home, including W. E. B. D. Boys. Julia also did lots of organizing and what might almost be considered social work in her community, things like founding a nursery for the children of black working families during the Great Migration. As huge numbers of African Americans started moving north. She also used their home to house black newcomers to the area who had nowhere else to go. Bayard's elementary education took place at a segregated Westchester school. The local high school, though, was integrated, mainly because the community itself wasn't large enough to support a separate high school for black children. He was a really good student, and he pursued a wide range of extracurricular activities. He won essay contests and oratory awards. He was also a poet and a singer with a beautiful, very clear tenor singing voice. There are still some recordings that exist today of him and his adult life singing spirituals and protests, songs and Rustin was also an athlete. He lettered in track and football, and his teammates told stories about his sportsmanship, how he helped people up and sometimes recited poems to them after he had tackled them. So although Westchester had long Quaker roots, and Quakers played a big role in the abolition of slavery, there was still a lot of racial division in the town. In addition to segregate his schools, theaters, and other public spaces. There was a lot of racial tension among families in town, and at tensions among its various European immigrant groups. The prejudice ran deep enough that young Bayard was not allowed in the home of his best friend, John Cessna, and he also worried that Tessna's parents would be angry if he brought John over to his house. They wound up having their hang out time in the local public library. There are lots of stories from Rustin's high school years about his first protest for equal rights, and since most of this knowledge comes from interviews conductedly eater, it's difficult to pin down with precision. There are stories about him being arrested for sitting in the white section of a local theater and for refusing to move after being denied entry into a restaurant. While on a trip with the football team, he protested the segregated locker facilities at the integrated high school, and he succeeded in changing that policy when he got the team to threaten to refuse to play an upcoming championship. Regardless of exact details, it's clear that he was already focused on fighting for equality while he was still in school. Once he graduated, though, things became a lot more difficult for him. He had truly excelled in high school, but he wasn't able to get a scholarship to attend college. His family could afford at most to pay his way somewhere local to Westchester. Eventually, through personal connections, he finally wound up with a music scholarship to Wilberforce University, historically black university in Ohio. But Wilberforce University wasn't really a good fit. A lot of it's offered courses at the time were more technically invocationally oriented than the more liberal arts curriculum that Rustin really wanted. R OTC participation was mandatory, which directly conflicted with his pacifism. This experience was one of the things that would lead Ruston to formally become a Quaker. Accounts differ on how this actually played out. Either he was asked to leave the school because he arranged a strike over the quality of the food, or he left because the school just wasn't challenging him. Back home in Westchester, rest and enrolled at Cheney State Teachers College, another historically black college. This one was founded by Quakers for black students. And it was certainly a better fit for Ruston, but he wound up leaving the area entirely to go to New York City at the invitation of his aunt Bessie. Although he originally intended to study at City College, this more or less spelled the end of his formal education. And we'll start talking about what he did beyond college after another brief word from a sponsor, so to get back to buy Art Rustin's life. Although he did not wind up graduating from City College as originally planned, he did become involved with more organized protests and resistance soon after getting to New York. For a time he was a member of the Youth Communist League. When he joined it was not long after the Scottsboro Boys trial. These were nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women. All the boys were convicted, and all but the youngest was sentenced to death. The Communist Party led demonstrations and raised money for the young men's legal defense. All of these things, plus the party's focus on equal economic opportunity, were really attractive to Rustin. However, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in nineteen forty one, the organization dropped its focus on racial equality in the United States and part due to concerns that protesting against segregation segre aation of the United States military, would ultimately weaken its efforts to aid the Soviet Union. The Youth Communist League also specifically told Ruston to stop his activism against racism. He wound up cutting his ties to the organization and to the Communist Party completely. He didn't stop with his activism, though he registered as a conscientious objector. He began working with socialist labor leader A. Philip Randolph. He also met pacifist A. J. Musty at an American Friends Services Committee meeting, and eventually began working with his pacifist social movement organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation as a field secretary. Through the Fellowship of Reconciliation and other organizations, Rustin started organizing anti war and civil rights protests, including traveling to Puerto Rico to study the struggles of conscientious objectors living there. Often he was the only black person and an other otherwise all white team from the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He toured the United States, making anti war speeches and organizing, and in his speeches, he often presented anti war activism and equal rights for black people as inextricably linked. It made no sense, according to his philosophy, for a black person to join a segregated military and then fight injustice on behalf of a nation that would not grant him equal rights. Back at home, In Rustin boarded a bus from Louisville to Nashville and took a seat in the second row that was in the white section. The bus driver told him to move to the back and also called him a racial epithet in the process. Rustin refused, saying that segregation was unjust and explained that, in his words quote, if I were to sit in the back, I would be condoning injustice for the rest of the journey. At every stop, the driver tried to get Rustin to move, and Restin refused. Then outside of Nashville, police pulled the bus over and four officers physically removed rested, and then beat him in front of the other passengers. And later interviews, he said that when they were done, he stood up and said, there is no need to beat me. I am not resisting you. Through all these tours and speaking his view on the war and the draft evolved. It wasn't just that war was wrong. In his mind, conscription itself was also wrong because it was dividing the whole of mankind, which was supposed to be one community of equals, into us and them. He also objected to the fact that a person had to be a member of a pacifist religion to become a conscientious objector. Non religious pacifists were excluded. His experiences in civilian public service camps where objectors were sent to also left a lot to be desired. The camps themselves, like so many other places, were segregated, so when the Draft Board ordered rest In to appear for a physical and report to a civilian public service camp on November thirteen, nine, he refused. He rescinded his prior request to be granted conscientious objector status, and he was imprisoned at Ashland Federal Correctional Institution in Kentucky beginning in nineteen forty four. Once he got there, he tried to integrate the prison, continually advocating integration to the warden. Eventually he was allowed to teach a history class to white inmates, and the warden had the gate that separated the racial sections of the prison unlocked when Rustin used this gate to enter the common area for white prisoners, though another inmate, a former judge convicted on fraud charges, beat him with a mop handle until it broke. Rustin's wrist was broken in the attack on Several white conscientious objectors who were nearby sustained minor injuries. Rustin, not his attacker, was punished for it. I kind of want to take a moment to say from this point, people tried to brand fired Ruston as a draft dodger. That's not what draft dodger means. Like a draft dodger is a person who evades the draft by, for example, going to Canada. That is not what Byared Rusten did. Byard rust And refused the draft and served prison time. As a consequence, Rustin's attempts to integrate the prison were derailed, unfortunately, by a sexual misconduct investigation. This was an allegation that Reston originally denied, but then he later acknowledged it is true. He was also put into isolation for weeks, and some of the other conscientious objectors who came to his defense we're put into administrative segregation. This incident caused a huge rift between Rustin and a j Mustie, who wrote him a scathing letter blasting him for weakness for making such a decision in the middle of efforts to integrate the prison. He was deeply disappointed that Bayard had not only jeopardized his work in the prison by engaging in sexual activities with other inmates, but also that he had lied about it. After a long series of meetings and interrogations, Ruston was let out of isolation, where he resumed advocacy for integration at the prison. After another series of protests and an influx of new conscientious objectors to the prison that made Ruston's advocacy seemed like more of a threat, he was transferred to Louisbourg Penitentiary in uh In, Pennsylvania. He was released in ninety seven after twenty eight total months incarcerated. Throughout his time in prison, Rushton kept up a correspondence with Davis Platt, his first long term partner. Rustin and Platt had meant in nineteen forty three, and if anybody in the peace movement had entertained doubts about Rustin's sexual orientation, his relationship with Platt really dispelled them. Because prison correspondence was monitored. They wrote their letters in code. These letters progressed in their coded intimacy, especially after Ruston confessed to his infidelity there and he vowed to be celibate for the rest of his time in prison. The two uh what even actually break up in ninety seven at Platt's instigation because he wanted their relationship to be monogamous and Rustin had a lot of partners after he get out of prison. Ruston was part of the Journey of Reconciliation, which was a project of the Congress of Racial Equality or CORE. This is a precursor to the Freedom Rides, and if you're interested in learning about the Freedom Rides, there's a whole series of podcasts by past hosts on those in the archive. The Journey of Reconciliation was meant to test segregation laws after the nineteen forty six Supreme Court ruling Morgan versus Virginia, which ruled that segregation was illegal for buses that crossed state lines. Even though the Supreme Court had ruled that segregating interstate buses was unconstitutional, a lot of bus lines were either tacitly or explicitly segregating them anyway, and a lot of writers, either not aware of the ruling, not wanting to cause trouble, or being genuinely fearful for their safety complied. The Journey of recons Aviation was intended to put bus integration to the test by sending both black and white riders out together on buses to test the law. This was dangerous work, and rested In the other writers faced continual opposition, including violence and multiple arrests as they traveled through the South. They were attacked and beaten by a mob of segregationists in North Carolina, and it was rest In, not the attackers, who was charged. He wound up returning to North Carolina two years later after a lengthy series of appeals in a botched defense to serve thirty days of hard labor on a chain gang. He was released after twenty two days, after which he spoke on the experience, as well as publishing a lengthy report on the inhumane and abhorrent treatment of the prisoners on the chain gang, and this report eventually led to some reforms, both in North Carolina and in some of the surrounding states. In the interim between the Journey of Reconciliation, in his return to North Carolina to service sentence, Rustin did a lot. He testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the need to integrate the armed forces, something that finally happened on July with Executive Order one. There is uh, there's film footage I think it is of this this testimony. It may be a different one where like he keeps answering the question and then he takes a drag on a cigarette like he's dropping a microphone. It's amazing. Also in don't smoke, that's it's real bad for you. This was in when people didn't really know that. Also in nineteen forty eight, the American Friends Service Committee assigned Rustin to be it's representative at a pacifist seminar in India. He had been studying the pacifist teachings of Mohandaskan also known as Mahatma Gandhi for some time, especially how those teachings could be applied to a non violent resistant movement. This turned into a four month tour of study and advocacy in India following a brief stay in London. Although Gandhi had been assassinated that January, Rustin was able to study with people who had worked directly with him. He also spent a lot of time speaking directly to India's own civil rights leaders. Gandhi had been the keystone of its non violent focus, and after his assassination, movement leaders were worried that younger, more radical participants would take the movement in a more violent direction. They really hoped that Rustin, as a black man, would have an influence and reach that white pacifists simply couldn't, considering that India had just become independent from a white British government. After his return from India, Rusten wrote quote, we need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers. The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places the wheels don't turn, Which is where I got the title of this episode. Yeah uh, and that's actually where where Tracy his cliff hung us. Yeah. Well, and I originally where we're going to pick up next time is the probably lowest point in Rustin's life, and I originally intended to get through that in this episode, but the time does not equate. That's a whole additional chapter of stories. Have one really long episode and one relief short one. Well, yeah, so we're gonna we're gonna end kind of a high point. Like at this point in Rustin's career, people were calling him the American Gandhi, and they like he was on track to become an enormously prominent and well known um civil rights pacifist leader. Like that he was. He was on that path, and we're going to pick up next time with what derailed him from that path. Uh, just kind of a sad story. So brace for that. But in the meantime, you got some listener mail. Do you have listener mail hanging on? Uh? This listener mail is is it's a little bit, a little bit from back. I'm still catching up from having been out for a little bit with my mail. Um. And so this is from Mary or Pat possibly Mary Ellen Um, that's not quite clear. So uh, she writes to us about white weddings and she says, hello, Tracy and Holly, I just listened to the episode on white weddings and you stated that you didn't know whether plum cake was still considered to be a wedding cake in the UK. I'm sure loads of British listeners have written to tell you this, but fruitcake is definitely still the traditional option when you're looking to get a wedding cake here. Most people in my husband's generation don't fancy it, but his parents and older relatives all still say that you to be the standard wedding confection. We even tried someone tasting for wedding cakes, but we opted for something a bit less heavy. I'm an American who met a British guy while living in Japan. Having moved to England and done wedding planning here, I've learned lots of surprising things, like the difference in traditions like the cake. For example, it's common for the reception to have two different meals. First is the wedding breakfast, which despite the name, is just to sit down served meal after the wedding ceremony. This has served to a smaller group of people, as when the evening guests arrived later there is usually a buffet style meal. Also, I was prepared to have the best man and made of honor give the toast, but I found out the traditional way here these days is to have the father of the bride the groom, and lastly the best man gives speeches. I was learning a lot of little differences like that, which surprised me as I thought American and British weddings would be quite similar. Finally, just the side that I thought you'd appreciate being fans of Queen Victoria. When my husband and I got married at the City Hall here in the northeast of the ceremony, room where weddings were held was named quote the Victoria Room. Throughout the ceremony we were under the stern gaze of Victoria's portrait. We went back in after to snap a photo with her Majesty as well. She said to that photo, thank you so much, Mary, or perhaps Mary Ellen. That is a sweet story. It is. Their photo is very sweet. And I love the idea of Queen Victoria because in my head I think about her letters to her daughters saying, don't have kids right away? Oh yeah, I um, we heard. So. It was funny because after that episode, most but not all, of the notes that we got about wedding cake in Britain were from similarly Americans who married someone um either uh, like somebody who had moved to the United States and their parents were still somewhere in the UK, or like someone who had moved someone moved someone who had met someone in front the UK and was like going there to get married. We've basically heard a lot of American perspectives about what it was like to try to plan a wedding uh in somewhere in like the whole realm of the British Isles. Um, having grown up with the expectations that are kind of ingrained in you in the United States and sort of being like, what do you mean this fruit cake situation? I don't talk. This is not a cake, um. And some of these letters were quite charming, so thank you very much everyone who sent them to us. If you would like to write to us, we're a history podcast at how stuff Works dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com slash miss in history and on Twitter at miss in History. We're also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash miss in history, and on Instagram at missed in History. If you would like to learn more about what we've talked about today, you can come to our website. Put the word Gandhi in the search bar. You will find several articles about Gandhi, his life and work. You can also come to our website, which is missed in history dot com where you will find, for example, the pie charts I talked about at the beginning of this episode. You'll find an archive every episode we have ever done. You will find show notes for all the episodes Holly and I have ever done, which I will link to some of the recordings of buyed, resting and singing, so you can do all that and a whole lot more at how stuff works dot com or missed in history dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff works dot co.