Bayard Rustin

I’ve always been interested in the civil rights movement and the general movement for social change. As I’ve read books on the people who’ve participated in the fight for equal rights, one name kept popping up who inspired many of these people to become active. Bayard Rustin is not as well known as Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X, yet he played an important part in the middle of the twentieth century in organizing protests for civil rights and for anti war causes, and he helped bring Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence into the mainstream of American progressive thought. His work on behalf of important progressive causes was informed by his Quaker faith, and his activism helped improve American society by tearing down segregation in the South and bringing to the forefront issues of economic justice and world peace.

I was one year old when Martin Luther King Jr. died, so I can’t really say that I knew him when. Growing up as a Filipino American in the America of the 1970s and 1980s, though, he was still a presence in my life. I saw a lot of excerpts of his “I Have a Dream” speech playing on t.v. and his words gave me this feeling that this was a man to be respected and admired. Spending my early childhood in military bases, where I played with kids of many different races and religions, I never experienced any racism or prejudice, so the injustices that King talked about seemed like something from long ago. It wasn’t until my Dad retired in 1979 and we had to live outside the base that I encountered racism of any sort and it was a shock to me. When I heard the “I Had A Dream” excerpts on t.v. that year, it gave me the first appreciation of what King was fighting against.