Reading:from Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, a Biography by Jervis Anderson, p.19

         [Bayard] Rustin was by temperament really a social reformer, responsive to problems of human rights and democracy wherever he saw them. Rustin’s “active concern for races and oppressed minorities other than Negro Americans,” historian Vann Woodward said, “is an aspect of his world view.”

Not long before he died, Rustin wrote this reply to a critic of his world view: “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. Those values were based on the concept of a single human family and the belief that all members of that family are equal. The racial injustice that was present in this country during my youth was a challenge to my belief in the oneness of the human family. It demanded my involvement in the struggle to achieve interracial democracy; but it is very likely that I would have been involved had I been a white person with the same philosophy. I worked side-by-side with many white people who held these values, some of whom gave as much, if not more, to the struggle than myself.”

[You know how God found them and was angry.] The Lord God said ….I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; …. To the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband….” Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever-- [And you know that they were banished from Paradise and forced to work for a living.]

Sermon

         Experts tell us that everyone is racist in some way. Do you agree? The Unitarian Universalist program “Journey to Wholeness” tells us the same thing and thus our denomination urges all our churches to embrace anti-racist programs. I used to think this was nonsense until I thought about it a great deal. Now, I think even the most well-meaning people have hints of racism or prejudice lurking around inside them. It is impossible to avoid having prejudice if we either live in a multicultural society or we are exposed to people who are different through work or travel. Racism, or prejudice, grows out of fear, fear of the unknown. It is part of human nature.

         Racism was rampant in most of America’s churches until the mid-1960’s. This is a primary indication of how religion and society are tightly bound. The prejudices that people carry with them in their lives are present with them when they step into their churches on a Sunday morning. You may think that this is obvious. However, people generally think that the church holds up ideals for us to reach towards and so those of us who come to church, especially to liberal churches, may think we are magically above the prejudices of society. It is good for us to keep in mind that we can and do entertain prejudiced thoughts. This way, we can notice them when they occur. We can say to ourselves, “Hmmm, that’s a bit of prejudice lurking around inside me.” It could do us the world of good.

         No religion was more liberal in its ideals than that of the Quakers. It was into a black family, influenced by the Quaker faith, that our hero, Bayard Rustin, was born. Let us step back and hear his story.

         “West Chester was…. founded by wealthy Quaker farmers and businessmen in 1799.” It is now part of metropolitan Philadelphia. West Chester is not far above the Mason Dixon line and some fugitive slaves sometimes decided to stay there on their way through the Underground Railroad.

         Julia Davis was born in 1873, the only child of a black couple who were bought by a Quaker couple with the intention of bringing them north to set them free. Although the Religious Society of Friends hated slavery and any oppression and believed in the oneness of humanity, they were uncomfortable worshipping alongside the very Native Americans and Negroes they had converted to Quakerism. Blacks usually sat in the galleries of their meeting houses, just like any other white church. This is why the African Methodist Episcopal church—AME for short—was established because the Methodists were equally, if not more uncomfortable with blacks in their churches.) Therefore, very few former slaves stayed with the Quakers. But Julia Davis did. However, she married Janifer Rustin, who belonged to an AME church, which was very different from the tradition of Quakers, who sat together in long silences, waiting for the Holy Spirit to move them to speak.

         Julia and Janifer had six daughters and two sons. On March 17, 1912, their daughter, Florence, gave birth to an out-of-wedlock child. Julia and Janifer decided to raise him as their own, their youngest. They named him Bayard Taylor after a famous nineteenth century Quaker. Although Julia accompanied her husband to the AME church, she instilled in her children the principles of the Quaker faith: non-violence, equality of all people, and the doctrine of the inner light. These principles were to influence the direction of Bayard’s life.

         In those days, the only opportunity open to brilliant blacks was teaching. This is how Bayard probably had the finest possible elementary education available anywhere, for he had the most brilliant teachers! He emulated his teachers, especially an elocution teacher whose crisp accent Bayard modeled and cultivated into an Oxford English accent, even as a boy. (There was definitely something of the appealing eccentric in Bayard from boyhood!) This made him stand out wherever he went.

         Bayard could have been a musician. He played the piano, harpsichord, classical guitar, and mandolin. Bach was his favorite composer. He could have been a singer for his clear tenor voice was sought after by many choirs and churches. He could have been an actor and he did perform with Paul Robeson, but there were few opportunities for blacks. He could have been a painter. He could have been an academic. He could have been an athlete. Tennis was his passion but when his high school needed him on the football team, he was their best player. Even in his high school days, Rustin constantly challenged segregation. When the football team played out-of-town, he instigated his black teammates to refuse to play until their Jim Crow accommodations were changed. He sat in the white section of the Cinema and was arrested. He was to be arrested 25 times in his lifetime. White friends always supported him. They followed him into restaurants, soda fountains, department stores, theaters, and the YMCA. They were usually intercepted and thrown out onto the streets. Rustin became well-known in West Chester. His multi-racial friends were known as “Rustinites.”

         He is said to be the most brilliant student ever to graduate from West Chester High School. He was intellectual, charming, tall, handsome, muscular, and a Renaissance man. He was a connoisseur of beauty—antique furniture, art, music, dancing, literature, painting, and women! He was born to lead, organize, and teach the principles of non-violence.

         Rustin had on-again, off-again flings with the Communist and Socialist Parties, which was understandable if we remember that communism and socialism taught equality. He also attended my alma mater, the City College of the City University of New York, a hot bed of radicalism in those days—the 30’s and 40’s—and which was free of charge then for undergraduate work (and also when I attended in the late 1960’s). He audited many courses but took exams only in those he found useful. Thus, he never graduated. Rustin was the darling of New York liberal intellectuals. He was also gay, which was not a problem in social circles of intellectuals but it pushed the prejudices of many in the religious and black organizations. Some friends and colleagues said that he should “reform” and others said that it is his “nature” and you can’t ask him to change his nature.

         Most of Bayard’s youth was spent in peace organizations, which were mostly white. When he was 25 years, he began working for the Emergency Peace Campaign, organized by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and a number of other pacifist groups. In particular, he was dedicated to the work of FOR, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an American branch of an international organization of Christian pacifists. He was to work for them for many years, even when he was “on loan” from them to work in the Civil Rights movement.

         What is not well known is that during the 1930’s and ‘40’s, the pacifist movements also worked for civil rights. They could be thought of as the first civil rights organizations, which was also the case for the communist and socialist parties. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was studying for his Ph.D. at Boston University, he read the works of Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi but did not integrate the concepts of non-violent civil disobedience into the civil rights movement until Bayard Rustin was called by a white civil rights worker to meet with King. Rustin conveyed the concepts of how non-violence could work in the civil rights movement. When Rustin saw a handgun lying on the sofa at King’s home, he talked to him about how an advocate of nonviolence could not even own a gun, nor could any of his followers.

         Bayard told King of the incident in a North Carolina prison where he was serving two years as a conscientious objector to the war. He had complained and campaigned against the segregation in the prison. The warden had relented and allowed blacks to join white objectors for two hours in the evening in the community room. One white was outraged and got a broomstick and hit Bayard on his head with all his might. Bayard would not let his white colleagues stop the man. The stick broke, but Bayard bent down and picked up the pieces and gave them to his attacker and invited him to beat him again. The attacker did and managed to break Bayard’s wrist. Eventually, the man stopped, seeing that Bayard would not fight back. He shook with shame and cried. There were many other examples like this from Bayard’s life. The aim was to absorb the suffering and let the effect of the suffering do its work on the attacker.

         It was a considerable effort for King and other civil rights leaders to train their workers and supporters in the tactics of nonviolence. It was the tactics of nonviolence that made the civil rights movement so astonishingly compelling. It was the tactics of Gandhi’s India against the British lion being used successfully in America, but it was not without consequences. King began the training of the workers by calling together 60 of the most powerful black preachers for a two-day conference.

         The nonviolent movement impressed all of Europe. Though I was only 11 years old, I well remember seeing the beatings of southern blacks on the television and my family was shocked by them. It had an effect on the world. How many of you remember these beatings? (Many in the congregation raised their hands.)

         Martin Luther King’s work was aided financially by many organizations, including the War Resisters League, A. Philip Randolph’s Negro Railway Car Worker’s union, the Friends Service Committee, entertainers who held concerts to raise funds, hundreds, if not thousands, of churches, and, I’m proud and happy to say, by dozens, if not hundreds, of Unitarian churches and their ministers. Some of the ministers are mentioned by name in Bayard’s biography. Many other committed religious leaders contributed greatly to this movement, including many Jews. It was a great sadness to Bayard to encounter antisemitism amongst blacks for he saw in that the same discrimination from which black people had suffered.

         Although Rustin contributed significantly to the peace movement in the early 1960’s, his greatest contribution to the Civil Rights Movement was his organizational leadership of the August 28, 1963 March on Washington and rally at the Lincoln Memorial. He has been called the “Architect” of the March. Dozens of speeches were made that day. Every speaker told Rustin that they didn’t want to follow Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for after he spoke, it would be the end of the event. I certainly never tire of hearing Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

         Bayard Rustin later said, “The march made Americans feel for the first time that we were capable of being truly a nation…moving beyond division and bigotry. I think it will be quite some time before there will be another such spiritual uprising in the hearts of people….”

         Perhaps it was the coupling of social reform with the most vibrant language of the prophets of ancient Israel. Perhaps it was a deep down knowing that if we could overcome these prejudices, we were truly on our way to the Promised Land. Perhaps we truly do believe that regarding prejudice of all kinds, we shall overcome some day.

References

The following has inspired and informed this sermon:

Anderson, Jervis. Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, a Biography, New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins, 1997.