Rustin, directed by George C Wolfe
Author: George C Wolfe. Review by Pete Duckworth.
Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) was a pioneering US Quaker activist for civil rights, nonviolence, and gay rights. He was a pioneer of desegregation, and was beaten and arrested for sitting on the second row of a bus as early as 1942 (this later inspired the Freedom Riders). From 1944-1946 he was imprisoned for refusing military service as a conscientious objector. In 1948 he travelled to India to learn techniques of nonviolent resistance directly from the Gandhian movement. He was always open about his homosexuality despite it being illegal in the USA for most of his life, and was briefly jailed for it in the 1950s. He advised and influenced Martin Luther King Jr, introducing him to the principles of nonviolence. He organised the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In 1964 he organised the widespread high school boycott against segregation. Following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Rustin advocated closer ties between the civil rights movement and the Democratic Party, moving from protest into politics. He advocated working class politics and trade union organisation. He opposed identity politics and black nationalism. He turned against communism, even lending critical support to USA involvement in the Vietnam War. Rustin also became a leading voice in advocating for the movement of Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel. He consistently supported War Resisters International. In the 1980s he lent support to the growing gay rights movement, while asserting that his sexuality had never been a prompt for his activism.
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