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Rustin, Bayard Taylor
5 articles on Rustin, Bayard Taylor
Rustin, Bayard
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
(b. 17 March 1912; d. 24 August 1987), civil rights organizer. Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, to Florence Rustin and Archie Hopkins, Bayard Taylor Rustin was one of the most effective and fearless, though frequently overlooked, organizers in the civil rights movement. Bayard was raised by his maternal grandparents. His grandmother Julia Rustin, a member of the NAACP, came from a tradition of Quaker pacifism and racial equality, which had a deep and abiding influence on her grandson, who remained a Quaker throughout his life. The Rustin household occasionally hosted such civil rights luminaries as James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Mary McLeod Bethunewhen they toured in the West Chester area. Bayard attended public schools, where he was academically and athletically successful and where he first challenged racial ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 399 Includes: Bibliography1910–1987
African American civil rights leader and political organizer. Bayard Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, into a Quaker family, and the pacifism he learned from the Society of Friends remained with him his entire life. After a comfortable childhood in West Chester, he studied at West Chester State College. Before graduating, he moved to Harlem, New York, during the 1930s and began studying at City College, while singing in local clubs with African American folk artists Josh White and Huddie Ledbetter. Attracted to the Young Communist League's stance on race issues, Rustin joined the group in 1936 and worked as an organizer until 1941, when he quit the party.His resistance to the government, however, continued throughout 1941when Rustin was asked by African American civil rights ...
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Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 2056 Includes: Further Reading | Obituaries:(17 Mar. 1912–24 Aug. 1987), civil rights organizer and political activist, was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of Archie Hopkins and Florence “Cissy” Rustin. Hopkins abandoned his sixteen-year-old lover before their child was born, and it was not until Bayard was eleven that he discovered that Cissy was his mother, not his sister, and that his “parents” Janifer Rustin, a caterer, and Julia Rustin, a nurse, were, in fact, his grandparents. Throughout his life, Bayard Rustin referred to Janifer as “papa” and Julia as “mama” and enjoyed a more comfortable family life than his complicated origins might suggest.Rustin attended the public schools of West Chester and displayed a precocious talent for dissent. In grade school he resisted teachers who tried to make him write with his right hand, and in high school ...
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Source: American National Biography Online
Word Count: 1537 Includes: Bibliographycivil rights leader and political activist, was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the illegitimate son of an immigrant from the British West Indies. Raised by his maternal grandparents (his grandfather was a caterer), Rustin was educated in the local public schools. He first experienced racial discrimination as a member of his high school football team when he was denied service at a restaurant in Media, Pennsylvania. After high school, he worked at odd jobs, traveled widely, and studied at Wilberforce University in Ohio, Cheney State Teachers College in Pennsylvania, and the City College ...
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Source: The Oxford Companion to American Military History
Word Count: 332(1910–1987), pacifist and civil rights activist. Born in Westchester, Pennsylvania, Rustin was raised by his grandparents as a Quaker. As an African American of developing political consciousness, Rustin joined the Young Communist League in New York City in the early 1930s, but quit in 1941. He then joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and in 1942, helped form the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Rustin spent two years in prison as a conscientious objector during World War II. Afterwards, he joined various anticolonial organizations, including the Free India movement and the Committee to Support South African Resistance. In 1947, he participated in CORE's Journey of Reconciliation, precursor to the 1960s Freedom Rides. Rustin also served as executive director of the War Resisters League ...
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