Bayard Rustin - Evolving Affiliations

Evolving Affiliations

Following directions from the Soviet Union, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and its members were active in the civil rights movement for African Americans. Following Stalin's "theory of nationalism", the CPUSA once favored the creation of a separate "nation" for negroes, to be located in the American Southeast. In 1941, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin ordered the CPUSA to abandon civil rights work and focus supporting U.S. entry into World War II. Disillusioned, Rustin began working with members of the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas, particularly, A. Philip Randolph, the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; another socialist mentor was the pacifist A. J. Muste, leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR).

The three of them proposed a march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in the armed forces. Meeting with President Roosevelt in the Oval Office, Randolph respectfully and politely, but firmly, told President Roosevelt that Negroes would march in the capital unless desegregation occurred. To prove their good faith, the organizers canceled the planned march after Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (the Fair Employment Act), which banned discrimination in defense industries and federal agencies.

Rustin traveled to California to help protect the property of Japanese Americans who had been imprisoned in internment camps. Impressed with Rustin's organizational skills, Muste appointed him as FOR's secretary for student and general affairs.

Rustin was also a pioneer in the movement to desegregate interstate bus travel. In 1942 he boarded a bus in Louisville, bound for Nashville, and sat in the second row. A number of drivers asked him to move to the back, but Rustin refused. The bus was stopped by police 13 miles north of Nashville and Rustin was arrested. He was beaten and taken to the police station, but was released uncharged.

In 1942, Rustin assisted two other staffers, George Houser and James L. Farmer, Jr., and activist Bernice Fisher as they formed the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Rustin was not a direct founder but was "an uncle of CORE," Farmer and Houser said later. CORE was conceived as a pacifist organization based on the writings of Henry David Thoreau. It was modeled after Mohandas Gandhi's non-violent resistance against British rule in India.

As declared pacifists who refused induction into the military, Rustin, Houser, and other members of FOR and CORE were convicted of violating the Selective Service Act. From 1944 to 1946, Rustin was imprisoned in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, where he organized protests against segregated dining facilities. During his incarceration, Rustin also organized FOR's Free India Committee. After his release from prison, he was frequently arrested for protesting against British colonial rule in India and Africa.

Just before a trip to Africa while college secretary of the FOR, Rustin recorded a 10-inch LP for the Fellowship Records label. He sang spirituals and Elizabethan songs, accompanied on the harpsichord by Margaret Davison.