Thanks PamI knew about WAMU but forget to tune in.  Love the software visuals of changing colors and form while listening to Robert Siegal “All Things Considered”.

If the they are using the “Brother Outsider” video. . .. . .it will be a great learning experience.  
I actually purchased “Brother Outsider” to use as a ‘training video’ for my workplace.  

Bayard was arrested for refusing to give up his seat on a bus to a white person TEN YEARS before Rosa Parks.
Yet few people, even few African-Americans, know his name, who he was or anything about his considerable contributions to the African-American civil rights movement.
Equally sad, few gay people seem to know anything about him either.

AND Rustin was repeatedly beaten….
…for his efforts [and that of a small group of mixed blacks and whites] to integrate interstate bus lines and waiting rooms.
Police beat him on one bus itself, north of Nashville, then continued the beating in the police station. Having maintained his Ghandian composure the mystified police captain said,

“Nigger, you’re supposed to be scared when you come in here! I believe the nigger’s crazy!”

A North Carolina judge sentenced him to a month on a brutal chain gang whose guards were fond of shooting at prisoners’ feet to make them “dance.” Think Cool Hand Luke times 50.
There were other times when he was beaten by police as a homosexual, too.
The ignorance [or indifference] of LGBT Movement leaders about him is not just wrong but self-defeating because he could serve, in so many ways, as a bridge between gays of all colors and any blacks who are antigay.
As I’ve often written, a rare chance at nexus has been repeatedly missed by not using the example of Rustin and his partner in marriage equality fights. After Rustin was hospitalized, Walter Naegle had to argue with hospital officials for hours before finally being allowed near his partner’s bed right before Rustin died.
In 2006, officials in Rustin’s hometown of West Chester, PA, asked Naegle for a list of people who should be invited to the dedication of the high school named for Rustin. He provided the list – but wasn’t invited himself!!!
To this day, none of the school’s literature references to its namesake acknowledges his being gay.

curious that he was not invitedThe school has a Gay Lesbian Straight Alliance Club.
https://www.edline.net/pages/R…

One can hardly blame the LGBT community for not knowing muchabout Rustin, given that he has been so well concealed by those who write African American history.  
I do my part to help with black history:  Some months ago at the Museum of the African Diaspora, they had a “Harlem Renaissance” exhibit.  Included was a mini-exhibit of Langston Hughes, a little history and his writing.  A blackboard was provided for people to write comments.  I wrote “We need to celebrate Langston’s blackness and his gayness.”  
The effort wasn’t appreciated by ‘security.’  I’m white, but I’m guessing that race had nothing to do with their reaction. It was homophobia, or maybe ignorance that Langston was gay or who knows.  It felt like they were being ‘protective’ and engaged me somewhat.  
Anyway, my message was erased because it was not ‘appropriate,’ but I was not in any way harassed to asked to leave the museum.
Upon thinking about it later, I think that the security woman and I learned something about each other and about race.  But I can’t exactly figure out what it is or why I feel this way.  

Sorry, I wouldn’t call it “curious”…
…I would call it “obvious” – and the same reason Rustin’s biography on the school’s site does NOT read,
“He is survived by his life partner, biographer Walter Naegle.”
GLSAs exist in many schools/school districts run by homophobes. Some just try harder than others to prevent them.

A recent photo of Naegle.

Right in front of your eyesThere is much more about the African American movement that is dynamically gay. Baynard was also instrumental in initiating the meeting between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King jr. And some day even they will have to also revive the history of gay civil rights for all the work he has done in that area as well. But the likely reason he is written out of the history books was for a lewd conduct arrest–I believe in Los Angeles, which inclined Martin and others to distance themselves publicly from him though he remained a very adviser to the movement even then.
While the history books written of African Americans and of our movements seem to only reinforce the 1 or 2 dimensional philosophy of the writers who author them, people forget that our leaders, artists, writers, etc., where real people with an exceptional level of acceptance for each other. Martin and the other leaders knew very well that Baynard was gay, If they took any real issue with him at all it was likely because his religious beliefs where more eastern oriented that African American and traditional. However, after his arrest on lewd conduct charges in LA his image could not be seen as tarnishing or upstaging the movement. After all the majority of the leadership community where Pastors from traditional churches with not so traditional positions on civil rights. So back in the day you could pretty much be who you where going to be. Because in the end we where all in it together. But the movement was the thing and a public image was key to seeing the movement advance.

YesNPR said the Pasadena arrest made national news in 1953.   Leaders don’t forget 10 years later at the time of the march.  Many African-American leaders were concerned that Rustin’s sexual orientation and Communist past would undermine support for the civil rights movement. U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who was a member of the SCLC’s board, forced Rustin’s resignation from the SCLC in 1960 by threatening to discuss Rustin’s morals charge in Congress.
The current President of SCLC is Bernice King, and we know her views about homosexuality.  

Good reportAnd they recognized his partner.

With respect, kudo, there are holes in your speculation…
1. Rustin was a hybrid of many schools of thought, but he was first of all a Quaker, and there’s no evidence any took “real issue with him” because of it.
2. His arrest [which for the record was in Pasadena] was hardly the sole reason for most historians’ ignoring or underplaying the central role he played in not just the movement generally but the shaping of MLK, nor the resistance to him by other black civil rights leaders at the time. Both were clearly broadbrush homophobia, arrest or not.
Yes, the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins included Rustin’s other “scars” such as his Young Communist League membership 30-years before and prison time for WWII draft resistance, but it was Rustin’s homosexuality and arrest that he most used against him when insisting he could have nothing to do with the 1963 march on Washington [even tho Rustin was one of those who conceived of it in the first place].
But Rustin’s own mentor, A. Philipp Randolph, outmaneuvered Wilkins. Put officially in charge of the march because of his seniority in the movement [he, with Rustin's help, had forced FDR to racially integrate WWII defense industries or face a march on DC then], he simply turned around and gave the responsibility for organizing it to Rustin as his “deputy.”
And after racist fascist Strom Thurmond tried to both discredit the movement generally and the march specifically by bellowing on the Senate floor about the “pervert’s” gay sex charges and entering the arrest record from years before [clearly secured for him by racist closeted fag fascist J. Edgar Hoover], it backfired with movement leaders who circled the proverbial wagons around Rustin, including, must to his moved surprise, Wilkins. He even spoke at the march.

With respect….
You’re conflating some events…and imagining understandable motivations when, in this case, they don’t exist. Known homophobe Powell justified his 1960 efforts to discredit Rustin [whose political influence, along with King's, he was known to be jealous of] in terms of Rustin being a “bad influence” on King [ye olde redbaiting] and kicked off in a speech at the National Sunday School Congress, and picked up by black media. He had no need to take it to THE Congress.
When King failed to be intimidated by that, then Powell let it be known through the movement grapevine that he was willing to falsely accuse King of having a gay affair with Rustin unless King fired him. [That King buckled to the blackmail is one of the worst stains on his reputation.]
Such extortion could hardly be interpreted as being motivated by sincere concern about damage Rustin’s gayness might do to the movement. In fact, his real motive, in addition to discrediting Rustin generally, was, at the behest of the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins and white Democratic power players to get King to abandon a plan to protest the 1960 Democratic National Convention.
King’s abandoning him for a time hurt Rustin greatly, but he would eventually work with SCLC again.

If we missed itIs there anywhere to access or download a copy? I can’t find anything like it on their site. Help!

Gah – lovely bit of censorship there…If they don’t want people to comment, they shouln’t provide a comment space.
That erasure of your comment makes me want to start a protest, a la integrating-library-style, where GLBTAs of all colors come up and write the same thing. If it gets erased, then the next day (hour, whatever) it gets written again. And again. It’s not a fluke, it’s a fact.

You’re probably right about the homophobia bitI have a question, though.
Were there any other black writers/artists from the Harlem Renaissance in that exhibit.
After all, that was a largely black gay literary movement.

I missed this too!But then, on my show yesterday, I had as part of my commentary how Rustin helped with the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March in ’63.
The fact that people like Thomas, who sits on the United States Supreme Court(!), yet would deny TLBG Americans equal rights in this country when his very position is due in large part to a GAY black man, just boils my outrage!
His very presence spits in the face of Dr. King and all those who fought for inclusion of everyone in American society. I’d love nothing more that to send all these assimilationists back to the Jim Crow days to remember how it was like to be treated — maybe then they’d remember their history!

Full Episode on the WebsiteHi Lymis! Thanks for your interest in State of the Re:Union. You can find the full episode of Bayard Rustin: Who Is This Man? on our Bayard Rustin page (http://stateofthereunion.com/home/season-2/bayard-rustin). Thanks for listening!

Full Episode on the WebsiteHi Marlene! You can listen to the full episode on the Bayard Rustin page of our website (http://stateofthereunion.com/home/season-2/bayard-rustin). Thanks for your interest!