Editing Bayard Rustin (section)

==Affiliations==
During the 1930s, at the direction of the [[Soviet Union]], the [[Communist Party USA]] (CPUSA) and its members, including Rustin, were active in the [[Civil rights movement (1896–1954)|early civil rights movement]].<ref name="Kazin2011">{{cite book|last=Kazin|first=Michael|title=The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fsWLGcZ7pyAC&pg=PA112|access-date=November 6, 2011|date=August 21, 2011|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-1-4008-3946-9|page=112}}</ref> Following [[Joseph Stalin]]'s "theory of nationalism", they favored the creation of a separate nation for African Americans in the [[Southeastern United States]].<ref>August Meier and Elliot Rudwick. ''Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW''.</ref> However, in 1941, after [[Operation Barbarossa|Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union]], [[Communist International]] ordered the CPUSA to abandon its civil rights work and focus instead on supporting U.S. entry into [[World War II]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Browder|first=Earl|date=1941|title=The Communist|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/communist/v20n02-feb-1941-The-Communist-OCR.pdf|access-date=|website=}}</ref> 

Disillusioned, Rustin began working instead with members of [[Norman Thomas]]'s [[Socialist Party of America]], particularly [[A.&nbsp;Philip Randolph]] and pacifist [[A. J. Muste]], leader of the [[Fellowship of Reconciliation]] (FOR), who hired Rustin as a race relations secretary in the summer of 1941,<ref name="Encyclopedia of African American History: Bayard Rustin">{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Bayard Rustin <!--

     The title is a guess! If someone has access to this work, please verify the title!

-->|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of African American History |last=Smith |first=Eric Ledell |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-85109-769-2 |location=Santa Barbara, Calif. |pages=1002–1004}}</ref> considering him to be a man of oratorical ability and intelligence who would sacrifice himself repeatedly for a good cause.<ref name=":12">{{Cite magazine |last=Berman |first=Paul |date=April 21, 1997 |title=The Prince of Protest |url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?AN= |magazine=New Republic |pages=34–39}}</ref> 

Muste, Randolph, and Rustin proposed a march on Washington, D.C., in 1941 to protest [[Racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces|racial segregation in the armed forces]] and widespread [[employment discrimination]]. After meeting with President [[Theodore Roosevelt|Franklin Roosevelt]] in the [[Oval Office]], Randolph told President Roosevelt that African Americans 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.

According to Daniel Levinson, Rustin had an "infinite capacity for compassion." In 1944, while imprisoned in North Carolina, Rustin displayed nonviolent tactics, allowing himself to get beaten repeatedly by a white inmate until he gave up. Rustin defied segregation during that time and practiced his tactic while incarcerated.<ref name=":02">{{Cite journal |last1=O’Connell |first1=Jeffrey |last2=O’Connell |first2=Thomas E. |date=December 2002 |title=Belle Moskowitz: An early female powerhouse |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12147-002-0008-2 |journal=Gender Issues |volume=20 |issue=1 |pages=76–83 |doi=10.1007/s12147-002-0008-2 |issn=1098-092X}}</ref>

Randolph's decision as leader of the organizers to cancel the march was made against Rustin's advice.<ref name="Encyclopedia of African American History: Bayard Rustin" /> The armed forces, in which Black troops typically had white commanding officers,<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/alaska-WWII/ BUILDING THE ALASKA HIGHWAY Race and the Army During World War II], ''[[WGBH-TV]]''. Retrieved July 26, 2022.</ref> remained racially segregated until 1948, when President [[Harry S. Truman]] issued an Executive Order. 

Randolph felt that FOR had succeeded in their goal and wanted to dissolve the committee.{{when|date=December 2023}} Again, Rustin disagreed with him and voiced his differing opinion in a national press conference, which he later said he regretted.<ref name="Encyclopedia of African American History: Bayard Rustin" />

Rustin traveled to California{{when|date=December 2023}} to help protect the property of the more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans (most of whom were U.S.-born citizens) who had been [[Japanese-American internment|imprisoned in internment camps]]. In the [[Korematsu v. United States|6–3 ''Korematsu'' decision]], the Supreme Court upheld the forcible internment. Impressed with Rustin's organizational skills, A. J. 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, Kentucky|Louisville]], bound for [[Nashville]], and sat in the second row. A number of drivers asked him to move to the back, according to Southern practice of [[Jim Crow]], but Rustin refused. The bus was stopped by police 13 miles north of Nashville and Rustin was arrested. He was beaten and taken to a police station but was released uncharged.<ref>{{cite journal |journal=Fellowship |last=Rustin |first=Bayard |date=July 1942 |title=Non-Violence vs. Jim Crow}} reprinted in {{cite book|last1=Carson|first1=Clayborne|author-link1=Clayborne Carson|last2=Garrow|first2=David J.|author-link2=David J. Garrow|last3=Kovach|first3=Bill|author-link3=Bill Kovach|title=Reporting Civil Rights: American journalism, 1941–1963|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9j8OAQAAMAAJ|access-date=September 13, 2011|year=2003|publisher=Library of America|pages=15–18|isbn=9781931082280}}</ref>

He spoke about his decision to be arrested, and how that moment also clarified his witness as a gay person, in an interview with the ''[[Washington Blade]]'' in the 1980s:

{{blockquote | As I was going by the second seat to go to the rear, a white child reached out for the ring necktie I was wearing and pulled it, whereupon its mother said, "Don't touch a nigger."

If I go and sit quietly at the back of that bus now, that child, who was so innocent of race relations that it was going to play with me, will have seen so many blacks go in the back and sit down quietly that it's going to end up saying, "They like it back there, I've never seen anybody protest against it." I owe it to that child, not only to my own dignity, I owe it to that child, that it should be educated to know that blacks do not want to sit in the back, and therefore I should get arrested, letting all these white people in the bus know that I do not accept that.

It occurred to me shortly after that that it was an absolute necessity for me to declare homosexuality because if I didn't I was a part of the prejudice. I was aiding and abetting the prejudice that was a part of the effort to destroy me.<ref name="NPR 2019-01-06" />}}

In 1942, Rustin assisted FOR staffers [[George Houser]] and [[James Farmer]], as well as activist [[Bernice Fisher]], in forming the [[Congress of Racial Equality]] (CORE), which was conceived as a pacifist organization based on the writings of [[Mohandas Gandhi]], who used [[non-violent resistance]] against [[British Raj|British rule in India]].<ref name="Hardiman2003">{{cite book|author-link=David Hardiman|first=David|last=Hardiman|title=Gandhi in His Time and Ours: The Global Legacy of His Ideas|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y1BMOHA2D7AC&pg=PA256|year=2003|publisher=C. Hurst & Co. Publishers|isbn=978-1-85065-712-5|page=256}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Harambee City : the Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the rise of Black Power populism|last=Nishani|first=Frazier|date=2017|publisher=University of Arkansas Press|isbn=9781610756013|location=Fayetteville|pages=3–26|oclc=973832475}}</ref>

As declared [[pacifism|conscientious objectors]] who refused induction into the military, Rustin, Houser, and other members of FOR and CORE were convicted of violating the [[Selective Training and Service Act of 1940|Selective Service Act]]. From 1944 to 1946, Rustin was imprisoned in [[Federal Correctional Institution, Ashland|Ashland Federal Prison]] in Kentucky, and later the [[Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary]], in Pennsylvania. At both, he organized protests against racially segregated housing and dining facilities. During his incarceration, he also organized FOR's [[Free India Committee]]. After his release from prison, he was frequently arrested for protesting against British colonial rule, in both India and Africa.

Just before a trip to Africa while college secretary of the FOR, Rustin recorded a [[LP record|10-inch LP]], ''Elizabethan Songs and Negro Spirituals,'' for the Fellowship Records label. He sang [[spirituals]] and [[Elizabethan]] songs, accompanied on the [[harpsichord]] by Margaret Davison.<ref>From liner notes, Fellowship Records 102.</ref>