Was mlk gay
The secretly queer advisor to Martin Luther King was an American hero who can't be forgotten
He was a Civil Rights leader that taught and practiced nonviolent protest. He is the face behind the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. After his death, he was praised by Republicans like Ronald Reagan and Democrats such as Barack Obama. You’re likely picturing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. upon these descriptors, but this article is about his mentor, advisor, and ally. This is the story of Bayard Rustin.
Born on Parade 17, 1912, Bayard Rustin never knew his father and his mother had him so juvenile that he consideration that she was his sister. Existence raised by his grandparents, Rustin was instilled with their Quaker values, quoted as saying they “were based on the concept of a single human family and the belief that all members of that family are equal.”
@nprBayard Rustin may be the most consequential architect of the ‘60s civil rights movement you’ve never heard of. #NPR #ThroughlineNPR #blackhistorymonth
As a teenager, he wrote poetry and played football, eventually graduating and attending Wilberforce University, Cheney Express Teachers College, and
Bayard Rustin
Episode Notes
Bayard Rustin was a champion of the Black civil rights movement—mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. But because he was queer and out, he faced bigotry inside and outside the movement. The FBI and Sen. Strom Thurmond tried to destroy him. But he persisted.
Episode first published January 10, 2019.
———
From Eric Marcus: Bayard Rustin was a key behind-the-scenes leader of the Ebony civil rights movement—a proponent of nonviolent protest, a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the principal organizer of the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Autonomy. And he was gay and open about it, which had everything to do with why he remained in the background and is little known today in comparison to other leaders of the civil rights movement.
My earliest memory of anything having to do with the civil rights movement is indelible, because it’s one of the exceptional memories I have of my father, who died in 1970. He was lying on the sofa in the living room of our small apartment watching
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Quinton E. Baker, February 23, 2002. Interview K-0838. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- You knew Martin Luther King. You met Martin Luther King or at least spoke with him.
- QUINTON E. BAKER:
- Yes.
- CHRIS McGINNIS:
- Did he ever verbalize or, I guess you could assume acknowledge the role of male lover people within the black civil rights movement? Because really, I guess when you ran into him, it may have just been strategy sessions and general meetings and that kind of thing.
- QUINTON E. BAKER:
- Yeah, you know.
- CHRIS McGINNIS:
- Obviously, one of his people organized the March on Washington.
- QUINTON E. BAKER:
- Yeah, I know more of his, of the people around him, more so than Doctor King and no I didn't get a meaning. No, I contemplate that the feeling that I got was that Surgeon King was not very comfortable with the gay people in the movement, and I comprehend he wasn't very comfortable with Bayard Rustin, and so that is to some
Martin Luther King Jr.’s View on Gay Marriage
By Jason Carson Wilson
Jury’s out on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s view of the GLBT community, CNN.com reports. King’s daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, stated in 2005 while campaigning for a constitutional gay marriage exclude that she believed he didn’t “take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”
Coretta Scott King—King’s late widow and Bernice’s mother—probably disagreed. Scott King was a queer rights advocate with a gay aide.
Coretta wasn’t the only one with a gay friend. Martin King worked closely with openly gay civil rights commander Bayard Rustin. Rustin is credited with organizing King’s 1963 march on Washington D.C., at which he gave the historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
Aside from King and Rustin’s association, there’s little evidence of the iconic civil rights leader’s attitude about gay and lesbian people. A 1958 Ebony magazine advice column just might give a hint:
“I am a boy,” an anonymous writer wrote King. “But I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I don’t want my parents to know about me. What can I do?”
King stressed being same-sex attracted wasn