Today in Labor History February 12, 1947: 60 anti-draft demonstrators burned their draft cards in New York City during an antiwar demonstration. Between 400 and 500 veterans and conscientious objectors from World Wars I and II burned their draft cards in two demonstrations, in front of the White House in Washington and at the Labor Temple in New York City, in protest of a proposed universal conscription law. Civil Rights organizers James Peck, Bayard Rustin and A.J. Muste helped organize the anti-draft protests.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #antiwar #civilrights #whitehouse #antidraft #wwii #wwi #ajmuste #newyork #conscientiousobjectors #BayardRustin #blackhistorymonth

#BayardRustin was a civil rights activist and political strategist who is perhaps best known for his role as the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and was a close advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Despite his contributions, Rustin faced significant challenges, partly due to his identity as an openly gay man during a period of widespread homophobia. Rustin shared some of those challenges in this interview in 1982. #BlackHistory
https://blknewsnow.com/bayard-rustin-wgbh-interview-1982/

@NBCNews
"Social justice advocates are creating a queer history archive that celebrates Bayard Rustin, a major organizer in the Civil Rights Movement and key architect of the March on Washington.

"The Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice will launch a digital archive this fall featuring articles, photos, videos, telegrams, speeches, and more tied to Rustin's work. Sourced from museums, archives, and personal accounts, it's designed as a central space where others can add their own stories, creating a living historical record.

"There's this hole in our history," said Robt Martin Seda-Schreiber, the center's founder and chief activist. "And there are great resources about Bayard, but they're all spread out, and none of it has been collected and put together in the way that he deserves, and more importantly, the way the world deserves to see him."

#LGBTQ #LGBTHistory #BayardRustin #SocialJustice #CivilRights
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/bayard-rustin-archive-aims-preserve-legacy-queer-civil-rights-activist-rcna217550

Who else have we erased?
This isn’t just a story about a movement. It’s about who gets remembered, who gets left out, and what it means to love when there is no name for what you are to each other.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/what-the-law-allowed-bayard-walter-and-the-shape-of-queer-love-3c9d16933eed?sk=c17a6e88feffe9ebf61be840a9131ae5

#LGBTQ #QueerHistory #BayardRustin #MLKJr

Bayard Rustin born this day in 1912. Rustin worked with A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement in 1941 to press for an end to discrimination in employment. Rustin later organized Freedom Rides and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership, teaching King about nonviolence and later serving as an organizer for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

After the passage of the civil rights legislation of 1964–65, Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO's A. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Communist Vietnam and Cambodia. At the time of his death in 1987, he was on a humanitarian mission in Haiti.

Rustin was a gay man who had been arrested early in his career for engaging in public sex. Due to criticism over his sexuality, he usually acted as an influential adviser behind the scenes to civil-rights leaders. In the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay and lesbian causes.

#BayardRustin

MLK’s March on Washington? Bayard Rustin organized it. A gay Black activist, erased from history.

Without Rustin, no movement. #BHM2024 #BayardRustin

Bayard Rustin:
“Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.“

“We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.”

On this Martin Luther King’s Day let us all be angelic troublemakers makers. remembering Bayard Rustin’s kind wise words.

#MartinLutherKing #BayardRustin