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Speaker 1: Welcome to Steph you missed in history class from dot Com. Hello,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast Trade. Phoebe Wilson, Holly Frying say,

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Speaker 1: we are going to return to the story of fired

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Speaker 1: rest In. This is a man who spent twenty eight

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Speaker 1: months during and after World War Two. Is one of

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Speaker 1: the many conscientious objectors in federal prison. After his release,

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Speaker 1: he was part of the Journey of Reconciliation, and that

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Speaker 1: was a project to test a Supreme Court ruling that

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Speaker 1: found the segregation of interstate buses unconstitutional. He also spent

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Speaker 1: four months after the war in India studying Gandhian non

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Speaker 1: violence and speaking on non violence. The world changed a

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Speaker 1: lot during these years. As had happened after World War One,

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Speaker 1: black service members returned home and were dismayed to find that,

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Speaker 1: in spite of having served their country in a time

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Speaker 1: of war, they were still facing discriminate Asian at home.

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Speaker 1: That's galvanized the civil rights movement. Nuclear weapons had changed

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Speaker 1: the tone of the peace movement, and communism was increasingly

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Speaker 1: seen as a very serious threat. All of this change

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Speaker 1: had a huge profound effect on Byard Reston's life and work,

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Speaker 1: which is what we're going to be talking about in

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Speaker 1: today's episode, and if you have not heard Part one,

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Speaker 1: parts of this one are going to make a lot

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Speaker 1: more sense with with that context. I tried to make

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Speaker 1: it an episode that would also stand alone, but like,

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Speaker 1: there's only so much we can re explain without making

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Speaker 1: this episode twice as long. Uh And as was the

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Speaker 1: case at in Part one, there is a little more

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Speaker 1: talk by necessity of fired rest in sex life than

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Speaker 1: might be typical of our show. Because of his previous

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Speaker 1: ties to the Communist Party, his race, and his sexual orientation,

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Speaker 1: the McCarthy era was extremely dangerous for Bayard Rustin. This

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Speaker 1: was one of the many reasons why he started to

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Speaker 1: look beyond the United States in terms of his activism

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen five d's. In nineteen fifty two, he

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Speaker 1: toured North and West Africa, spending his time in Ghana,

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Speaker 1: then known as the Gold Coast in Nigeria. During his

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Speaker 1: time in Africa, he met with activists who were resisting

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Speaker 1: the British colonial government there. He Booke ended his time

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Speaker 1: in Africa with stops in London, where he met with

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Speaker 1: pacifists and civil rights activists about how to encourage non

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Speaker 1: violence independence movements. Among Britain's African colonies. He had originally

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Speaker 1: planned to do similar work in French colonies, but he

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Speaker 1: had been previously part of protests at the French embassy

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Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. And consequently the French government would

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Speaker 1: not grant him of a visa to do this work whoops.

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Speaker 1: Once he got back to the US, he set out

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Speaker 1: on a speaking tour and he started trying to work

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Speaker 1: out funding to go back to Africa and make a

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Speaker 1: more coordinated effort to encouraging non violent independence movements. But

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Speaker 1: as had happened while he was trying to integrate a

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Speaker 1: federal prison while sir time there is a conscientious objector,

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Speaker 1: his efforts were derailed Following a sexual encounter. In January

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Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty three, he and two other men were

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Speaker 1: caught in the backseat of a car in Pasadena, California.

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Speaker 1: All three were arrested on charges of lewd vagrancy and

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Speaker 1: ultimately sentenced to sixty days in prison. This was really

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Speaker 1: the last straw and Bayard Reston's working relationship with pacifist A. J.

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Speaker 1: Musty and his organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Musty had

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Speaker 1: been sorely, sorely disappointed by Bayard Reston's sexual misconbact charge

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Speaker 1: while in prison, after which Bayard had assured him that

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Speaker 1: his sexual orientation would not be an obstacle to his

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Speaker 1: ongoing work. That made this whole incident in Pasadena, from

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Speaker 1: a j Musty's point of view, a huge betrayal. On

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Speaker 1: top of the fact that once again byired sex life

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Speaker 1: had derailed his work. Fired resigned from the fellow Ship

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Speaker 1: of Reconciliation as a result, this was a hugely pivotal

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Speaker 1: event in Rustin's life. He had been in prison multiple

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Speaker 1: times before, but this was the first time that it

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Speaker 1: was because of something unrelated to civil disobedience or being

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Speaker 1: a conscientious objector. Since the sexual misconduct investigation had happened

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Speaker 1: while he was in federal prison, knowledge of what had

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Speaker 1: happened had been mostly confined to the conscientious object or community,

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Speaker 1: but now he was a convicted sex offender, and homosexual

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Speaker 1: behavior carried an enormous stigma. The Fellowship of Reconciliation also

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Speaker 1: publicized his resignation among its members, so it became common

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Speaker 1: knowledge in the pacifist community, and from there the other

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Speaker 1: social movements that Bayard Rustin had been part of the

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Speaker 1: prevailing wisdom at the time was that this being essentially

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Speaker 1: fired from the Fellowship of Reconciliation wasn't because Ruston was gay, uh,

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Speaker 1: it was the as he was flagrant and promiscuous about it.

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Speaker 1: A j Musty maintained that somebody caught in a heterosexual

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Speaker 1: encounter in a public place and then sent to jail

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Speaker 1: over it would have faced the same consequences. Rustin went

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Speaker 1: from being a sought after voice in the anti war

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Speaker 1: and civil rights movements and someone who really had the

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Speaker 1: potential to become an international leader in non violent resistance

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Speaker 1: to being someone who could really only work behind the scenes.

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Speaker 1: When he was released from prison, he was depressed and

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Speaker 1: he felt desperately alone since many of his friends seemed

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Speaker 1: to have abandoned him. He came to the conclusion that

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Speaker 1: he was arrogant, that it had been selfish of him

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Speaker 1: to follow his libido when he had other important work

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Speaker 1: to do. When he got back to New York, he

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Speaker 1: entered therapy to try to get back on his feet

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Speaker 1: and to try to figure out how to exist as

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Speaker 1: a gay man without sabotaging his work. Again, out of

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Speaker 1: work and with little left to live on and with

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Speaker 1: a sex offense conviction as an obstacle to finding employment.

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Speaker 1: He spent several months trying to figure out what to do.

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Speaker 1: Was the fall of nineteen fifty three before he found

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Speaker 1: another opportunity, which was the War Resistors League. Like the

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Speaker 1: Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resistors League was an anti

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Speaker 1: war organization, but unlike the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which most

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Speaker 1: of its members were clergy, most members of the War

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Speaker 1: Resistors League were secular. Ruston was already actually involved with

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Speaker 1: this organization. He served on its board, which he had

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Speaker 1: actually offered to resign from after his arrest in Pasadena.

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Speaker 1: The board had had declined his offer to resign. The

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Speaker 1: War Resistors League was at that point struggling, and the

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Speaker 1: hope was that hiring Rustin as its program director would

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Speaker 1: help them build connections with other pacifists. The decision to

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Speaker 1: bring him on was far from unanimous, and A. J. Mustie,

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Speaker 1: who was on the War Resistors League board, resigned after

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Speaker 1: it was made in protest, although he returned earned after

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Speaker 1: his retirement from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the two

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Speaker 1: men eventually made at least some amends. Rustin would work

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Speaker 1: with the organization for more than a decade. This return

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Speaker 1: to the world of act of activism was really difficult

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Speaker 1: for Rustin. He was still really trying to reconcile how

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Speaker 1: to live his life as a gay man with how

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Speaker 1: to follow his life's work as an activist. He felt

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Speaker 1: like a lot of the activist community was just waiting

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Speaker 1: for him to mess up again. And even though he

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Speaker 1: had always been willing to go to prison for his

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Speaker 1: beliefs and every time he undertook an act of civil disobedience,

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Speaker 1: he was prepared to be arrested. Now that he had

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Speaker 1: a sex offense conviction on his record, being arrested again

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Speaker 1: came with a much higher stake. He started to worry

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Speaker 1: about his sexual orientation in a way that he hadn't before.

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Speaker 1: In general, he became a lot more discreet, and he

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Speaker 1: advised other gay activists to do the same. In the

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Speaker 1: mid nineteen fifties, Rustin was part of the American Friends

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Speaker 1: Service Committee study that wrote Speak Truth to Power, which

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Speaker 1: was a document urging the United States to take non

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Speaker 1: violent responses to international conflicts. At his own request, because

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Speaker 1: of his nineteen fifty three arrest, Rustin asked that his

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Speaker 1: name be left off of it. At about this time,

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Speaker 1: the civil rights movement and then in the United States

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Speaker 1: took another turn, and we'll talk about what happened and

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Speaker 1: how it led to rust and being involved in it.

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Speaker 1: After a brief sponsor break, get back to the life

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Speaker 1: of fired Ruston. In nineteen fifty four, the United States

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court issued its ruling and Brown versus the Board

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Speaker 1: of Education. This was the ruling that public school segregation

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Speaker 1: was unconstitutional. We have a whole series on this ruling

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Speaker 1: in the archive which goes into a lot of detail

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Speaker 1: about the civil rights movement and how it led to

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Speaker 1: this ruling and what happened afterwards, So we're not going

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Speaker 1: to rehash those details here. Basically, though, school segregation unconstitutional.

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Speaker 1: Although Rustin had been involved in equal rights for black

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Speaker 1: Americans for much of his life, he hadn't had a

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Speaker 1: lot of direct involvement in the movement between his advocacy

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Speaker 1: for integrating the U. S Military in the late nineteen

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Speaker 1: forties and the decision in Brown versus Board. But the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court decision and the backlash that it spawned were

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Speaker 1: immediately compelling to him. In nineteen fifty five, he started

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Speaker 1: working with an organization called in Friendship to provide uh

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Speaker 1: support directly to black civil rights activists who were being

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Speaker 1: targeted by white supremacists in the South. While the n

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Speaker 1: double A CP took on various legal aspects of combating

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Speaker 1: what was going on in the South, and Friendship offered

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Speaker 1: direct assistance, including food, clothing, and funds to people who

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Speaker 1: were being affected by racism. On December, one of n

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Speaker 1: ROSA Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her

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Speaker 1: seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This act

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Speaker 1: of civil disobedience, which we have talked about at length

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Speaker 1: on the podcast before, touched off the Montgomery bus boycott

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Speaker 1: that is the subject of two episodes in our archive.

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Speaker 1: Soon Montgomery area civil rights leaders houses were being bombed,

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Speaker 1: and that includes the house of Martin Luther King Jr.

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Speaker 1: In Friendship wanted to send somebody to help, and their

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Speaker 1: most logical choice, in spite of his now checkered past,

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Speaker 1: was Byard Rustin. Specifically, they thought it would be best

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Speaker 1: to send somebody who already had lots of experience in

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Speaker 1: nonviolent resistance and in organizing non violent movements for freedom.

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Speaker 1: This is exactly what Rustin had spent so much time

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Speaker 1: doing in the forties, including studies and travels with followers

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Speaker 1: of Mohandas Gandhi in India. Since he was black, it

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Speaker 1: also meant that he was less likely to be seen

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Speaker 1: as an outsider once he got there. Labor leader A.

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Speaker 1: Philip Randolph connected Rustin to the leaders of the bus boycott.

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Speaker 1: Once in Montgomery, Rustin wrote speeches and protest songs, and

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Speaker 1: he also did a lot of practical work arranging car

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Speaker 1: pools and other transportation for black passengers who were protesting

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Speaker 1: segregation by refusing to ride on segregated buses. And he

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Speaker 1: advised everyone who was being indicted in connection with the

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Speaker 1: bus boycott to dress in their Sunday best and go

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Speaker 1: to the courthouse rather than waiting for their court date

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Speaker 1: to arrive. His original plan had been to formally train

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Speaker 1: the bus boycott's leaders on Gandhian nonviolent resistance, but when

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Speaker 1: he got Once he got there, it became a lot

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Speaker 1: more practical and effective to become part of the planning

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Speaker 1: itself and to offer insights and strategies as situations arose.

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Speaker 1: He also started to advise Martin Luther King on the

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Speaker 1: direction of his civil rights work. He strenuously advocated a

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Speaker 1: form of pacifism, informed by both his Quaker beliefs and

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Speaker 1: Gandhi's non violent resistance. As one example that kept being

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Speaker 1: sited the first time he went over to the king home,

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Speaker 1: there were armed guards outside and numerous weapons in the house,

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Speaker 1: and Byard Rustin was basically like, dude, you are leading

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Speaker 1: a pacifist movement. You cannot have all these guns here.

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Speaker 1: That's not not how it works. But it wasn't just

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Speaker 1: that though, like we're gonna talk about more, but like that,

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Speaker 1: that is the keystone example that a lot of people

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Speaker 1: start with, and the non violence approach that became such

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Speaker 1: a fundamental part of King's leadership was largely refined and

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Speaker 1: directed by Rustin's influence. King had plenty of theory, but

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Speaker 1: not a strong practical sense of how to translate the

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Speaker 1: idea of non violence to a working social movement. Rustin's

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Speaker 1: work with King was ongoing until King's assassination in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty eight, although from time to time Rustin's sexual orientation

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Speaker 1: and his past conviction led him to make himself scarce.

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Speaker 1: Through the late nineteen fifties, rest and continued to work

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Speaker 1: both within and outside of the United States. He King

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Speaker 1: organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in nineteen fifty six

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Speaker 1: and nineteen fifty seven, and in the late nineteen fifties

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Speaker 1: he also went once again to Northern Africa, this time

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Speaker 1: to protest French nuclear arms testing there. He also did

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Speaker 1: lots of other work within the anti nuclear movement as well.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty seven, he was invited to attend the

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Speaker 1: National Congress of the Communist Party of the United States

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Speaker 1: of America. He had not had any ties to communism

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Speaker 1: since the nineteen forties, and he was invited as an

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Speaker 1: outside observer. He attended, and this was apparently when he

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Speaker 1: caught more serious attention of the FBI. Uh The FBI

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Speaker 1: maintained surveillance of Buyard Rustin for much of the nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: including wire taps of his phone conversations with Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Speaker 1: You can read a lot of this online at the

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Speaker 1: FBI thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. In nineteen sixty,

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Speaker 1: Rustin's arrest in Pasadena really came back to haunt him.

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Speaker 1: He and King were planning a protest outside the Democratic

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Speaker 1: National Convention because no Democratic candidate had expressed a clear

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Speaker 1: support of the civil rights movement. Democratic Representative Adam Clayton

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Speaker 1: Powell Jr. Was angry about this planned protest and trying

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Speaker 1: to put an end to it, so he blackmailed Martin

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Speaker 1: Luther King with the threat that he would tell the

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Speaker 1: press about Rustin's arrest and also plant a false report

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Speaker 1: that King and Rustin were lovers. Terrified at what such

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Speaker 1: a scandal would do to the movement and to his

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Speaker 1: own reputation, King canceled the protests and he convinced Rustin

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Speaker 1: to resign from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. At the time.

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Speaker 1: Rustin was devastated, but inn He expressed a belief that

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Speaker 1: his sexual orientation had not been a problem for King

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Speaker 1: until it became a problem for the movement because of

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Speaker 1: these outside sources that are jerks. For the next couple

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Speaker 1: of years, as much of Ruston's work was focused on

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Speaker 1: nuclear disarmament and freedom movements in Africa and travel abroad

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Speaker 1: for a while after this whole incident, the civil rights

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Speaker 1: movement largely went on without him. But this was not

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Speaker 1: the end of his work with King, and we will

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Speaker 1: talk about it in the March on Washington. After another

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Speaker 1: brief sponsor break, it is probably safe to say that

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Speaker 1: a lot of folks in the United States think of

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Speaker 1: the civil rights movement in terms of things like segregation

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Speaker 1: in schools and on buses, discrimination in employment and housing,

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Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. But there was a whole

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Speaker 1: additional layer to that, and that was a focus on

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Speaker 1: economic issues. The March on Washington gets shortened to just

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Speaker 1: the March on Washington, but it was really the March

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Speaker 1: on Washington for jobs and freedom, and originally the focus

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Speaker 1: was largely on jobs. The idea for this march started

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Speaker 1: with labor leader A. Philip Randolph in nineteen sixty two.

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Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about him and our podcast

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Speaker 1: on the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters. Randolph recruited Rustin

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Speaker 1: to help him plan a march that would draw attention

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Speaker 1: to the economic issues that were running in parallel with

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Speaker 1: desegregation in the South. At first, other civil rights organizations

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Speaker 1: were really slow to join this march, though, and the

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Speaker 1: War Resistors League had also declined to temporarily release Restin

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Speaker 1: from his duties to work on it. But in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty three, Commissioner Bull Connor of Birmingham, Alabama turned fire

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Speaker 1: hoses and police dogs on teenage protesters the KU klux

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Speaker 1: Klan began bombing activists homes and the hotels where out

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Speaker 1: of town activists were staying in Birmingham. With this, the

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Speaker 1: March refined its focus to jobs in freedom, and it

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Speaker 1: got a lot bigger. Martin Luther King became involved. The

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Speaker 1: Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, the Congress of Racial Equality,

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Speaker 1: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Urban League, the

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Speaker 1: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the

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Speaker 1: Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters would become the Big six

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Speaker 1: organizations who all came together for the March. Once again,

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Speaker 1: rest in sexual orientation and his past arrest put a

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Speaker 1: dent in his ability to take the helm, even though

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Speaker 1: he was the one to wind up doing a whole

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Speaker 1: lot of the planning. Roy Wilkins of the Double A

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Speaker 1: CP cited the risk involved with putting Rustin into such

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Speaker 1: a position at such a high profile event, afraid that

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Speaker 1: having him in such a public facing role would jeopardize

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Speaker 1: the march and its respectability. In the end, A Philip

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Speaker 1: Randolph became the director and Rustin was his deputy. The

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Speaker 1: bulk of their planning took just eight weeks of continual

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Speaker 1: negotiations among all of these organizations and the people involved,

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Speaker 1: many of which just did not see eye to eye.

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Speaker 1: So much went into those eight weeks before the March

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Speaker 1: on Washington. Apart from the speakers, the musicians, and all

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Speaker 1: of those logistics, there were the simpler logistics of handling

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Speaker 1: an expected quarter of a million people. I say simpler,

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Speaker 1: that's not really correct. It's just a different logistics. Apart

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Speaker 1: from the speakers, the musicians and all of that, there

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Speaker 1: was the simple logistics of handling an expected quarter of

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Speaker 1: a million people. Instructions for protesters were exact, including that

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Speaker 1: each person should plan to bring nonperishable food for both

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Speaker 1: lunch and dinner. In The march itself had a lot

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Speaker 1: of moving parts, including portable toilets, shuttle buses, first aid stations,

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Speaker 1: just on and on the things you would need for

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Speaker 1: a massive group of people. As the march got bigger

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Speaker 1: and bigger, it also got less radical. Restlon's original plan

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Speaker 1: had been for it to be a wide ranging, active

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Speaker 1: demonstration with lots of sit ins and direct lobbying, but

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Speaker 1: as it got bigger, its focus had to get bit

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Speaker 1: broader and less militant in order for it to still

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Speaker 1: work and for all of these people to still want

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Speaker 1: to be involved with it. The whole time they were planning,

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Speaker 1: the collection of organizers and civil rights organizations expected some

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Speaker 1: kind of resistance from segregationists and others who wanted the

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Speaker 1: march to fail. The biggest piece of that resistance came

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Speaker 1: just three weeks before the march was to take place,

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Speaker 1: when Senator strom Thurmond of South Carolina read from the

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Speaker 1: FBI file on Rustin on the Senate floor, including calling

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Speaker 1: him a sexual deviant and effectively outing him to the

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Speaker 1: entire nation. This time, though, the movement that had more

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Speaker 1: than once pushed him out because of his sexual orientation

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Speaker 1: and his behavior had his back. A Philip Randolph publicly

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Speaker 1: defended Ruston and denounced Thurman's invasion of his privacy, which

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Speaker 1: he pointed out pretty pretty clearly was only being made

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Speaker 1: in order to persecute him. In the end. Of course,

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Speaker 1: the march itself was huge, between two hundred thousand and

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Speaker 1: three hundred thousand people. As the last of the formal remarks,

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Speaker 1: King ate his famous I have a dream speech, and

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Speaker 1: after he concluded, A Philip Randolph led the gathered crowd

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Speaker 1: in a pledge to continue to fight for civil rights

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Speaker 1: after they got home. The leaders of the march then

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Speaker 1: met with President John F. Kennedy. Rustin was not one

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Speaker 1: of those who did, but he and A. Philip Randolph

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Speaker 1: were on the cover of Life magazine that September six.

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Speaker 1: From there, Rustin really tried to get social movement organizations

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Speaker 1: to build on the success of the March, to expand

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Speaker 1: their focus to include other disenfranchised populations, and to try

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Speaker 1: to work towards a solid plan of progress rather than

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Speaker 1: going from one individual dramatic protest to another. He also

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Speaker 1: returned to his work with the War Resistors League and

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Speaker 1: the Peace Movement, while also traveling and speaking on behalf

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Speaker 1: of civil rights. In nineteen sixty five, A. Philip Randolph

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Speaker 1: resigned from the War Resistors League, and he announced that

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Speaker 1: he and buy Ard Rustin were launching the A. Philip

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Speaker 1: Randolph Institute. The institute's goal was to expand the impact

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Speaker 1: of and strengthen the civil rights movement by building connections

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Speaker 1: between labor and civil rights organizations. The same year, Ruston

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Speaker 1: published From Protest to Politics, the Future of the Civil

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Speaker 1: Rights Movement, which was a call to transition the civil

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Speaker 1: rights movement from a series of protests against equality to

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Speaker 1: a political movement. He saw the need for civil rights

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Speaker 1: activists than anyone else he was the target of discrimination

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Speaker 1: and inequality to band together to form a real political majority.

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Speaker 1: In some ways, this uh this document was more optimistic

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Speaker 1: than his real thoughts on the subject, and part because

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Speaker 1: he was writing it for a broad audience who he

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Speaker 1: was hoping to get on board with this plan. However,

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Speaker 1: in the years after the March on Washington, Rustin found

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Speaker 1: himself on the receiving end of a fair amount of

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Speaker 1: criticism from the very movement he had been so instrumental

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Speaker 1: in shaping. A lot of this boiled down to his

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Speaker 1: being seen as more moderate in a movement that was

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Speaker 1: becoming a radical, and for calling for building a political

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Speaker 1: coalition rather than a true revolution. An influx of young

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Speaker 1: activists saw him as a traitor for trying to work

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Speaker 1: out compromises with legislators, even though he had gone to

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Speaker 1: prison for his opposition to World War two. People did

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Speaker 1: not think he took a definitive enough stance against the

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Speaker 1: Vietnam War, in part because he was trying to work

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Speaker 1: within the system, which involved maintaining productive relationships with a

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Speaker 1: lot of people who were in favor of the war.

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Speaker 1: By the late nineteen sixties, and part because he had

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Speaker 1: not been as demonstrative as people wanted against the Vietnam War,

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Speaker 1: Ruston had few ties left to the peace movement. He

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Speaker 1: was also at odds with the Black Power movement. They

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Speaker 1: were definitely prominent Black power leaders who did not agree

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Speaker 1: with his philosophies at all. His calls to work together

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Speaker 1: to build political power rather than focusing on individual issues

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Speaker 1: and individual protests were increasingly unheeded. In the all of

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, having put himself under an enormous pressure

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Speaker 1: to write the movements that he saw as floundering, Buyer

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Speaker 1: Rustin had a massive heart attack. With an increasing number

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Speaker 1: of disagreeing voices on how to change things in the

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Speaker 1: United States, Rustin wound up focusing his efforts on foreign

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Speaker 1: affairs and travel abroad after he recovered from his heart attack,

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Speaker 1: working with an organization called Freedom House, and that was

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Speaker 1: a bipartisan organization aimed to spread democracy internationally. He also

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Speaker 1: advocated on behalf of refugees from numerous nations. In the

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Speaker 1: late seventies and early eighties, the gay rights movement in

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Speaker 1: the United States was moving more into the public sphere,

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Speaker 1: and by ed Rustin did as well. Part of this

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Speaker 1: was because he'd met Walter Nagle in April of nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy seven, just after he turned sixty five. Nagle was

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Speaker 1: twenty seven, and it was love at first sight. It

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Speaker 1: was Nagle's first long term relationship and Rustin's most serious

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Speaker 1: and steadfast of his life. With Nagle's encouragement, Rustin renewed

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Speaker 1: ties with some of his old pacifist connections. He returned

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Speaker 1: to an old love of scouring auctions to buy and

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Speaker 1: restore antique furniture as well, and he joined the gay

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Speaker 1: rights movement, speaking advocating against racism within the gay community

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Speaker 1: and lobbying New York Mayor Ed Coach for a gay

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Speaker 1: and lesbian rights bill. In spite of having lived his

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Speaker 1: life as a gay man, he declined in nine six

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Speaker 1: invitation to contribute to an anthology of gay men's writing,

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Speaker 1: say that it would be dishonest to present himself as

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Speaker 1: being at the forefront of that struggle. It was not,

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Speaker 1: in fact being gay that had caused him to be

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Speaker 1: an activist, because gay marriage wasn't yet legal, and New

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Speaker 1: York's rent control laws meant that Rustin's death could render

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Speaker 1: Nagle homeless without some kind of family connection to Rustin.

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Speaker 1: They created that connection and the only way that was

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Speaker 1: available available to them at the time. Rustin legally adopted

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Speaker 1: Nagle in nineteen eighty two, Buyard ruston Can tinued to

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Speaker 1: be politically active for the rest of his life, including

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Speaker 1: working as an election observer and visiting refugee camps. On

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Speaker 1: a trip to Haiti. In seven, he and Nagel both

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Speaker 1: got sick. A doctor diagnosed them both with an intestinal parasite.

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Speaker 1: In reality, by Ed Rustin had appendicitis. On Friday, August

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Speaker 1: twenty one of that year, it was the term and

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Speaker 1: that his appendix had ruptured and he had parrot nitis.

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Speaker 1: He died three days later at the age of seventy five.

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Speaker 1: In the American Friends Service Committee Board restored Rustin's name

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Speaker 1: to the authors of Speak Truth to Power. He was

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Speaker 1: posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal Medal of Freedom by President

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Speaker 1: Barack Obama. In that is, Byrod Rustin. A lot of

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Speaker 1: people speculate about how his life would have been different

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Speaker 1: if he had been born a little later. Uh that

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Speaker 1: there are in the whole wake of that Pasadena sex

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Speaker 1: crime charge um he did some soul searching that was like, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: even though I've never really hidden who I who I am,

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Speaker 1: the fact that society causes me to keep this secret

433
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:25,040
Speaker 1: it is definitely a factor on like how I have

434
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:33,280
Speaker 1: conducted myself. Yeah. Anyway, Uh, even though that was like

435
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:36,440
Speaker 1: almost eight thousand words on buyard rust and spread out

436
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: over two episodes, there are so many things that he

437
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:43,880
Speaker 1: did that we did not touch on at all. That's

438
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 1: always the case anytime we do a fascinating person's life, though,

439
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:50,879
Speaker 1: you just you can't include every single thing. And he

440
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:53,880
Speaker 1: just never stopped like that was part of it. And

441
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 1: all of these things that he were doing, he was

442
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:59,840
Speaker 1: doing We're we're important. It's like, okay, well, in this

443
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:04,200
Speaker 1: big gap of time between the between the Montgomery bus

444
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:06,880
Speaker 1: boycott and the march at Washington, he was doing all

445
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: of this anti war protesting, like all of this travel

446
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 1: abroad and all of this encouraging African nations to non

447
00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:21,440
Speaker 1: violently rise up against uh against colonial government's uh. Like

448
00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: he was just ongoing constantly. Uh. And so I mean

449
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: he he was less active and the rest of his life,

450
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:33,159
Speaker 1: but he still like was was touring and speaking and

451
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:35,760
Speaker 1: being an election observer and all that. Even until they

452
00:27:35,840 --> 00:27:40,400
Speaker 1: end do you have a little bit of listener mail

453
00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 1: for us to wrap up with? I do. This is

454
00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: from Diana. Diana says, Dear Holly and Tracy, I just

455
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 1: finished your podcast on the eruption of Eldfell on Hayming

456
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:54,440
Speaker 1: this piece of history I've actually heard a lot about before,

457
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 1: but I always enjoy hearing the story. We told. I'm

458
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 1: a geologist, and in two I went to ice Land

459
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:03,600
Speaker 1: for a geology class trip. Among other things, we visited

460
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:07,080
Speaker 1: Hama and hiked up Eldfell. What was so amazing to

461
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 1: me was that l Fella is still very hot. Rocks

462
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:13,439
Speaker 1: are incredibly good insulators, and if you dug down just

463
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:16,719
Speaker 1: an inch or two you could boil water. One student

464
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: melted part of his hiking boot. If you think you

465
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:23,840
Speaker 1: had trouble with Icelandic pronunciations, you should look up newscasters

466
00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:26,399
Speaker 1: trying to say a f y yoko, which is a

467
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:30,480
Speaker 1: volcano started erupting in March and disrupted air travel across

468
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 1: Europe for weeks. See it in even did a whole

469
00:28:32,880 --> 00:28:36,800
Speaker 1: story about the name. Many Icelandic letters look the same

470
00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 1: as the English alphabet, but they often have different pronunciations,

471
00:28:40,280 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 1: especially for combinations of letters. You really have to think

472
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,400
Speaker 1: of it as a whole new alphabet. I would add

473
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:48,160
Speaker 1: just one thing to your mention of the mid Atlantic Ridge.

474
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 1: In addition to the mid Atlantic Ridge, there is also

475
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 1: a hot spot beneath Iceland, which increases the amount of

476
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 1: volcanism to produce rocks. Without the addition of the hotspot volcanism,

477
00:28:58,320 --> 00:29:00,280
Speaker 1: it is unlikely that Iceland would break the s of

478
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:03,680
Speaker 1: the ocean. Hot hot spot is an area of volcanism

479
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:07,080
Speaker 1: that can occur anywhere in a tectonic plate. The Hawaiian Islands,

480
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:10,000
Speaker 1: for example, we're created by hot spot. Movement of the

481
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 1: tectonic plate over the hot spot creates the chain of islands.

482
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 1: We don't yet know what causes hot spots to occur,

483
00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 1: or why they occur where they do. Thanks for a

484
00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:20,640
Speaker 1: great podcast, Diana. Thank you Diana for writing in. I

485
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:27,200
Speaker 1: have in fact seen that video. It is hilarious for

486
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: several reasons. One is that, like so many of the

487
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 1: pronunciations are so incongruous from one another, and then the

488
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:35,760
Speaker 1: other thing is I'm pretty sure this is the video

489
00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:38,240
Speaker 1: that I'm thinking of. I've watched several videos of people

490
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:43,560
Speaker 1: trying to say the thing I'm going to try say again, uh,

491
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,160
Speaker 1: because I keep transposing two of the syllables when I

492
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:48,360
Speaker 1: try to say it. And I also freely admit I

493
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 1: cannot make the noise that is two els at the

494
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:54,200
Speaker 1: end of a word in Icelandic, like, I can't do it.

495
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 1: I have tried a lot. Uh. So I think it's

496
00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:02,160
Speaker 1: this video where that they then called someone like the

497
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:05,520
Speaker 1: Icelandic Consulate and we're was like, how do you say

498
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 1: this um? And the final pronunciation they had basically had

499
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:12,760
Speaker 1: the end of it sounded like yogurt, which is not

500
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 1: It's also not right, so it was like, there's twenty

501
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 1: seven different weird, bizarre ways people try to say aya

502
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:26,640
Speaker 1: fietla yoko. There we go correctly except for the L part,

503
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: which I can't do it. I can't do the L

504
00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 1: of them. Uh. And then they're like and this is

505
00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 1: how it really is, and then that one is also wrong. No, yeah, uh.

506
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:44,400
Speaker 1: I also have a refrigerator magnet on my refrigerator that

507
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: we bought that like it says uh yet ya af

508
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 1: yetla yoko. It's easy to say, and then it like

509
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: sounds it out in syllables, except the last syllable rendered

510
00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 1: on this magnet is definitely not how it sounds. So anyway,

511
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 1: thank you everyone who was from Iceland for putting up

512
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 1: with the fact that I cannot make that sound that

513
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: all of these volcanoes really in with. Uh. We did

514
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 1: walk around on l Belt a little bit while I

515
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 1: was there. We did not dig down in there. Our

516
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 1: plan was to go all the way to the top,

517
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 1: but we were there really early in the spring season,

518
00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: and it appeared that some of the path that goes

519
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 1: up to the top had been kind of covered over

520
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:33,360
Speaker 1: by some sliding volcanic debris. Uh, And we made we

521
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:36,719
Speaker 1: turned up what we thought was the path, but it

522
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 1: was really just the place where everyone had turned thinking

523
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:43,440
Speaker 1: they could get up that way. And then it became

524
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: clear that we had been led astray and we had

525
00:31:45,400 --> 00:31:47,320
Speaker 1: to catch our ferry back to the mainland, so we

526
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 1: didn't We didn't get a try again, but we did

527
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: b wlok around on there. Did you find it more interesting?

528
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:56,320
Speaker 1: I didn't dig down into it, but I kind of

529
00:31:56,360 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 1: wish I had, so if you had reached down and

530
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 1: touched the ground, though it did not still feel warm

531
00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 1: or did it or do you know, well, the like

532
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:09,480
Speaker 1: the the loose scattered surface of the ground did not

533
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:12,800
Speaker 1: feel warm, But I can't remember whether we said this

534
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: that the primary source of heat and hot water in

535
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:20,719
Speaker 1: Haymany now is is residual cooling from that eruption, like

536
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: it has become the heating source. Um. And when I

537
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 1: first heard about that, I thought, isn't that a whole

538
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,160
Speaker 1: lot of work to put into something that's eventually going

539
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:32,360
Speaker 1: to cool off. It's not gonna cool for a really

540
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:38,320
Speaker 1: long time anyway. Thank you, Diana. And if you would

541
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: like to write to us, swear a history podcast at

542
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. We're also on Facebook at

543
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 1: facebook dot com slash miss in history and on Twitter

544
00:32:44,840 --> 00:32:47,800
Speaker 1: at missing history. Are Tumbler is missing history dot tumbler

545
00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 1: dot com. We're also on Pentterriest at pentrist dot com

546
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 1: slash missed in history. Uh you Oh? We also have

547
00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:57,280
Speaker 1: an instagram missing history. Were that too. If you would

548
00:32:57,360 --> 00:32:59,560
Speaker 1: like to come to our parent company's website, which is

549
00:32:59,560 --> 00:33:01,600
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, put the words civil Rights

550
00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: movement in the search bar. You will find lots of

551
00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:07,320
Speaker 1: different articles about various aspects of the Civil rights movement.

552
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 1: And then you'd also come to our website just missed

553
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:12,200
Speaker 1: in history dot com. You can find show notes of

554
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 1: every episode that Holly and I have worked on together,

555
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 1: and an archive of every episode that has existed ever.

556
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:21,920
Speaker 1: In the show notes for this episode, UM, we will

557
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:24,800
Speaker 1: have some links to some of the recordings of Buyer

558
00:33:24,840 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 1: dressed in UH singing, and we'll have links to his

559
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:33,280
Speaker 1: FBI file the documents from that they're publicly available. And

560
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: maybe I'll also link to the video of the guy

561
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:41,320
Speaker 1: from Iceland saying if yet your local correctly uh, which

562
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: I think this time, when our listeners have stopped listening,

563
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: I said it the best of all the time. So yeah,

564
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 1: So you can do all that a whole lot more

565
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:52,680
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com or missed in history

566
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

567
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:04,840
Speaker 1: Is it how staff works at home in the