As I began writing “Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer,” my biography of the 20th-century radical leader and activist, one of my colleagues cautioned me not to “fall in love.”
This, of course, is good advice for any biographer, and I tried to follow it.
But it wasn’t easy, because Bayard Rustin was America’s signature radical voice during the 20th century, and yes, I believe those voices includes that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Rustin trained and mentored.
His vision of nonviolence was breathtakingly broad.
He was a civil rights activist, a labor unionist, a socialist, a pacifist and, later in life, a gay rights advocate.
Today, scholars would call Rustin an intersectionalist, a man who understood the complex effects of multiple forms of discrimination, including racism, sexism and classism.
To continue reading this article by Jerald Podair, go to: https://theconversation.com/me...ll-in-trouble-197250
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