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Activist and Organizer Bayard Rustin
Born into a Quaker family in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Bayard Rustin served as race relations secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) from 1941 to 1953. During that same period he was a youth organizer for A. Philip Randolph's proposed 1941 March on Washington and became the first field secretary of CORE. He planned and participated in the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, the first Freedom Ride into the South. Rustin was an advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and an organizer of the Montgomery bus boycott and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He also organized the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage, the 1958 and 1959 Youth Marches for Integrated Schools, and the 1963 March on Washington. |