I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters

Michael G. Long is an associate professor of religious studies and peace and conflict studies at Elizabethtown College and is the author or editor of several books on civil rights, religion and politics in mid-century America, including Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall and First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson. He holds a Ph.D. from Emory University in Atlanta and resides in Highland Park, Pennsylvania.Long's books have been featured or reviewed in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, USA Today, Book Forum, Ebony/Jet and many other newspapers and journals. He has appeared on C-Span and NPR, and his speaking engagements have taken him from the National Archives in Washington, D.C., to the Houston Public Library in Texas, to the City Club of San Diego.Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 - August 24, 1987) was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Rustin practiced nonviolence. He was a leading activist of the early 1947-1955 civil-rights movement, helping to initiate a 1947 Freedom Ride to challenge with civil disobedience racial segregation on interstate busing. He recognized Martin Luther King, Jr., 's leadership, and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen King's leadership; Rustin promoted the philosophy of nonviolence and the practices of nonviolent resistance, which he had observed while working with Gandhi's movement in India. Rustin became a leading strategist of the civil rights movement from 1955-1968. He was the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was headed by A. Philip Randolph, the leading African-American labor-union president and socialist. Rustin also influenced young activists, such as Tom Kahn and Stokely Carmichael, in organizations like the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).After the passage of the civil-rights legislation of 1964-1965, Rustin focused attention on the economic problems of working-class and unemployed African Americans, suggesting that the civil rights movement had left its period of protest and had entered an era of politics, in which the Black community had to ally with the labor movement. Rustin became the head of the AFL-CIO's A. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the i