Michael G. Long

First sentence: Bayard Rustin was a troublemaker.

Premise/plot: This is a picture book biography for older readers about civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. He dreamed up and planned a march on Washington. Not any march, but what would turn out to be THE march. Not everyone was happy--so the book shares--that he was a leader/planner in the civil rights movement. He was gay, you see. They feared that those on all sides would use that against them all. But he remained a leader and was pivotal to the civil rights movement.

My thoughts: I learned plenty while reading this one. I almost always do learn something when I read nonfiction written for children. I think this one stands out--for many different reasons. But for me, it is the artwork that is most striking.… (més)

Too long ignored for being queer and open about it, the life of a Quaker resistor of Wrong and Wickedness was a complicated one. I wish this collection of essays had been edited to reduce the repetition of basic information about him, but appreciate that it was done at all.

I imagine the experience of being friends with Bayard Rustin was pretty fraught...his stadards were very high and his judgments usually spot-on, which combination is uncomfortable for himself and others. This reality played itself out in his double invisibility in gay-rights circles: Blackness and religious belief. He felt he wasn't needed or wanted in that world so, until he fell in love with Walter Naegle at 65, he focused on Black liberation and didn't involve himself in gay rights. The sad part to me is that the man was ahead of his time in his politics, his morals, and his social beliefs, and still deeply internalized both homophobia and misogyny.

If you're utterly unfamiliar with Rustin, this collection of essays will fill you in. Read the way any collection should be, piece by piece over time, the cumulative effect is to bring an unjustly underknown man's contributions to the best things that happened in the era of Civil Rights expansion to light. He is, be aware, not critically examined in these essays. Part three of the collection, "What Rustin Means to Me," is probably my favorite to read because the legacy of this upright, intelligent, unsparing actor on the public stage is dealt with by those whom he has inspired. I suppose anyone who stood up for an unpopular belief because it was right to do so can't hope for a better legacy.… (més)

I had a sort of vague background knowledge about Bayard Rustin, but what really pushed him to the front of my consciousness was Rasheed Newson's depiction of Rustin in My Government Means to Kills Me (one of the best books of 2022 that didn't get the attention it deserved—if you want to stop reading this review right now and switch over to that book, you're welcome to; I'm no match for Rasheed Newson). In that book, Rustin played the role of an informal mentor to a young, gay Black man who'd recently moved to New York City and was coming to his own political awakening; they'd meet up in the snack/storage room at the back of the only Black bathhouse in town and share long conversations that were both pointed and rambling.

I was incredibly excited to see this collection of essays bring published. With multiple essays by multiple authors, I was looking forward to a mix of approaches to Rustin and his work. Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics does offer some interesting portraits of Ruskin, but I have two caveats regarding it. First is that these essays all lean toward the hagiographic. Yes Rustin merits some hagiography, but Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics doesn't provide the kind of research, analysis, and critique I was looking for. Second, the essays contain far too much repetition: Rustin did X in year Y, did V in year W, did T in year U, and so on. Being given a timeline is helpful, but not when one gets what is essentially the same timeline over and over again in each essay.

This book can provide an adequate introduction to the life and work of Rustin, but if you really want to dig into his thinking, ethics, and political strategies, you'll want to look elsewhere. That's the point I'm currently at: looking for full-length works about Rustin's life packed with details and analysis. If I come across a particularly good one, I'll no doubt be posting a review on GoodReads.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from NYU Press via Edelweiss; the opinions are my own.… (més)