0:01

Welcome to Steph you missed in history

0:03

class from dot Com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast

0:14

Trade. Phoebe Wilson, Holly

0:16

Frying say, we are going

0:18

to return to the story of fired rest In.

0:21

This is a man who spent twenty eight months

0:23

during and after World War Two. Is one of the

0:25

many conscientious objectors in federal

0:28

prison. After his release,

0:30

he was part of the Journey of Reconciliation, and

0:32

that was a project to test a Supreme Court

0:35

ruling that found the segregation of interstate

0:37

buses unconstitutional. He

0:39

also spent four months after the war

0:41

in India studying Gandhian non

0:44

violence and speaking on non violence.

0:47

The world changed a lot during these years.

0:50

As had happened after World War One, black

0:52

service members returned home and were dismayed

0:54

to find that, in spite of having served their

0:56

country in a time of war, they were

0:58

still facing discriminate Asian at home. That's

1:01

galvanized the civil rights movement. Nuclear

1:04

weapons had changed the tone of

1:06

the peace movement, and communism

1:08

was increasingly seen as a very

1:11

serious threat. All of this change

1:13

had a huge profound effect on Byard

1:16

Reston's life and work, which is

1:18

what we're going to be talking about in today's episode,

1:20

and if you have not heard Part one, parts

1:23

of this one are going to make a lot more sense with

1:26

with that context. I tried to make it an episode

1:28

that would also stand alone, but like, there's only

1:30

so much we can re explain without

1:32

making this episode twice as long. Uh

1:34

And as was the case at in

1:37

Part one, there is a little more talk

1:39

by necessity of fired rest in sex

1:41

life than might be typical of our show. Because

1:44

of his previous ties to the Communist Party,

1:47

his race, and his sexual orientation,

1:50

the McCarthy era was extremely dangerous

1:52

for Bayard Rustin. This was one

1:54

of the many reasons why he started to look beyond the

1:56

United States in terms of his activism

1:59

in the nineteen five d's. In

2:01

nineteen fifty two, he toured North and

2:03

West Africa, spending his time in Ghana,

2:05

then known as the Gold Coast in Nigeria.

2:09

During his time in Africa, he met with activists

2:11

who were resisting the British colonial government

2:13

there. He

2:16

Booke ended his time in Africa with stops

2:18

in London, where he met with pacifists and

2:20

civil rights activists about how to encourage

2:23

non violence independence movements.

2:25

Among Britain's African colonies.

2:28

He had originally planned to do similar work

2:30

in French colonies, but he had

2:32

been previously part of protests at

2:34

the French embassy in Washington, d C. And

2:36

consequently the French government would

2:38

not grant him of a visa to do this work

2:41

whoops. Once he

2:43

got back to the US, he set out

2:45

on a speaking tour and he started trying

2:47

to work out funding to go back to Africa

2:50

and make a more coordinated effort to encouraging

2:53

non violent independence movements. But

2:56

as had happened while he was trying to integrate

2:58

a federal prison while sir time

3:00

there is a conscientious objector, his

3:02

efforts were derailed Following a sexual

3:05

encounter. In January

3:07

of nineteen fifty three, he and

3:09

two other men were caught in the backseat of

3:11

a car in Pasadena, California.

3:14

All three were arrested on charges of lewd

3:16

vagrancy and ultimately sentenced

3:19

to sixty days in prison. This

3:22

was really the last straw and

3:24

Bayard Reston's working relationship

3:27

with pacifist A. J. Musty and his

3:29

organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

3:32

Musty had been sorely, sorely

3:35

disappointed by Bayard Reston's

3:37

sexual misconbact charge while in prison,

3:39

after which Bayard had assured

3:42

him that his sexual orientation would not be

3:44

an obstacle to his ongoing work.

3:46

That made this whole incident in Pasadena,

3:49

from a j Musty's point of view, a huge

3:52

betrayal. On top of the fact that once

3:54

again byired sex life had derailed

3:57

his work. Fired resigned

3:59

from the fellow Ship of Reconciliation as

4:01

a result, this was a

4:03

hugely pivotal event in Rustin's

4:05

life. He had been in prison multiple

4:08

times before, but this was the first time

4:10

that it was because of something unrelated to

4:12

civil disobedience or being a

4:14

conscientious objector. Since

4:17

the sexual misconduct investigation

4:19

had happened while he was in federal prison, knowledge

4:22

of what had happened had been mostly confined

4:25

to the conscientious object or community, but

4:28

now he was a convicted sex offender,

4:30

and homosexual behavior carried an

4:32

enormous stigma. The

4:34

Fellowship of Reconciliation also

4:36

publicized his resignation among its

4:38

members, so it became common knowledge

4:41

in the pacifist community, and

4:43

from there the other social movements that

4:45

Bayard Rustin had been part of the

4:48

prevailing wisdom at the time was

4:50

that this being essentially

4:52

fired from the Fellowship of Reconciliation

4:55

wasn't because Ruston was gay,

4:58

uh, it was the as he was flagrant

5:01

and promiscuous about it. A

5:04

j Musty maintained that somebody caught

5:06

in a heterosexual encounter in a public

5:08

place and then sent to jail over

5:10

it would have faced the same consequences.

5:14

Rustin went from being a sought after

5:16

voice in the anti war and civil rights

5:19

movements and someone who really had the potential

5:21

to become an international leader in non violent

5:23

resistance to being someone

5:25

who could really only work behind the scenes. When

5:29

he was released from prison, he was depressed

5:31

and he felt desperately alone since many of

5:33

his friends seemed to have abandoned him.

5:36

He came to the conclusion that he was arrogant,

5:39

that it had been selfish of him to follow

5:41

his libido when he had other important

5:43

work to do. When he got back to

5:45

New York, he entered therapy to try to get back

5:47

on his feet and to try to figure out how to

5:49

exist as a gay man without sabotaging

5:52

his work. Again, out

5:54

of work and with little left to live

5:56

on and with a sex offense conviction

5:58

as an obstacle to finding employment.

6:00

He spent several months trying to figure

6:03

out what to do. Was the fall of

6:05

nineteen fifty three before he found another opportunity,

6:07

which was the War Resistors League. Like

6:10

the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War

6:12

Resistors League was an anti war organization,

6:15

but unlike the Fellowship of Reconciliation,

6:18

which most of its members

6:20

were clergy, most members

6:22

of the War Resistors League were secular. Ruston

6:25

was already actually involved with this

6:27

organization. He served on its board, which

6:29

he had actually offered to resign from

6:31

after his arrest in Pasadena.

6:34

The board had had declined his

6:36

offer to resign. The

6:39

War Resistors League was at that point

6:41

struggling, and the hope was that

6:43

hiring Rustin as its program director

6:46

would help them build connections with other pacifists.

6:49

The decision to bring him on was far from

6:51

unanimous, and A. J. Mustie, who

6:53

was on the War Resistors League

6:55

board, resigned after it was made

6:58

in protest, although he returned earned

7:00

after his retirement from the Fellowship of Reconciliation,

7:03

and the two men eventually made at least

7:06

some amends. Rustin would

7:08

work with the organization for more than a decade.

7:11

This return to the world of act of activism

7:14

was really difficult for Rustin. He

7:16

was still really trying to reconcile how

7:18

to live his life as a gay man with

7:20

how to follow his life's work as an activist.

7:23

He felt like a lot of the activist community

7:26

was just waiting for him to mess up again. And

7:28

even though he had always been willing to go to

7:31

prison for his beliefs and every time

7:33

he undertook an act of civil disobedience,

7:35

he was prepared to be arrested. Now

7:37

that he had a sex offense conviction on his

7:40

record, being arrested again

7:42

came with a much higher stake.

7:44

He started to worry about his sexual

7:46

orientation in a way that he hadn't before.

7:49

In general, he became a lot more discreet,

7:52

and he advised other gay activists

7:54

to do the same. In

7:56

the mid nineteen fifties, Rustin was part

7:58

of the American Friends Service Committee

8:00

study that wrote Speak Truth to Power,

8:03

which was a document urging the United States

8:05

to take non violent responses to international

8:08

conflicts. At his own request,

8:10

because of his nineteen fifty three arrest, Rustin

8:13

asked that his name be left off of it.

8:16

At about this time, the civil rights movement

8:18

and then in the United States took another turn,

8:20

and we'll talk about what happened and how

8:23

it led to rust and being involved in it. After

8:25

a brief sponsor break, get

8:34

back to the life of fired Ruston. In

8:36

nineteen fifty four, the United States Supreme

8:38

Court issued its ruling and Brown versus the

8:40

Board of Education. This was the ruling

8:43

that public school segregation was unconstitutional.

8:46

We have a whole series on this ruling in the archive

8:49

which goes into a lot of detail about the civil

8:51

rights movement and how it led to this ruling and

8:53

what happened afterwards, So we're not going to rehash

8:56

those details here. Basically, though,

8:58

school segregation unconstitutional.

9:01

Although Rustin had been involved in equal

9:04

rights for black Americans for much of his life,

9:06

he hadn't had a lot of direct involvement in

9:08

the movement between his advocacy for integrating

9:11

the U. S Military in the late nineteen forties

9:14

and the decision in Brown versus Board. But

9:16

the Supreme Court decision and the backlash

9:19

that it spawned were immediately compelling

9:21

to him. In nineteen

9:23

fifty five, he started working with an organization

9:26

called in Friendship to provide

9:28

uh support directly to black civil

9:31

rights activists who were being targeted

9:33

by white supremacists in the South. While

9:35

the n double A CP took on various

9:38

legal aspects of combating

9:40

what was going on in the South, and Friendship

9:43

offered direct assistance, including food,

9:45

clothing, and funds to people who were being

9:47

affected by racism.

9:50

On December, one of n ROSA

9:53

Parks was arrested for refusing to give

9:55

up her seat on a segregated bus

9:57

in Montgomery, Alabama. This

10:00

act of civil disobedience, which we have talked

10:02

about at length on the podcast before, touched

10:04

off the Montgomery bus boycott that

10:07

is the subject of two episodes in our archive.

10:10

Soon Montgomery area civil rights

10:12

leaders houses were being bombed, and

10:14

that includes the house of Martin Luther King

10:16

Jr. In Friendship

10:19

wanted to send somebody to help, and their

10:21

most logical choice, in spite of his

10:23

now checkered past, was Byard Rustin.

10:26

Specifically, they thought it would be best to send

10:28

somebody who already had lots of experience

10:31

in nonviolent resistance and

10:33

in organizing non violent movements

10:35

for freedom. This is exactly what

10:37

Rustin had spent so much time doing

10:40

in the forties, including studies and travels

10:42

with followers of Mohandas Gandhi in

10:44

India. Since he was black,

10:46

it also meant that he was less likely

10:48

to be seen as an outsider once he

10:50

got there. Labor leader

10:53

A. Philip Randolph connected Rustin

10:55

to the leaders of the bus boycott. Once

10:57

in Montgomery, Rustin wrote speeches

10:59

and protest songs, and he also

11:02

did a lot of practical work arranging car

11:04

pools and other transportation for

11:06

black passengers who were protesting segregation

11:08

by refusing to ride on segregated buses.

11:11

And he advised everyone who was being

11:14

indicted in connection with the bus boycott

11:16

to dress in their Sunday best and go to

11:18

the courthouse rather than waiting for

11:20

their court date to arrive. His

11:23

original plan had been to formally

11:25

train the bus boycott's leaders

11:27

on Gandhian nonviolent resistance,

11:30

but when he got Once he got there, it

11:32

became a lot more practical and effective

11:34

to become part of the planning itself

11:37

and to offer insights and strategies

11:39

as situations arose. He

11:41

also started to advise Martin

11:43

Luther King on the direction of his

11:46

civil rights work. He strenuously

11:48

advocated a form of pacifism, informed

11:50

by both his Quaker beliefs

11:53

and Gandhi's non violent resistance.

11:55

As one example that kept

11:57

being sited the first time he went over to

12:00

the king home, there

12:02

were armed guards outside and

12:05

numerous weapons in the house, and Byard

12:07

Rustin was basically like, dude, you are leading

12:09

a pacifist movement. You cannot have

12:12

all these guns here. That's

12:14

not not how it works. But

12:16

it wasn't just that though, like we're

12:18

gonna talk about more, but like that, that is

12:20

the keystone example that a lot of people

12:22

start with, and the non violence

12:25

approach that became such a fundamental part

12:27

of King's leadership was largely

12:29

refined and directed by Rustin's influence.

12:32

King had plenty of theory, but not a strong

12:34

practical sense of how to translate the idea

12:37

of non violence to a working social

12:39

movement. Rustin's work with King

12:41

was ongoing until King's assassination

12:44

in nineteen sixty eight, although from

12:46

time to time Rustin's sexual orientation

12:48

and his past conviction led him

12:51

to make himself scarce. Through

12:54

the late nineteen fifties, rest and continued

12:56

to work both within and outside of the United

12:58

States. He King organized

13:01

the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in nineteen

13:03

fifty six and nineteen fifty seven, and

13:06

in the late nineteen fifties he also went once

13:08

again to Northern Africa, this time to

13:10

protest French nuclear arms testing

13:12

there. He also did lots of

13:14

other work within the anti nuclear movement

13:16

as well. In nineteen fifty

13:18

seven, he was invited to attend the National

13:21

Congress of the Communist Party of the United

13:23

States of America. He had

13:25

not had any ties to communism since the nineteen

13:28

forties, and he was invited as

13:30

an outside observer. He attended,

13:33

and this was apparently when he caught more

13:35

serious attention of the FBI.

13:37

Uh The FBI maintained surveillance of

13:39

Buyard Rustin for much of the nineteen

13:42

sixties, including wire taps of

13:44

his phone conversations with Martin Luther King,

13:46

Jr. You can

13:48

read a lot of this online at the FBI

13:51

thanks to the Freedom of Information

13:53

Act. In nineteen

13:55

sixty, Rustin's arrest in Pasadena

13:58

really came back to haunt him.

14:00

He and King were planning a protest

14:02

outside the Democratic National Convention

14:04

because no Democratic candidate had expressed

14:07

a clear support of the civil rights movement.

14:10

Democratic Representative Adam Clayton

14:13

Powell Jr. Was angry

14:15

about this planned protest and trying to

14:17

put an end to it, so he blackmailed

14:19

Martin Luther King with the threat that he would

14:22

tell the press about Rustin's

14:24

arrest and also plant a false

14:26

report that King and Rustin were

14:28

lovers. Terrified

14:30

at what such a scandal would do to the movement

14:32

and to his own reputation, King canceled

14:35

the protests and he convinced Rustin

14:37

to resign from the Southern Christian

14:39

Leadership Conference. At the time. Rustin

14:41

was devastated, but inn

14:44

He expressed a belief that his sexual orientation

14:47

had not been a problem for King until

14:50

it became a problem for the movement because

14:53

of these outside sources that are jerks.

14:58

For the next couple of years, as much of Ruston's

15:01

work was focused on nuclear disarmament

15:03

and freedom movements in Africa and travel

15:05

abroad for a while after

15:08

this whole incident, the civil rights movement

15:10

largely went on without him. But this

15:13

was not the end of his work with King, and

15:15

we will talk about it in the March on

15:17

Washington. After another brief

15:19

sponsor break, it

15:29

is probably safe to say that a lot

15:31

of folks in the United States think of the civil

15:34

rights movement in terms of things like segregation

15:36

in schools and on buses, discrimination

15:39

in employment and housing, and that sort

15:41

of thing. But there was a whole additional

15:43

layer to that, and that was a focus on economic

15:46

issues. The March

15:48

on Washington gets shortened to

15:51

just the March on Washington, but it

15:53

was really the March on Washington for jobs

15:55

and freedom, and originally the focus

15:58

was largely on jobs. The

16:00

idea for this march started with labor

16:02

leader A. Philip Randolph in nineteen sixty

16:05

two. We talked a little bit about him and our

16:07

podcast on the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters.

16:10

Randolph recruited Rustin to help him plan

16:12

a march that would draw attention to the economic

16:15

issues that were running in parallel

16:17

with desegregation in the South. At

16:19

first, other civil rights organizations were

16:22

really slow to join this march,

16:24

though, and the War Resistors League

16:26

had also declined to temporarily release

16:28

Restin from his duties to work on it.

16:31

But in nineteen sixty three, Commissioner

16:33

Bull Connor of Birmingham, Alabama

16:35

turned fire hoses and police dogs

16:38

on teenage protesters the

16:40

KU klux Klan began bombing activists

16:42

homes and the hotels where out of

16:45

town activists were staying in Birmingham.

16:48

With this, the March refined its focus

16:50

to jobs in freedom, and it got a lot

16:52

bigger. Martin Luther King became involved.

16:55

The Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee,

16:58

the Congress of Racial Equality, the

17:00

Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the

17:02

National Urban League, the National

17:04

Association for the Advancement of Colored People,

17:07

and the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters

17:09

would become the Big six organizations

17:11

who all came together for the March. Once

17:15

again, rest in sexual orientation

17:17

and his past arrest put a dent in his

17:19

ability to take the helm, even though he was

17:21

the one to wind up doing a whole lot of

17:23

the planning. Roy Wilkins

17:25

of the Double A CP cited the

17:27

risk involved with putting Rustin into

17:30

such a position at such a high profile

17:32

event, afraid that having

17:34

him in such a public facing

17:37

role would jeopardize the march and

17:39

its respectability. In the

17:41

end, A Philip Randolph became the director

17:43

and Rustin was his deputy. The

17:46

bulk of their planning took just eight

17:48

weeks of continual negotiations

17:50

among all of these organizations and the people

17:53

involved, many of which just did

17:55

not see eye to eye. So

17:57

much went into those eight weeks before the March

17:59

on Washington. Apart from the speakers,

18:02

the musicians, and all of those

18:04

logistics, there were the simpler logistics

18:07

of handling an expected quarter

18:09

of a million people. I say simpler, that's

18:11

not really correct. It's just a different logistics.

18:14

Apart from the speakers, the musicians

18:16

and all of that, there was the simple logistics

18:19

of handling an expected quarter

18:21

of a million people. Instructions

18:23

for protesters were exact, including

18:25

that each person should plan to bring nonperishable

18:28

food for both lunch and dinner.

18:30

In The march itself had a lot of moving

18:33

parts, including portable toilets, shuttle

18:35

buses, first aid stations,

18:37

just on and on the things you would need for

18:39

a massive group of people. As

18:42

the march got bigger and bigger, it

18:44

also got less radical. Restlon's

18:47

original plan had been for it to be a

18:49

wide ranging, active demonstration

18:51

with lots of sit ins and direct lobbying,

18:53

but as it got bigger, its focus had

18:56

to get bit broader and less

18:58

militant in order for it to still work and for

19:00

all of these people to still want to be involved

19:02

with it. The whole time they were planning,

19:05

the collection of organizers and civil rights

19:07

organizations expected some

19:09

kind of resistance from segregationists

19:11

and others who wanted the march to fail. The

19:14

biggest piece of that resistance came just three

19:16

weeks before the march was to take place, when

19:19

Senator strom Thurmond of South Carolina

19:22

read from the FBI file on Rustin

19:24

on the Senate floor, including calling

19:27

him a sexual deviant and effectively

19:29

outing him to the entire nation. This

19:33

time, though, the movement that had more than once pushed

19:35

him out because of his sexual orientation and his

19:38

behavior had his back. A

19:40

Philip Randolph publicly defended

19:42

Ruston and denounced Thurman's invasion

19:45

of his privacy, which he pointed out pretty

19:47

pretty clearly was only being made in

19:49

order to persecute him.

19:51

In the end. Of course, the march itself was

19:53

huge, between two hundred thousand and three

19:55

hundred thousand people. As

19:57

the last of the formal remarks, King ate

20:00

his famous I have a dream speech, and

20:02

after he concluded, A Philip Randolph

20:04

led the gathered crowd in a pledge to continue

20:07

to fight for civil rights after they

20:09

got home. The leaders of the march

20:11

then met with President John F. Kennedy.

20:13

Rustin was not one of those who did, but

20:16

he and A. Philip Randolph were on the cover

20:18

of Life magazine that September

20:20

six. From

20:22

there, Rustin really tried to get

20:24

social movement organizations to build

20:26

on the success of the March, to expand

20:29

their focus to include other disenfranchised

20:32

populations, and to try to work towards

20:34

a solid plan of progress

20:36

rather than going from one individual

20:38

dramatic protest to another. He

20:41

also returned to his work with the War Resistors

20:43

League and the Peace Movement, while also traveling

20:46

and speaking on behalf of civil rights. In

20:48

nineteen sixty five, A. Philip Randolph

20:51

resigned from the War Resistors League, and

20:53

he announced that he and buy Ard Rustin were

20:55

launching the A. Philip Randolph Institute.

20:58

The institute's goal was to expand

21:00

the impact of and strengthen the civil

21:03

rights movement by building connections between

21:05

labor and civil rights organizations.

21:08

The same year, Ruston published

21:10

From Protest to Politics, the Future

21:12

of the Civil Rights Movement, which was a call

21:15

to transition the civil rights movement from

21:17

a series of protests against equality

21:19

to a political movement. He

21:21

saw the need for civil rights activists

21:23

than anyone else he was the target of discrimination

21:26

and inequality to band together

21:28

to form a real political majority.

21:31

In some ways, this uh this document

21:34

was more optimistic than his real thoughts

21:36

on the subject, and part because he was writing

21:38

it for a broad audience who he was hoping

21:41

to get on board with this plan. However,

21:44

in the years after the March on Washington,

21:47

Rustin found himself on the receiving

21:49

end of a fair amount of criticism

21:51

from the very movement he had been so instrumental

21:54

in shaping. A lot of this boiled

21:56

down to his being seen as more moderate

21:58

in a movement that was becoming a radical, and

22:01

for calling for building a political coalition

22:03

rather than a true revolution. An

22:06

influx of young activists saw him

22:08

as a traitor for trying to work out compromises

22:10

with legislators, even

22:13

though he had gone to prison for his opposition

22:15

to World War two. People did not

22:17

think he took a definitive enough stance

22:19

against the Vietnam War, in part

22:21

because he was trying to work within the system,

22:24

which involved maintaining productive relationships

22:26

with a lot of people who were in favor of the

22:28

war. By the late nineteen sixties,

22:31

and part because he had not been as

22:34

demonstrative as people wanted against

22:36

the Vietnam War, Ruston had

22:38

few ties left to the peace movement. He

22:40

was also at odds with the Black Power

22:43

movement. They were definitely prominent

22:45

Black power leaders who did not agree

22:47

with his philosophies at all. His

22:50

calls to work together to build political

22:52

power rather than focusing on individual

22:55

issues and individual protests were

22:57

increasingly unheeded. In

22:59

the all of nineteen seventy one, having

23:01

put himself under an enormous pressure

23:05

to write the movements that he saw as

23:07

floundering, Buyer Rustin had

23:09

a massive heart attack. With an increasing

23:11

number of disagreeing voices on how to change

23:13

things in the United States, Rustin

23:16

wound up focusing his efforts on foreign affairs

23:18

and travel abroad after he recovered from

23:20

his heart attack, working with an organization

23:22

called Freedom House, and that was a bipartisan

23:25

organization aimed to spread democracy

23:27

internationally. He also

23:29

advocated on behalf of refugees from

23:31

numerous nations. In

23:33

the late seventies and early eighties,

23:35

the gay rights movement in the United States was

23:38

moving more into the public sphere, and

23:40

by ed Rustin did as well. Part

23:42

of this was because he'd met Walter Nagle

23:45

in April of nineteen seventy seven, just after

23:47

he turned sixty five. Nagle was

23:49

twenty seven, and it was love at first sight.

23:52

It was Nagle's first long term relationship

23:54

and Rustin's most serious and steadfast

23:57

of his life. With Nagle's encouragement,

24:00

Rustin renewed ties with some of his old pacifist

24:02

connections. He returned to an old

24:04

love of scouring auctions to buy and

24:07

restore antique furniture as well,

24:10

and he joined the gay rights movement,

24:12

speaking advocating against racism

24:15

within the gay community and lobbying

24:17

New York Mayor Ed Coach for a gay and

24:19

lesbian rights bill. In spite

24:21

of having lived his life as a gay man, he

24:24

declined in nine six invitation to

24:26

contribute to an anthology of gay men's

24:28

writing, say that it would be dishonest to

24:30

present himself as being at the forefront

24:33

of that struggle. It was not, in

24:35

fact being gay that had caused him to be an

24:37

activist, because gay marriage

24:40

wasn't yet legal, and New York's rent

24:42

control laws meant that Rustin's death

24:44

could render Nagle homeless without some

24:46

kind of family connection to Rustin.

24:49

They created that connection and the only way

24:51

that was available available to them at the

24:53

time. Rustin legally

24:55

adopted Nagle in nineteen eighty two,

24:58

Buyard ruston Can tinued to be politically

25:01

active for the rest of his life, including

25:03

working as an election observer and visiting

25:05

refugee camps. On a trip to Haiti.

25:07

In seven, he and Nagel

25:10

both got sick. A doctor diagnosed

25:13

them both with an intestinal parasite.

25:15

In reality, by Ed Rustin had appendicitis.

25:19

On Friday, August twenty one of that year,

25:21

it was the term and that his appendix had ruptured

25:23

and he had parrot nitis. He died three

25:25

days later at the age of seventy five. In

25:30

the American Friends Service Committee Board

25:32

restored Rustin's name to the authors

25:34

of Speak Truth to Power. He

25:37

was posthumously awarded the Presidential

25:39

Medal Medal of Freedom by President Barack

25:42

Obama. In that

25:46

is, Byrod Rustin. A

25:48

lot of people speculate about

25:52

how his life would have been different if

25:54

he had been born a little later.

25:57

Uh that there are

26:00

in the whole wake of that Pasadena

26:03

sex crime charge um

26:06

he did some soul searching

26:09

that was like, Yeah, even though I've

26:12

never really hidden who I who I am,

26:14

the fact that society causes

26:17

me to keep this secret

26:20

it is definitely a factor on

26:22

like how I

26:24

have conducted myself. Yeah.

26:29

Anyway, Uh,

26:31

even though that was like almost eight

26:34

thousand words on buyard rust and spread

26:36

out over two episodes, there

26:38

are so many things that he did that

26:40

we did not touch on at all. That's

26:43

always the case anytime we do a fascinating

26:46

person's life, though, you just you can't include

26:48

every single thing. And

26:50

he just never stopped like that was part

26:52

of it. And all of these things that he

26:54

were doing, he was doing We're we're

26:57

important. It's like, okay, well, in this big

27:00

gap of time between the between

27:03

the Montgomery bus boycott and the march at Washington,

27:06

he was doing all of this anti

27:08

war protesting, like all

27:10

of this travel abroad and all of this encouraging

27:13

African nations to non violently

27:15

rise up against uh

27:18

against colonial government's uh.

27:21

Like he was just ongoing constantly.

27:25

Uh. And so I mean he he

27:27

was less active and the rest

27:29

of his life, but he still like was was

27:32

touring and speaking and being an election observer

27:34

and all that. Even until they end do

27:38

you have a little bit of listener mail for us to

27:40

wrap up with? I do. This

27:44

is from Diana. Diana

27:46

says, Dear Holly and Tracy, I just finished

27:48

your podcast on the eruption of Eldfell

27:51

on Hayming this piece of history I've

27:53

actually heard a lot about before, but I always

27:55

enjoy hearing the story. We told. I'm

27:57

a geologist, and in two I went

27:59

to ice Land for a geology class trip.

28:02

Among other things, we visited Hama and

28:04

hiked up Eldfell. What was

28:06

so amazing to me was that l Fella is still

28:08

very hot. Rocks are incredibly

28:10

good insulators, and if you dug

28:13

down just an inch or two you could boil

28:15

water. One student melted

28:17

part of his hiking boot. If

28:20

you think you had trouble with Icelandic pronunciations,

28:22

you should look up newscasters trying to say a

28:24

f y yoko, which is a volcano

28:27

started erupting in March and

28:29

disrupted air travel across Europe for weeks.

28:31

See it in even did a whole story about the

28:33

name. Many Icelandic letters

28:36

look the same as the English alphabet, but they often

28:38

have different pronunciations, especially

28:40

for combinations of letters. You really

28:42

have to think of it as a whole new alphabet. I would

28:45

add just one thing to your mention of

28:47

the mid Atlantic Ridge. In addition to the

28:49

mid Atlantic Ridge, there is also a hot spot

28:52

beneath Iceland, which increases the amount

28:54

of volcanism to produce rocks. Without

28:56

the addition of the hotspot volcanism, it is unlikely

28:58

that Iceland would break the s of the ocean. Hot

29:01

hot spot is an area of volcanism that

29:03

can occur anywhere in a tectonic plate.

29:06

The Hawaiian Islands, for example, we're created

29:08

by hot spot. Movement of the tectonic

29:10

plate over the hot spot creates the chain of islands.

29:13

We don't yet know what causes hot spots to occur,

29:15

or why they occur where they do. Thanks for a great

29:17

podcast, Diana. Thank you

29:19

Diana for writing in. I have in fact seen

29:22

that video. It is

29:24

hilarious for

29:27

several reasons. One is that, like so

29:29

many of the pronunciations are so

29:31

incongruous from one another, and

29:33

then the other thing is I'm pretty sure this is the video

29:35

that I'm thinking of. I've watched several videos

29:37

of people trying to say the thing I'm going to try

29:40

say again, uh,

29:43

because I keep transposing two of the syllables

29:45

when I try to say it. And I also freely admit

29:48

I cannot make the noise that is two

29:50

els at the end of a word in Icelandic,

29:52

like, I can't do it. I have tried

29:55

a lot. Uh. So

29:58

I think it's this video where that they then called

30:01

someone like the Icelandic Consulate

30:03

and we're was like, how do you say this um?

30:06

And the final pronunciation

30:09

they had basically had the end of it sounded like

30:11

yogurt, which is not It's

30:13

also not right, so it was like, there's

30:15

twenty seven different weird,

30:17

bizarre ways people try to say

30:20

aya fietla yoko.

30:22

There we go correctly

30:25

except for the L part, which I can't

30:27

do it. I can't do the L of them. Uh.

30:31

And then they're like and this is how it really

30:33

is, and then that one is also wrong. No,

30:38

yeah, uh.

30:40

I also have a refrigerator

30:42

magnet on my refrigerator that we

30:44

bought that like

30:46

it says uh

30:49

yet ya af yetla yoko.

30:52

It's easy to say, and then it like sounds

30:54

it out in syllables, except the last

30:57

syllable rendered on this magnet is definitely

30:59

not how it sounds. So

31:02

anyway, thank you everyone

31:04

who was from Iceland for putting

31:07

up with the fact that I cannot make

31:09

that sound that all of these

31:11

volcanoes really in with. Uh. We

31:13

did walk around on l Belt a little bit while

31:16

I was there. We did not dig down in there.

31:18

Our plan was to go all the way to the top, but we

31:20

were there really early in the spring

31:23

season, and it appeared that

31:25

some of the path that goes up to the top had been

31:27

kind of covered over by some sliding

31:30

volcanic debris. Uh,

31:32

And we made we turned up what we thought was

31:35

the path, but it was really just the place

31:38

where everyone had turned thinking they could

31:40

get up that way. And then

31:42

it became clear that we had been led astray and

31:45

we had to catch our ferry back to the mainland, so

31:47

we didn't We didn't get a try again, but we did

31:49

b wlok around on there. Did you find it more interesting?

31:53

I didn't dig down into

31:55

it, but I kind of wish I had, so

32:00

if you had reached down and touched the ground, though it did

32:02

not still feel warm or did it or

32:04

do you know, well, the like the the loose

32:07

scattered surface of the ground did

32:09

not feel warm, But I

32:11

can't remember whether we said this that the primary

32:14

source of heat and hot water in Haymany

32:16

now is is residual

32:18

cooling from that eruption, like it has

32:21

become the heating

32:23

source. Um. And when

32:25

I first heard about that, I thought, isn't

32:27

that a whole lot of work to put into something that's eventually

32:30

going to cool off. It's not gonna cool for a really

32:32

long time anyway.

32:36

Thank you, Diana. And if you would

32:38

like to write to us, swear a history podcast at how stuff

32:40

works dot com. We're also on Facebook

32:42

at facebook dot com slash miss in history and on

32:44

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Pentterriest at pentrist dot com slash missed in

32:50

history. Uh you

32:53

Oh? We also have an instagram missing history.

32:55

Were that too. If you would like to come

32:58

to our parent company's website, which is how stuff

33:00

works dot com, put the words civil Rights movement in

33:02

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33:04

of different articles about various aspects of the

33:06

Civil rights movement. And then you'd also come to our

33:08

website just missed in history dot com. You can

33:10

find show notes of every

33:13

episode that Holly and I have worked on together, and an

33:15

archive of every episode that has existed

33:17

ever. In the show notes for this episode,

33:20

UM, we will have some links to

33:23

some of the recordings of Buyer dressed

33:25

in UH singing, and we'll

33:27

have links to his FBI file the

33:30

documents from that they're publicly available.

33:33

And maybe I'll also link to the video of

33:35

the guy from Iceland saying if

33:38

yet your local correctly uh,

33:41

which I think this time, when our

33:43

listeners have stopped listening, I said it the best of

33:45

all the time. So

33:46

yeah, So you

33:49

can do all that a whole lot more at how

33:51

stuff works dot com or missed in history dot com

33:57

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34:00

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