0:01

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History

0:03

Class from how Stuff Works dot com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

0:14

I'm tray Syne Wilson and I'm Holly

0:17

Froy. So pretty recently

0:20

we got a complaint that we talked

0:22

about too many women, and we've gotten a complaint

0:25

quite a few times. So

0:27

I did what we always do, and I counted,

0:29

but this time I had to be in my bonnet, So I

0:31

made a bunch of pie charts, and

0:33

I mean the pie charts show that

0:36

there's never ever been a year in the history

0:38

of our time on the show when we've talked about

0:40

more women than men. Uh,

0:44

in spite of concerted effort to talk about a lot

0:46

of women. Um. And in response

0:48

to this whole thing of of of all the pie charts,

0:50

a lot of folks suggested that we only

0:52

talk about women for the rest of the year, which

0:55

I get, I get that impulse.

0:59

I was already in the middle of working on these two episodes

1:01

when that whole thing happened. And it's actually a

1:04

really good example of why women

1:06

are not the only people that we try

1:09

to make sure that we talk about on this show. Because

1:12

we're going to talk about buyared rest in Today

1:14

and Wednesday Byared Reston was an

1:16

openly gay Black man born in nineteen

1:18

twelve, and he spent his life working

1:20

tirelessly for equal rights and peace

1:22

and democracy and economic equality,

1:25

including being one of the primary planners

1:27

of the nineteen sixty three March on Washington.

1:30

And because of when he lived, rest

1:32

in sexual orientation became a really serious

1:34

obstacle to the work that he was trying to do. So

1:36

we're going to talk about him a sid a moment ago

1:38

into parts. This part

1:41

will go up to the late nineteen forties, and

1:43

then part two will pick up from there, and

1:45

a little heads up for parents and teachers.

1:48

By necessity, we talk about Buyared rest

1:50

in sex life more in this podcast than

1:52

you might normally expect from our show. There

1:55

are also several incidents we're going to

1:57

talk about in which he and the people around

1:59

him were subject of violence. So

2:02

this might be one to pre screen before sharing

2:04

it with the kids, or if either of those

2:06

things are things that you are sensitive to. So

2:09

we're gonna hop right in. Uh. Typically

2:12

when we talk about the biography of a historical

2:14

figure, we start at the beginning with their

2:16

birth and then we walk through what's known of

2:18

their early life, And while we're gonna

2:21

get to that, we're going to take a slightly different

2:23

approach to introducing Bayard Rustin.

2:26

Rustin was a member of the religious Society

2:28

of Friends, or Quakers. In

2:31

his own words, quote, my activism

2:33

did not spring from being black. Rather,

2:35

it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker

2:37

upbringing and the values instilled

2:39

in me by the grandparents who reared me.

2:42

So before we talk about what he did that,

2:44

we're going to talk about who he was and

2:47

how that grew from his Quaker religion.

2:50

As in the case with pretty much every denomination,

2:52

there's not one monolithic way of being a

2:54

Quaker. There are lots of variations

2:56

and nuances from region to region and from

2:58

one congregation to another. And this even

3:01

trickles down to whether a person prefers the

3:03

word Quaker or the word Friends to describe

3:05

themselves inspired. Ruston referred

3:07

to himself as a Quaker, we will as well.

3:10

A core of Quaker teachings are values

3:12

known as testimonies. There's also

3:14

some variation in how the testimonies are defined

3:17

or explained, and how people interpret

3:19

them and incorporate them into their lives

3:21

day to day. As described

3:23

by the American Friends Service Committee,

3:26

the six Quaker testimonies are peace,

3:28

equality, community, integrity,

3:31

simplicity, and stewardship. In

3:34

particular, Rustin spent his life

3:36

trying to embody peace, equality, and

3:38

community. Throughout

3:40

his life, Ruston resisted and worked

3:42

against oppression, inequality, and war,

3:45

and he did it all through non violent means.

3:47

He believed that all human beings are part

3:50

of the same community, and that a central

3:52

trait of that global family was that every

3:54

person and it was fundamentally equal.

3:57

This belief informed his approach to social

3:59

movements that he actively participated

4:01

in in the United States, in India,

4:03

and in several African nations.

4:06

Although a lot of the work he's best known

4:08

for was with the civil rights movement, Rustin

4:11

also joined the gay rights movement as it became

4:13

more public. In the nineteen seventies and nineteen

4:15

eighties. He worked with refugees,

4:18

observed elections, and traveled to Africa

4:20

repeatedly, both to work with local independence

4:23

movements and to protest nuclear

4:25

weapons testing being conducted there. He

4:28

went to prison for his non violent opposition

4:30

to World War Two. All of

4:32

these efforts united the themes of non

4:34

violence, equality, and a community

4:37

of equals encompassing all of humanity.

4:40

There are several books and articles

4:42

that tie Rustin's integrity. Another

4:45

of the Quaker testimonies to the fact that he

4:47

was an openly gay man and an arrow in same

4:49

sex behavior was illegal and when

4:51

being gay carried in an enormous stigma.

4:54

But that's really only part of the story.

4:56

It's true that he never really hid his orientation

4:59

from people. When he was young, he told

5:01

his grandmother that he preferred to spend his time

5:03

with men, and her reply was, quote,

5:06

I suppose that's what you need to do. The

5:08

people he worked with in the Pacifists and

5:10

civil rights movements in the forties and fifties

5:12

all knew that he was gay. This was long before

5:14

the Stone All Riots brought the gay rights

5:17

movement into a more mainstream i At

5:20

the same time, he struggled with his orientation

5:23

and how best to ethically exist in a culture

5:26

that so clearly classified his attraction

5:28

to men as wrong. It's

5:30

far from universal, but a lot of

5:32

written accounts of gay men who grew up

5:34

in the U S when he did talk

5:36

about this sense of shame, guilt,

5:38

and secrecy in terms

5:41

of his sexual orientation. Ruston

5:43

never seemed to have that, and being unashamed

5:45

of who he was was something his partners

5:48

and the people around him noticed and

5:50

commented on. However,

5:53

there were definitely occasions when his sex

5:55

life had a huge negative consequence

5:57

to his life and work, and sometimes it's

5:59

frankly oiled down to some poor decisions on

6:01

his part. He spent a lot of time

6:03

wrestling with his sexual orientation and

6:05

how to make it compatible with what he saw

6:08

as his life's work when most of

6:10

the world saw it as immoral. So

6:12

the idea that his simply being

6:15

out, or as out as a person

6:17

could be in that part of history

6:20

was a mark of his integrity is really

6:22

oversimplified. I also

6:25

want to take a moment to say, we're not suggesting

6:27

that people who were not out did

6:29

not have integrity, because life is more complicated

6:32

than that. Yes, indeed,

6:35

uh, I mean we've we've talked about it many

6:37

times on this show, the period

6:40

of time in which it was not only

6:42

marginalized and looked down upon, but flat out

6:44

illegal to be gay. And

6:47

he was not a perfect person, and there are things

6:49

we will discuss in these two episodes that

6:52

seemed contrary to the Quaker teachings

6:54

that drove by ARD's activism,

6:56

but even so, being a Quaker was critically

6:59

important to his and Quaker philosophies

7:01

of non violence and peace building were

7:04

concepts that he returned to again and

7:06

again. Although Quaker teachings

7:08

had a profound impact on so

7:10

many aspects of Fired Ruston's life

7:12

and character, we'd really be remiss if we didn't

7:15

also talk about the influence

7:17

of the African Methodist Episcopal Church as

7:19

well. His grandfather

7:21

was a member of the A. M. E. Church, and his grandmother

7:24

eventually joined it as well, essentially

7:26

to keep the family peaces, causing some tension

7:28

between them. For her to be a Quaker in him to be

7:31

in the A. M. E. Church, so he

7:33

was exposed to both religions and their

7:35

traditions in his childhood. Although

7:37

the Society of Friends had been a big part

7:39

of the movement for abolition in the United States

7:42

and many had been active participants in the

7:44

Underground Railroad, many

7:46

Quaker congregations were still predominantly

7:48

white during Ruston's formative years.

7:51

Those that had black members often segregated

7:54

them into separate seating. The

7:56

African Methodist Episcopal Church, on

7:58

the other hand had been found in eighteen

8:00

sixteen as a response to segregation

8:03

in other Methodist churches. As

8:05

a consequence, the a M. E Church became

8:07

a strong advocate for black leadership

8:10

and stress the need for black people to take

8:12

collective action to oppose racism

8:14

and injustice, both from the pulpit and

8:17

in life. So

8:19

and his life and his work, Bired Ruston

8:21

really combined the principles of Quaker

8:24

teachings with the advocacy focus of the

8:26

a m along with other philosophies

8:28

and belief systems as well. Uh

8:31

more of those will reveal themselves as we

8:33

talk about his life, which we were going to start

8:35

after a brief word from a sponsor, So

8:45

to get back to our story. Bired Taylor Rustin

8:47

was born on March March seventeenth, nineteen

8:50

twelve, in Westchester, Pennsylvania. The

8:52

town of Westchester, which is not far from

8:54

Philadelphia, was established by Quakers in

8:56

seventeen ninety nine. It continued

8:59

to have a predom monthly Quaker population, and

9:01

its black population grew as well, in

9:03

part because of its white Quaker community

9:06

sheltering escaping slaves. Rustin's

9:08

mother, Florence, was sixteen

9:11

when he was born, and his father, a

9:13

man named Archie Hopkins, was not

9:15

in the picture. He was raised by his

9:17

grandparents, Jennifer and Julia

9:19

Rusten, and Florence was the eldest

9:21

of their eight children. During

9:24

his earliest childhood years, the young Bayard

9:26

thought his mother was actually his sister.

9:30

The Rustins were one of Westchester's

9:32

most respected black families. Jennifer

9:34

was a steward at the Elks Lodge, and one of

9:36

its members rented him a ten room

9:38

home that allowed their large family to

9:40

live pretty comfortably. Julia's

9:43

father was a pastor at one of Westchester's

9:45

largest churches. Julia

9:48

herself did extensive community work.

9:50

She was one of the area's first members of the n

9:52

double a CP. If you do not know what that is,

9:55

that is the National Association for the

9:57

Advancement of Colored People. After

9:59

it was founded in nineteen o nine.

10:01

Some of the nation's most prominent black

10:03

leaders were guests in the rest and Home, including

10:06

W. E. B. D. Boys. Julia

10:09

also did lots of organizing and what might

10:11

almost be considered social work in her community,

10:13

things like founding a nursery for the children

10:15

of black working families during

10:18

the Great Migration. As huge numbers

10:20

of African Americans started moving north.

10:22

She also used their home to house black

10:24

newcomers to the area who had nowhere else

10:27

to go. Bayard's elementary

10:29

education took place at a segregated Westchester

10:32

school. The local high school,

10:34

though, was integrated, mainly because

10:36

the community itself wasn't large enough to

10:38

support a separate high school for black children.

10:41

He was a really good student, and he pursued

10:43

a wide range of extracurricular activities.

10:46

He won essay contests and oratory

10:48

awards. He was also a poet

10:50

and a singer with a beautiful, very clear

10:53

tenor singing voice. There are still

10:55

some recordings that exist today of him and

10:57

his adult life singing spirituals and protests,

11:00

songs and Rustin was also

11:02

an athlete. He lettered in track

11:04

and football, and his teammates told

11:06

stories about his sportsmanship, how

11:08

he helped people up and sometimes recited

11:11

poems to them after he had tackled

11:13

them. So although Westchester

11:15

had long Quaker roots, and Quakers

11:18

played a big role in the abolition of slavery,

11:20

there was still a lot of racial division

11:22

in the town. In addition to segregate

11:24

his schools, theaters, and other public spaces.

11:27

There was a lot of racial tension among

11:29

families in town, and at tensions

11:31

among its various European immigrant

11:33

groups. The prejudice ran deep

11:36

enough that young Bayard was not allowed

11:38

in the home of his best friend, John Cessna,

11:40

and he also worried that Tessna's

11:43

parents would be angry if he brought John over to

11:45

his house. They wound up having their hang

11:47

out time in the local public library.

11:51

There are lots of stories from Rustin's

11:53

high school years about his first protest

11:55

for equal rights, and since most

11:57

of this knowledge comes from interviews conductedly

12:00

eater, it's difficult to pin down

12:02

with precision. There are stories about

12:04

him being arrested for sitting in the white section

12:06

of a local theater and for

12:08

refusing to move after being denied entry

12:10

into a restaurant. While on a trip with

12:12

the football team, he protested

12:15

the segregated locker facilities at the integrated

12:18

high school, and he succeeded in changing that

12:20

policy when he got the team to threaten to

12:22

refuse to play an upcoming championship.

12:25

Regardless of exact details, it's

12:27

clear that he was already focused on fighting

12:29

for equality while he was still in school.

12:32

Once he graduated, though, things became a lot more

12:35

difficult for him. He had truly

12:37

excelled in high school, but he wasn't able

12:39

to get a scholarship to attend college.

12:42

His family could afford at most

12:44

to pay his way somewhere local to Westchester.

12:47

Eventually, through personal connections,

12:49

he finally wound up with a music scholarship

12:51

to Wilberforce University, historically

12:54

black university in Ohio. But

12:56

Wilberforce University wasn't really

12:58

a good fit. A lot of it's offered

13:01

courses at the time were more technically

13:03

invocationally oriented than the more liberal

13:05

arts curriculum that Rustin really wanted.

13:08

R OTC participation was mandatory,

13:10

which directly conflicted with his pacifism.

13:14

This experience was one of the things that would lead

13:16

Ruston to formally become a Quaker.

13:18

Accounts differ on how this actually played

13:20

out. Either he was asked to leave the school

13:23

because he arranged a strike over the quality

13:25

of the food, or he left because

13:27

the school just wasn't challenging him.

13:30

Back home in Westchester, rest and enrolled

13:33

at Cheney State Teachers College, another

13:35

historically black college. This one was

13:37

founded by Quakers for black students. And

13:39

it was certainly a better fit for Ruston,

13:42

but he wound up leaving the area entirely

13:44

to go to New York City at the invitation of

13:46

his aunt Bessie. Although he originally

13:48

intended to study at City College, this

13:51

more or less spelled the end of his formal education.

13:54

And we'll start talking about what he did beyond college

13:56

after another brief word from a sponsor,

14:05

so to get back to buy Art Rustin's

14:07

life. Although he did not wind up

14:09

graduating from City College as originally

14:11

planned, he did become involved with

14:14

more organized protests and resistance

14:16

soon after getting to New York. For

14:19

a time he was a member of the Youth Communist

14:21

League. When he joined it was not long

14:23

after the Scottsboro Boys trial. These

14:26

were nine black teenagers who were falsely accused

14:28

of raping two white women. All

14:31

the boys were convicted, and all but the youngest

14:33

was sentenced to death. The Communist

14:35

Party led demonstrations and raised

14:37

money for the young men's legal defense. All

14:40

of these things, plus the party's focus on

14:43

equal economic opportunity, were really

14:45

attractive to Rustin. However,

14:48

when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet

14:50

Union in nineteen forty one, the organization

14:53

dropped its focus on racial equality

14:55

in the United States and part due to concerns

14:57

that protesting against segregation

14:59

segre aation of the United States military,

15:02

would ultimately weaken its efforts

15:04

to aid the Soviet Union. The Youth

15:06

Communist League also specifically

15:08

told Ruston to stop his activism

15:10

against racism. He wound up cutting

15:12

his ties to the organization and to the

15:14

Communist Party completely. He

15:17

didn't stop with his activism, though he

15:19

registered as a conscientious objector.

15:22

He began working with socialist labor leader

15:24

A. Philip Randolph. He also

15:27

met pacifist A. J. Musty at an

15:29

American Friends Services Committee meeting,

15:31

and eventually began working with his pacifist

15:33

social movement organization, the Fellowship

15:36

of Reconciliation as a field

15:38

secretary. Through the Fellowship of Reconciliation

15:41

and other organizations, Rustin started

15:43

organizing anti war and civil rights

15:45

protests, including traveling to Puerto Rico

15:47

to study the struggles of conscientious objectors

15:50

living there. Often he was the

15:52

only black person and an other otherwise

15:54

all white team from the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

15:57

He toured the United States, making anti

16:00

war speeches and organizing, and

16:02

in his speeches, he often presented

16:04

anti war activism and equal

16:06

rights for black people as inextricably linked.

16:09

It made no sense, according to his philosophy,

16:12

for a black person to join a segregated

16:14

military and then fight injustice on

16:16

behalf of a nation that would not grant

16:18

him equal rights. Back at home, In

16:23

Rustin boarded a bus from Louisville

16:25

to Nashville and took a seat in

16:27

the second row that was in the white section.

16:30

The bus driver told him to move to

16:32

the back and also called him

16:34

a racial epithet in the process. Rustin

16:37

refused, saying that segregation was unjust

16:40

and explained that, in his words quote,

16:42

if I were to sit in the back, I would be condoning

16:45

injustice for the

16:47

rest of the journey. At every stop, the

16:49

driver tried to get Rustin to move, and

16:51

Restin refused. Then

16:54

outside of Nashville, police pulled the

16:56

bus over and four officers physically

16:59

removed rested, and then beat him

17:01

in front of the other passengers. And

17:03

later interviews, he said that when they were done,

17:06

he stood up and said, there is no need

17:08

to beat me. I am not resisting

17:11

you. Through all these

17:13

tours and speaking his view on

17:15

the war and the draft evolved. It

17:17

wasn't just that war was wrong. In his

17:20

mind, conscription itself was also

17:22

wrong because it was dividing the whole

17:24

of mankind, which was supposed to be one community

17:26

of equals, into us and

17:29

them. He also objected

17:31

to the fact that a person had to be a member of

17:33

a pacifist religion to become a conscientious

17:35

objector. Non religious pacifists

17:38

were excluded. His experiences

17:41

in civilian public service camps where

17:43

objectors were sent to also left

17:45

a lot to be desired. The camps

17:47

themselves, like so many other places,

17:50

were segregated, so

17:52

when the Draft Board ordered rest

17:55

In to appear for a physical and report

17:57

to a civilian public service camp on November

17:59

thirteen, nine, he

18:01

refused. He rescinded

18:04

his prior request to be granted conscientious

18:06

objector status, and he was imprisoned

18:08

at Ashland Federal Correctional Institution in

18:10

Kentucky beginning in nineteen forty

18:12

four. Once he got

18:15

there, he tried to integrate the

18:17

prison, continually advocating

18:19

integration to the warden. Eventually

18:22

he was allowed to teach a history class to white

18:24

inmates, and the warden had the gate that

18:26

separated the racial sections of the prison

18:28

unlocked when Rustin used

18:31

this gate to enter the common area for white

18:33

prisoners, though another inmate, a

18:35

former judge convicted on fraud charges,

18:38

beat him with a mop handle until it broke.

18:41

Rustin's wrist was broken in the attack on

18:43

Several white conscientious objectors who were

18:46

nearby sustained minor injuries.

18:49

Rustin, not his attacker,

18:51

was punished for it. I kind

18:53

of want to take a moment to say from this point, people

18:56

tried to brand fired Ruston as a

18:58

draft dodger. That's

19:00

not what draft dodger means. Like a draft

19:03

dodger is a person who evades the draft

19:05

by, for example, going to Canada. That

19:08

is not what Byared Rusten did. Byard

19:11

rust And refused the draft and served

19:13

prison time. As a consequence, Rustin's

19:15

attempts to integrate the prison were

19:18

derailed, unfortunately, by a sexual

19:20

misconduct investigation. This was an

19:22

allegation that Reston originally

19:24

denied, but then he later acknowledged

19:26

it is true. He was also put into

19:28

isolation for weeks, and some of the

19:31

other conscientious objectors who came to his

19:33

defense we're put into administrative

19:35

segregation. This incident

19:38

caused a huge rift between Rustin

19:40

and a j Mustie, who wrote him a scathing

19:43

letter blasting him for weakness for making

19:45

such a decision in the middle of efforts

19:47

to integrate the prison. He was

19:49

deeply disappointed that Bayard had

19:51

not only jeopardized his work in the prison

19:53

by engaging in sexual activities with other

19:56

inmates, but also that he

19:58

had lied about it. After

20:00

a long series of meetings and interrogations,

20:03

Ruston was let out of isolation, where

20:05

he resumed advocacy for integration

20:07

at the prison. After another

20:10

series of protests and an influx

20:12

of new conscientious objectors to the prison

20:14

that made Ruston's advocacy seemed like more

20:16

of a threat, he was transferred to Louisbourg

20:18

Penitentiary in uh In, Pennsylvania.

20:21

He was released in ninety seven after

20:23

twenty eight total months incarcerated. Throughout

20:26

his time in prison, Rushton kept up

20:28

a correspondence with Davis Platt,

20:31

his first long term partner. Rustin

20:33

and Platt had meant in nineteen forty three,

20:36

and if anybody in the peace movement had entertained

20:38

doubts about Rustin's sexual orientation,

20:41

his relationship with Platt really dispelled

20:43

them. Because prison correspondence

20:45

was monitored. They wrote their letters in code.

20:48

These letters progressed in their coded intimacy,

20:51

especially after Ruston confessed to his

20:53

infidelity there and he vowed

20:55

to be celibate for the rest of his time in prison.

20:58

The two uh what even actually break up

21:00

in ninety seven at Platt's instigation

21:03

because he wanted their relationship to be monogamous

21:06

and Rustin had a

21:08

lot of partners after he

21:10

get out of prison. Ruston was part of

21:12

the Journey of Reconciliation, which was

21:14

a project of the Congress of Racial Equality

21:16

or CORE. This is a precursor to

21:18

the Freedom Rides, and if you're interested in learning about

21:20

the Freedom Rides, there's a whole series of podcasts

21:23

by past hosts on those in the archive.

21:25

The Journey of Reconciliation was meant

21:27

to test segregation laws after the

21:29

nineteen forty six Supreme Court ruling

21:32

Morgan versus Virginia, which ruled

21:34

that segregation was illegal for buses

21:36

that crossed state lines. Even

21:39

though the Supreme Court had ruled that segregating

21:41

interstate buses was unconstitutional,

21:44

a lot of bus lines were either tacitly

21:47

or explicitly segregating them anyway,

21:50

and a lot of writers, either not aware

21:52

of the ruling, not wanting to cause trouble,

21:54

or being genuinely fearful for their

21:56

safety complied. The

21:59

Journey of recons Aviation was intended

22:01

to put bus integration to the test by

22:03

sending both black and white riders out

22:06

together on buses to test the law.

22:09

This was dangerous work, and rested

22:11

In the other writers faced continual opposition,

22:13

including violence and multiple arrests

22:16

as they traveled through the South. They

22:18

were attacked and beaten by a mob of segregationists

22:21

in North Carolina, and it was rest In, not

22:23

the attackers, who was charged.

22:26

He wound up returning to North Carolina

22:28

two years later after a lengthy

22:30

series of appeals in a botched defense

22:33

to serve thirty days of hard labor

22:35

on a chain gang. He was released

22:37

after twenty two days, after which he spoke

22:40

on the experience, as well as publishing

22:42

a lengthy report on the inhumane

22:44

and abhorrent treatment of the prisoners

22:47

on the chain gang, and this report

22:49

eventually led to some reforms, both

22:51

in North Carolina and in some of the surrounding

22:53

states. In the interim

22:56

between the Journey of Reconciliation, in

22:58

his return to North Carolina to service sentence,

23:01

Rustin did a lot. He

23:03

testified before the Senate Armed Services

23:06

Committee on the need to integrate the armed forces,

23:09

something that finally happened on July

23:12

with Executive Order one.

23:17

There is uh, there's

23:19

film footage I think it

23:21

is of this this testimony. It

23:23

may be a different one where like

23:26

he keeps answering the question and

23:29

then he takes a drag on a cigarette like

23:31

he's dropping a microphone. It's amazing.

23:37

Also in don't

23:39

smoke, that's it's real bad for you.

23:42

This was in when

23:44

people didn't really know that. Also

23:48

in nineteen forty eight, the American Friends Service

23:50

Committee assigned Rustin to be it's

23:52

representative at a pacifist

23:54

seminar in India. He

23:57

had been studying the pacifist teachings

23:59

of Mohandaskan also known as Mahatma

24:01

Gandhi for some time, especially how

24:03

those teachings could be applied to a non

24:05

violent resistant movement. This

24:08

turned into a four month tour of

24:10

study and advocacy in India following

24:12

a brief stay in London. Although

24:15

Gandhi had been assassinated that January,

24:17

Rustin was able to study with people who

24:19

had worked directly with him.

24:22

He also spent a lot of time speaking

24:24

directly to India's own civil rights

24:26

leaders. Gandhi had been the keystone

24:28

of its non violent focus, and after

24:31

his assassination, movement leaders

24:33

were worried that younger, more radical participants

24:36

would take the movement in a more violent direction.

24:39

They really hoped that Rustin, as a black

24:41

man, would have an influence and reach

24:43

that white pacifists simply couldn't, considering

24:46

that India had just become independent from

24:48

a white British government. After

24:51

his return from India, Rusten wrote

24:54

quote, we need in every community a

24:56

group of angelic troublemakers.

24:58

The only weapon we have is our bodies,

25:01

and we need to tuck them in places

25:03

the wheels don't turn, Which

25:05

is where I got the title of this episode. Yeah

25:09

uh, and that's actually where where Tracy

25:11

his cliff hung us. Yeah.

25:13

Well, and I originally where

25:16

we're going to pick up next time is

25:18

the probably lowest point in

25:22

Rustin's life, and I originally

25:24

intended to get through that in this episode,

25:28

but the time

25:30

does not equate. That's

25:33

a whole additional chapter of stories.

25:35

Have one really long episode and one relief

25:37

short one. Well, yeah, so we're gonna

25:39

we're gonna end kind of a high point. Like at this

25:41

point in Rustin's career, people were calling

25:44

him the American Gandhi, and they

25:46

like he was on track to

25:49

become an enormously

25:51

prominent and well known um

25:54

civil rights pacifist leader. Like

25:56

that he was. He was on that path, and

25:59

we're going to pick up next time with what

26:01

derailed him from that

26:03

path. Uh, just

26:06

kind of a sad story. So

26:08

brace for that. But in the meantime, you

26:10

got some listener mail. Do you

26:12

have listener mail hanging on? Uh?

26:16

This listener mail is is

26:18

it's a little bit, a little bit from back. I'm still

26:21

catching up from having been out for a little bit with

26:23

my mail. Um. And so

26:26

this is from Mary or

26:28

Pat possibly Mary Ellen Um,

26:32

that's not quite clear. So uh,

26:34

she writes to us about white weddings and she says, hello,

26:36

Tracy and Holly, I just listened to the episode

26:39

on white weddings and you stated that you didn't

26:41

know whether plum cake was still considered

26:43

to be a wedding cake in the UK. I'm

26:45

sure loads of British listeners have written to

26:47

tell you this, but fruitcake is definitely

26:49

still the traditional option when you're looking to

26:52

get a wedding cake here. Most people

26:54

in my husband's generation don't fancy it,

26:56

but his parents and older relatives

26:58

all still say that you to be the standard

27:00

wedding confection. We even tried

27:03

someone tasting for wedding cakes, but we opted

27:05

for something a bit less heavy. I'm

27:07

an American who met a British guy while living in Japan.

27:10

Having moved to England and done wedding planning

27:12

here, I've learned lots of surprising things,

27:15

like the difference in traditions like the cake.

27:18

For example, it's common for the reception

27:20

to have two different meals. First

27:22

is the wedding breakfast, which despite

27:24

the name, is just to sit down served

27:26

meal after the wedding ceremony.

27:28

This has served to a smaller group of people, as

27:30

when the evening guests arrived later there is

27:32

usually a buffet style meal. Also,

27:35

I was prepared to have the best man and

27:37

made of honor give the toast, but I found out the

27:39

traditional way here these days is to have the father

27:41

of the bride the groom, and lastly the best

27:43

man gives speeches. I was learning

27:45

a lot of little differences like that,

27:48

which surprised me as I thought American and

27:50

British weddings would be quite similar. Finally,

27:52

just the side that I thought you'd appreciate being

27:54

fans of Queen Victoria. When my husband and I

27:56

got married at the City Hall here in

27:59

the northeast of the ceremony,

28:01

room where weddings were held was named quote

28:03

the Victoria Room. Throughout the ceremony

28:06

we were under the stern gaze of Victoria's portrait.

28:08

We went back in after to snap a photo with

28:10

her Majesty as well. She said to that photo,

28:13

thank you so much, Mary, or perhaps Mary

28:15

Ellen. That is a sweet story. It is.

28:17

Their photo is very sweet. And I love the idea

28:20

of Queen Victoria because in my head

28:22

I think about her letters to her daughters saying,

28:24

don't have kids right away? Oh

28:26

yeah, I um,

28:29

we heard. So. It was funny because

28:31

after that episode, most

28:34

but not all, of the notes that we got about

28:36

wedding cake in Britain were from similarly

28:40

Americans who married someone

28:43

um either uh, like somebody

28:45

who had moved to the United States and their parents

28:47

were still somewhere in the UK, or

28:50

like someone who had moved someone moved

28:52

someone who had met someone in front the UK and was

28:54

like going there to get married. We've basically

28:56

heard a lot of American perspectives

28:59

about what it was like to try to plan

29:02

a wedding uh in

29:04

somewhere in like the whole

29:07

realm of the British Isles. Um,

29:09

having grown up with the expectations

29:12

that are kind of ingrained in you in the United

29:14

States and sort of being like, what do you

29:16

mean this fruit cake situation? I don't

29:18

talk. This is not a cake, um.

29:22

And some of these letters were quite charming, so thank

29:24

you very much everyone who sent them

29:27

to us. If you would

29:29

like to write to us, we're a history podcast at how

29:31

stuff Works dot com. We're also on

29:33

Facebook at facebook dot com slash miss

29:35

in history and on Twitter at miss in History.

29:37

We're also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com

29:40

slash miss in history, and on Instagram

29:42

at missed in History. If you would like to learn

29:44

more about what we've talked about today, you can come to our website.

29:47

Put the word Gandhi in the search bar. You will find

29:49

several articles about Gandhi, his

29:52

life and work. You can also come to our

29:54

website, which is missed in history dot com where

29:56

you will find, for example, the pie charts I talked

29:58

about at the beginning of this episode. You'll

30:00

find an archive every episode we have ever

30:02

done. You will find show notes

30:04

for all the episodes Holly and I have ever

30:06

done, which I will link to

30:09

some of the recordings of buyed,

30:11

resting and singing, so you can do

30:13

all that and a whole lot more at how stuff works

30:15

dot com or missed in history dot com

30:23

for more on this and thousands of other topics

30:25

because it how stuff works dot co.