September 21, 2008
Missing Bayard Rustin
The NYT reports that opponents of the anti-gay-marriage initiative in California are worried that it might get buried in a wave of socially conservative African-Americans coming out to vote for Barack Obama, even though Obama himself has come out against the initiative. (Others aren't so sure; the voting records don't match the conventional wisdom.)
Somewhere, the spirit of Bayard Rustin is crying out in wordless agony. The political calculation — fear of gay-baiting and Red-baiting — that led his colleagues in the civil rights movement (including Martin Luther King, whom he mentored) to refuse him the credit he was due means that now, when it might be useful, Rustin's name is not one to conjure with. But in the history of the Second Reconstruction, only King and Johnson outrank him in importance, and only Roger Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph, and Thurgood Marshall are his equals.
Biopic, anyone? Lou Gossett, Jr., as Bayard Rustin?
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