Already, they have begun to do to Gandhi what has been done to Jesus—worship him as an unobtainable ideal. That is the sin of men of goodwill—not really to believe in their own power.
Catalog
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin (; March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. He was born and raised in Pennsylvania, where his family was involved in civil rights work. In 1936, he moved to Harlem, New York City, where he earned a living as a nightclub and stage singer. He continued activism for civil rights. In the pacifist groups Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and the War Resisters League (WRL), Rustin practiced nonviolence. A member of the Communist Party before 1941, he collaborated with A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement in 1941 to press for an end to discrimination in employment. He was a leading activist of the early Civil Rights Movement, helping to initiate a 1947 Freedom Ride to challenge, with civil disobedience, the racial segregation issue related to 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 Mahatma Gandhi's movement in India, and helped teach Martin Luther King, Jr. about nonviolenc
Mrs. Greenstone, I am 59 years old. I am black and I have lived with and fought racism my entire life. I have been in prison 23 times—serving 28 months in a federal penitentiary and 30 days on a North Carolina chain gang, among other punishments. I have seen periods of progress followed by reaction.…
In my statement I cited the major lesson I had learned in fighting for human rights for 50 years for people all over the world. That lesson is simple: no group is ultimately safe from prejudice, bigotry, and harassment so long as any group is subject to special negative treatment.
[T]he demonstration bore the title ‘March for Jobs and Freedom.’ We realized even then that true freedom and racial equality cannot be achieved within the context of a stagnant economy, unable to provide blacks with permanent, good-paying jobs.
The most urgently needed national policy is a commitment to full employment. When black unemployment is above 13 percent...we have a major national crisis. When overall unemployment by official statistics remains above seven percent...we have a major national crisis....We need to rededicate…
[W]e must remember that we cannot hope to achieve democracy and equality in such a way that would destroy the very kind of society which we hope to build. If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we…
The basic issue, however, is not political. It is moral and spiritual. For Christians it has to do with the scriptural teaching that all men, whatever their race or color, are children of one Father, created by him for an eternal destiny, and therefore of infinite worth....It has to do with the…
Today I feel that God motivates me to use my whole being to combat by nonviolent means the ever-growing racial tension in the United States; at the same time the state directs that I shall do its will; which of these dictates can I follow—that of God or that of the state? Surely, I must at all times…
Separation, it seems to me, is the chief sin precisely because violence is automatically the result of separation and ostracism between individuals or groups or nations, and my point was that whenever there is such separation and such automatic violence it is naive to believe that you can deal with…
For example, when we went into the buses of the South, we knew that there would be some violent reactions brought to the surface. Now when we went into that situation, we also had to accept violence unto ourselves’ but unless we were naive, we also knew that the lynch mob at Chapel Hill, which was…
Now I tried, secondly, to make it clear that in a sense forcing them into that position did not create violence but rather brought already-existing violence to the surface so that they recognized its existence and were able to deal with it. I pointed out that there are many, many times—and this is…
For example, I have knowingly sat at the table… and in the front of a bus in the South with white people, aware of the fact that when I did so, I was bringing to the surface a fear in them which was in a sense more profound than if I had struck them, and this is in part due to the fact that if I had…
Segregation, separation, according to Jesus, is the basis of continuous violence.
War is wrong. Conscription is a concomitant of modern war. Thus, conscription for so vast an evil as war is wrong.
Many Negroes see mass violence coming. Having lived in a society in which church, school, and home problems have been handled in a violent way, the majority at this point are unable to conceive of a solution by reconciliation and nonviolence. I have seen schoolboys in Arkansas laying away rusty guns…
An increasingly militant group has it in mind to demand now, with violence if necessary, the rights it has long been denied.’ If we must die abroad for democracy we can't have,’ I heard a friend of mine say, 'then we might as well die right here, fighting for our rights.'
In time of war, the general social condition is fertile soil for the development of hate and fear, and transference of these to minority groups is quite simple.
When we reached Nashville, a number of policemen were lined up on both sides of the hallway down which I had to pass on my way to the captain's office. They tossed me from one to another like a volleyball. By the time I reached the office, the lining of my best coat was torn, and I was considerably…
‘I believe that I have a right to sit here,’ I said quietly. ‘If I sit in the back of the bus I am depriving that child—' I pointed to a little white child of five or six—‘of the knowledge that there is injustice here, which I believe it is his right to know. It is my sincere conviction that the…
Well, I am here to say that some of the most skillful people in the world are unemployed Negroes. Because they have reared their own children, they have reared two or three generations of white children. And they are skilled with love and affection for children.