BAYARD RUSTIN (1912-1987) was one of the most influential civil rights activists who maintained a low profile, reserving the spotlight for other prominent figures, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and A. Philip Randolph.
Born March 17, 1910, Rustin was one of twelve children raised by his grandparents in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Rustin’s life-long commitment to nonviolence began with his Quaker upbringing and the influence of his grandmother, a member of the Society of Friends and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). NAACP leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in the Rustin home. With these influences in his early life, Rustin campaigned against racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws in his youth.
Rustin graduated from West Chester High School and, in 1932, entered Wilberforce University. He left in 1936 before taking his final exams. He also attended Cheyney State Teachers College and completed an activist training program conducted by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The following year he moved to Harlem and began studying at City College of New York. There he became involved in efforts to free the Scottsboro Boys – nine young black men who had been accused falsely of raping two white women. He also became a member of the Young Communist League in 1936; soon after coming to New York City, he also became a member of Fifteenth Street Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
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