Friday, March 18, 2011, 7pm
Nancy D. Kates & Bennett Singer's
Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (2003)
Nominated for Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, Won Audience Awards at the San Francisco, Philadelphia and NYC Lesbian & Gay Film Festivals, and for Outstanding Documentary at the GLAAD Media Awards
One of the architects of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and Martin Luther King Jr's right-hand man, strategist, and teacher, was Bayard Rustin, an openly gay man. He is credited as the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech.
His activism began at an activist training program conducted by Quakers in 1937. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Harlemto help defend the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men in Alabama accused of raping two white women.
For the rest of his life, Rustin committed himself to issues of social justice. During WWII, he went to California to help protect the property of Japanese Americans, who had been imprisoned in internment camps. In 1942, Rustin helped form the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a pacifist organization based on the writings of Henry David Thoreau, modeled after Mohandas Gandhi's non-violent resistance against British rule in India. And in 1948, Rustin traveled to India to learn nonviolence techniques directly from the leaders of the Gandhian movement, shortly after Ghandi's assassination. On his return, Rustin served on the Quaker task force to write "Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence," one of the most influential and widely commented upon pacifist essays in the United States.
In 1947, he helped organize the first of the Freedom Rides to test the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States that banned racial discrimination in interstate travel. By 1956, Rustin began advising Martin Luther King Jr. on Gandhian tactics, as King was organizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, Rustin and King began organizing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). His activism turned towards gay rights in the 1970s, and in 1986, he gave a speech "The New Niggers Are Gays," urging homosexual rights as the next frontier of justice.
Doors open 7:00 pm – film starts at 7:30 pm sharp. Popcorn and refreshments available.
Stay to discuss the film – the second in our new series on LESBIAN, GAY, BI-SEXUAL & TRANSGENDER FOLKS part of THIRD FRIDAY FILM SERIES at First Existentialist.
WHAT: Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (2003)
WHEN: Friday, March 18, 2011, 7pm
WHERE: First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta, 470 Candler Park Dr., NE, Atlanta, GA 30307
HOW MUCH: $1 to $10 sliding scale, No one turned away
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