California Gov. Asked To Posthumously Pardon Gay Civil Rights Leader Bayard Rustin, Arrested For Having Sex With Men
California lawmakers are advocating for a civil rights leader’s posthumous pardon 67 years after he was arrested for having sex with a man.
CNN reports, Bayard Rustin was arrested one night in January 1953 after he was caught having sex with another man in a parked car in Pasadena. He was jailed on a “morals charge,” and served about two months in jail. He was also placed on the sex offender list.
The charge tarnished his name and work in the civil rights movement, CNN reports.
The Hill reports that Rustin’s arrest was a major hindrance to his activism, forcing him out of the leadership of the pacifist Fellowship for Reconciliation.
CNN reports that aside from Martin Luther King, Rustin was said to be the main person who pushed the Civil Rights Movement toward nonviolent ideas and tactics. After studying in India for several weeks in 1948 to learn Gandhian philosophies, he passed that teaching down to King.
By 1956, Rustin became a close confidant of King’s following the success of the Montgomery bus boycott, CNN reports.
In the early 1960s, as he rose in the civil rights movement, The Hill reports that Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. pressured King to freeze him out of his inner circle due to his sexuality.
By the time he was appointed as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, Rustin was largely pushed to the periphery of the movement, The Hill reports.
Former Sen. Strom Thurmond, a segregationist, read Rustin’s arrest record on the Senate floor and used it to delegitimize the civil rights movement, calling him a “pervert.”
“They really picked the wrong guy,” Walter Naegle, who was Rustin’s partner at the time of his death in 1987, told the Washington Post. “The thing that separated Bayard from many people was he wasn’t going to be silenced.”
On Tuesday (Jan. 21), the anniversary of Rustin’s death, California Sen. Scott Wiener, the chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, and Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, chair of the Black Caucus, wrote a letter to state Gov. Gavin Newsom calling for the posthumous pardon of the civil rights leader, CNN reports.
"Mr. Rustin's conviction and registered sex offender status haunted him for the rest of his life, and it continues to tarnish his name, despite his death thirty-three years ago," the letter, which was posted on Wiener’s twitter page, reads. "Indeed, California's treatment of Mr. Rustin tarnishes our entire state."
According to the Washington Post, Wiener came up with the idea over a breakfast with longtime LGBTQ activist Nicole Ramirez, who has spent years seeking a postage stamp dedicated to Rustin, but has heard concerns from some officials that the civil rights leader’s arrest record could get in the way of the approval process.
At a news conference on Tuesday (Jan. 21), Wiener said, CNN reports, "We're asking the governor to take a strong step and to send a profoundly impactful statement acknowledging that what happened to Bayard Rustin was wrong, that it was harmful, that it was a stain on the state of California. And that Bayard Rustin should be pardoned and this criminal conviction should be wiped away from his record."
Weber added that without Rustin -- who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 by former President Barack Obama -- there would be no Montgomery Bus Boycott, no Selma and no March on Washington, CNN reports.
In a statement to CNN, Newsom said he is “closely considering” the request.
"History is clear. In California and across the country, sodomy laws were used as legal tools of oppression. They were used to stigmatize and punish LGBTQ individuals and communities and warn others what harm could await them for living authentically," Newsom said in the statement. "I thank those who are advocating for Mr. Bayard Rustin's pardon."
