Do you know the name Bayard Rustin? I admit that I did not before watching the new film “Rustin,” which is about one of the unsung leaders of the civil rights movement.
SCLC is planning a new Poor People’s Campaign focused on empowerment, education and food for those in poverty.
The NAACP plans to highlight 110 years of civil rights history, and the current fight for voting rights, criminal justice reform, economic opportunity and education quality during its 110th national convention now happening in Detroit.
On February 26, the California Legislature passed a joint resolution in support of the national Bayard Rustin Stamp campaign. Spearheaded by Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo (AD 51), the concurrent resolution ACR-27 “honors the legacy of Bayard Rustin, who stood at the confluence of the greatest struggles for civil, legal, and human rights by African Americans, as well as the LGBTQ community, and whose focus on civil and economic rights and belief in peace and the dignity of all people remains as relevant today as ever.”
Watson Bradfield, a trailblazer in her own right, was born July 22, 1938 into a family of trailblazers. She was the youngest of four children. Her father, William Watson, was one of the first African American police officers in Los Angeles. Her grandfather, Spencer Watson, was a civil rights activist, involved in organizing the pullman porters along with Bayard Rustin. And, her grandmother Belle O’Neal was the surgical nurse who worked on the first open heart surgery with Dr. Clarence Williams in Chicago.
Rustin worked with Martin Luther King Jr. as an organizer in 1955 with the Montgomery bus boycott.