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When I say I love Eastland, it sounds preposterous a man who brutalizes people. But you love him or you wouldn’t be here. You’re going to Mississippi to create social change and you love Eastland in your desire to create conditions which will redeem his children.

Bayard Rustin

When I say I love Eastland, it sounds preposterous a man who brutalizes people. But you love him or you wouldn’t be here. You’re going to Mississippi to create social change and you love Eastland in your desire to create conditions which will redeem his children.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Children Inspirational Love Men
The moral man is he who is opposed to injustice per se, opposed to injustice wherever he finds it; the moral man looks for injustice first of all in himself.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Firsts Looks Men
There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement that would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that the absence of power also corrupts.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Movement Rights Strong
Every indifference to prejudice is suicide because, if I don’t fight all bigotry, bigotry itself will be strengthened and, sooner or later, it will return on me.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Fighting Prejudice Suicide
Every gay who is in the closet is ultimately a threat to the freedom of gays.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Fighting Gay Thinking
Surely, I must at all times attempt to obey the law of the state. But when the will of God and the will of the state conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Conflict Law States
God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Humanity Peace Ubuntu
You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Freedom Movement People
You have to all combine and fight a head-on battle – in the name of justice and equality – and even that’s going to be difficult. But if we let ourselves get separated so that we’re working for gays or school children or the aged, we’re in trouble.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Combine Difficult Fight Justice Name Ourselves Separate
I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Issues Military War
There are three ways in which one can deal with an injustice. (a) One can accept it without protest. (b) On can seek to avoid it. (c) One can resist the injustice non-violently. To accept it is to perpetuate it.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Accept Injustice Protest Seek Violent Way
Since Israel is a democratic state surrounded by essentially undemocratic states which have sworn her destruction, those interested in democracy everywhere must support Israel’s existence.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Country Democracy Support
I would say except when I have been attacked the black community has seldom seen fit to even mention the gay aspect. And since when I have been attacked I have usually been defended by the black community,
BAYARD RUSTIN

Gay Taken Thinking
When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. But when you’re right, you’re wrong anyhow.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Anyhow Racism Right Wrong
Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Destroyed Enraged Injustice
Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote: ‘The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics; 2) constitutional means; 3) democratic procedures; 4) respect for human personality; 5) a belief that all people are one.’
BAYARD RUSTIN

Careers Mean People
I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Believe Creative Trouble
You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Gay Rights Thinking
The proof that one truly believes is in action.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Action Believe Proof
I would say that the black newspapers have played it very straight. If I was attacked they simply published that I was attacked.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Attack Newspaper Play Publish Straight
If we desire a society in which men are brothers, then we must act towards one another with brotherhood. If we can build such a society, then we would have achieved the ultimate goal of human freedom.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Brother Goal Men
When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Acknowledge Dignity Society
I don’t want to seem intolerant to them and I think we have to say that to them with a great deal of affection, but remaining in the closet is the other side of the prejudice against gays. Because until you challenge it, you are not playing an active role in fighting it.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Deal Intolerant Prejudice Remaining Think
We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Community Peace Ubuntu
Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it at which point they can become human too.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Human Manifest Situation Social
The Journey of Reconciliation was organized not only to devise techniques for eliminating Jim Crow in travel, but also as a training ground for similar peaceful projects against discrimination in such major areas as employment and in the armed services.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Crow Journey Peaceful
Twenty-five, 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Character Gay Rights

When I say I love Eastland, it sounds preposterous a man who brutalizes people. But you love him or you wouldn’t be here. You’re going to Mississippi to create social change and you love Eastland in your desire to create conditions which will redeem his children.

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When I say I love Eastland, it sounds preposterous a man who brutalizes people. But you love him or you wouldn’t be here. You’re going to Mississippi to create social change and you love Eastland in your desire to create conditions which will redeem his children.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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