Reflecting on ‘Rustin’
Read the full article online at thegavoice.com.
George C. Wolfe’s film, “Rustin,” garnered 10s across the board as an illuminating portrayal of the pivotal activist and the civil rights movement to which he gave utter allegiance. It bestows overdue recognition upon Bayard Rustin, the Black gay genius who organized the movement’s defining act, the 1963 March on Washington.
Wolfe’s account of Rustin’s work and personal life is the kind of story that rarely reaches a wide audience. It is not the stock civil rights saga in which all the Blacks are hetero and noble and the whites either rabid racists or complicit cowards save for the exceptional white savior. In this tale, Black people, Black men especially, are shown dually as oppressed and oppressor. As one who was both Black and homosexual, Rustin contended with intersections of racism and homophobia, respectively, perpetrated by white and Black people.
Rustin possessed vision, wisdom, skills that suited his efforts, innate flair, and a compelling presence, all signature gifts of a born leader. By the time of the film’s setting, he had spent two decades fighting for racial justice and nonviolent social change, including his mentoring of a young Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery bus boycott.
Rustin was committed to his people’s liberation as well as his own as a Black gay man who dared to live his life without closets or beards. Wolfe’s coverage of Rustin’s romantic life shows us how Rustin and other queer men of the era negotiated intimacy across a cultural minefield of stigma and criminalization. Rustin has an uncommitted involvement with Tom, a white college student and movement ally who serves as his personal assistant. When Rustin mocks Tom’s stress-relieving marijuana as illegal, Tom quips, “So are we.” Rustin takes up with a closeted organizer, Elias (a fictional character), who asks to be taught “how to not be afraid.” While Elias finds sensual salvation in their intimacy, he dreads the moment that his nature will be exposed. By contrast, Rustin no longer fears the heterosexual gaze and invites Elias to live as his true nature calls. Gently, he tells him, “How can you speak of love when your heart is disconnected from your flesh?”
Congressman Adam Clayton Powell and white supremacist senator Strom Thurmond wedged Rustin’s sexuality to undermine his work (Powell) and the success of the movement (Thurmond). Jeffrey Wright gives a surly rendering of Powell as a jealous narcissist who resents King’s ascent to unrivaled acclaim. He threatens to circulate allegations of a sexual liaison between Rustin and King to prevent King from leading a protest at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. Powell’s ploy works, King capitulates. Three years later, Thurmond draws from the same playbook in his effort to derail the upcoming March on Washington by labeling Rustin a pervert and a Communist.
The visibility of Ella Baker (Audra McDonald) and Dr. Anna Hedgeman (CCH Pounder) attested to the reality of women’s leadership and the sexism that blunted their power. Baker (who actually co-founded the SCLC with Rustin) is shown advising King to endorse a protest and encouraging Rustin to reconnect with King. The real Baker went on record noting how King and the other men would dismiss her ideas because of her gender. Hedgeman chides the men for excluding women from the speakers’ roster at the march, to no avail. Mahalia Jackson was the only woman who took the stage.
Wolfe’s history indicts a tradition of Black activism self-sabotaged by sexism and homophobia within a repressive climate that transcends racial differences. Powell and Thurmond are polar political opposites who manipulate anti-gay biases mutually held by Black and white constituencies. NAACP president Roy Wilkins co-signs on Powell’s ploy referring to Rustin’s sexuality as “the unmentionable.” Even King himself accedes to Powell’s gay-baiting threat and betrays his mentor. In pushing Rustin and their women comrades to the margin, these men weakened the movement. In emulating the ways of cisgender, heterosexual white men in power, they preserved the status quo and forestalled radical change.
“Rustin” resonates for Black queer folk differently from any other audience because his story is, in the ways that matter most, our story. Black queer people know something about allegiance and the keeping of secrets. We still risk rejection, condemnation, and death if we dare act as ourselves and say yes to spirit and flesh. We give our talents and dollars over to institutions that accept our contributions yet refuse to honor our full presence. Our families depend on our loyalties whether we speak our full names or not. Yet in the pit of their stomach, in the marrow of their soul, our people remain unsettled about us as long as they refuse to reconcile what they want to be with what they see in the mirror. A friend once remembered this of Rustin: “Wherever he was, he stood at a rakish angle to it. Rustin, the man and the film, presents instruction and begs introspection about the power of a rakish angle.