Windy City Media Group Frontpage News

THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

home search facebook twitter join
Gay News Sponsor Windy City Times 2023-12-13
DOWNLOAD ISSUE
Donate

Sponsor
Sponsor
Sponsor

  WINDY CITY TIMES

Civil-rights icon Bayard Rustin honored by Legacy LIVE Series
Legacy Project, Affinity Community Services, The Northalsted Business Alliance, The Center on Halsted join
by Gretchen Rachel Hammond
2016-08-31

This article shared 1439 times since Wed Aug 31, 2016
facebook twitter pin it google +1 reddit email


On Aug. 24, 1987, one of the most significant, audacious and passionate figures both in the United States civil rights movement and innumerable worldwide causes dedicated to the betterment of humanity and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom breathed his last breath.

Twenty-nine years to the day that Bayard Rustin bequeathed a lifetime of achievement and a mantel for future generations to take up in reaching for what he called the "ultimate goal of human freedom," the Chicago-based outdoor LGBT museum and LGBT educational advocacy organization The Legacy Project partnered with Affinity Community Services, The Northalsted Business Alliance and The Center on Halsted for an evening dedicated to that life and the man who forged it.

The event began with an invocation ceremony at The Legacy Walk's memorial plaque for Rustin at the 3300 block of North Halsted Street in Lake View.

Rustin's surviving partner, Walter Naegle, made the journey from New York to play a key role in the celebration.

"I usually spend these anniversaries by myself but, when [Legacy Project founder and executive director] Victor Salvo extended this invitation to come out here, I thought that this was something I really needed to do," Naegle said. "Because the Legacy Project is so important to educating, especially young people, about the history of the LGBT [community] and LGBT people of color."

"We are not afraid to say his name, Bayard Rustin," The Reverend Benjamin Ledell Reynolds asserted in leading the invocation. "We remember a visionary, an activist, a strategist, the one who has been christened The Unknown Hero of the Civil Rights Movement; a tireless crusader for justice, a disciple of Gandhi and a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr. We remember the architect of the legendary 1963 March on Washington."

"[He] dared to live as an openly gay man during a fiercely homophobic 1940s, '50s and '60s, when it was not convenient to do so," Reynolds added. "We remember that it was he who paved the way of possibilities for those of us today who would challenge the systems of society and be bold enough to walk in his footsteps and in our own truth."

A visceral portrait of those footsteps was captured in the 2003 Nancy D. Kates and Bennett Singer multi-award winning documentary Brother Outsider.

Following the invocation and a beautiful rendition of Amazing Grace by Broadway Methodist Church praise and worship leader Jackie Boyd, the film was screened for a capacity audience at the Center's Hoover Leppen Theatre.

In a lively post-screening question and answer session moderated by celebrated journalist, Guardian contributing writer and Out Magazine Editor-at-Large Zach Stafford, both Naegle and LGBTQ historian, author and retired UIC professor John D'Emilio examined aspects of the film and Rustin's life, work and legacy.

"I knew who [Rustin] was before I met him," Naegle said. "The person I came to know was also the person who sang to children in a refugee camp in Thailand. He was more of a loving, gentle and human figure in addition to being a militant pacifist."

D'Emilio acknowledged that, although his own work on Rustin began as an opportunistic angle into writing about the 1960s, he was "overwhelmed by his life."

"Every social movement of consequence, he was involved with," D'Emilio said. "There's a hardly a question you can ask yourself about how to make change in the world that Rustin's life won't help you find the answer to. I think of him as being one of the most important social-justice activists in 20th-century America—far beyond what people attribute to him."

Yet Rustin's erasure as such a figure from the historical narrative was something illustrated to Stafford earlier in the evening by a young gay man who admitted knowing nothing about him.

"[Rustin] was never in it for recognition," Naegle said. "He was in it because he loved to do the work."

"As a culture, we live with historical amnesia," D'Emilio noted. "In Rustin's case it was compounded by the Quaker influence which was really important to his life. It's the quality of the work that's been done and what you build rather than being the person who gets credit for it. His being gay in that generation made it doubly necessary for him to work in the background. All of that conspires to make him not noticed in history."

Repairing this glaring omission and others like it is part of the life-blood of The Legacy Project's mission.

Salvo said that, much in the spirit of the Rustin celebration, the organization intends to begin a tradition "of always tying history to something on a particular day and, whenever possible, to someone who is on The Legacy Walk and building a program around them."

"We need to bring our history and our culture into this community in a very tangible way," Salvo concluded.

The lessons, inspiration and hope that are embodied in Rustin's life served as a defining illustration of Salvo's point.

For more information about The Legacy Project, visit LegacyProjectChicago.org .


This article shared 1439 times since Wed Aug 31, 2016
facebook twitter pin it google +1 reddit email

Out and Aging
Presented By

  ARTICLES YOU MIGHT LIKE

Gay News

Windy City Times seeks nominations for 30 Under 30 Awards
2024-03-18
--From a press release - CHICAGO—After a four-year hiatus, Windy City Times has revived its 30 Under 30 Awards. Windy City Times is seeking to recognize 30 more outstanding LGBTQ+ individuals (and allies). Nominees should be 30 years or younger as ...


Gay News

Oprah, Niecy Nash-Betts honored at GLAAD Media Awards
2024-03-15
Oprah Winfrey and Niecy Nash-Betts were honored at the 35th Annual GLAAD Media Awards that took place in Los Angeles at The Beverly Hilton on March 14. Winfrey received the Vanguard Award, introduced by iconic Chicago ...


Gay News

Chicago History Museum announces "Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s - 70s exhibition
2024-03-14
--From a press release - CHICAGO (March 14, 2024) ā€” The Chicago History Museum is thrilled to announce its upcoming exhibition, "Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960sā€”70s." Set to open on Saturday, May 18, 2024, this exhibition is ...


Gay News

Women's History Month doesn't do enough to lift up Black lesbians
2024-03-12
Fifty years ago, in 1974, the Combahee River Collective (CRC) was founded in Boston by several lesbian and feminist women of African descent. As a sisterhood, they understood that their acts of protest were shouldered by ...


Gay News

Center on Halsted's signature Human First Gala to return
2024-03-11
--From a press release - CHICAGO, IL ā€” Center on Halsted's signature Human First Gala will be held on Saturday, April 20 at The Geraghty. The gala brings together LGBTQ+ community members and allies for an evening of celebration to recognize ...


Gay News

SAVOR Eldridge Williams talks new concepts, Beyonce, making history
2024-03-08
One restaurant would be enough for most people to handle. However, this year Eldridge Williams is opening two new concepts—including one that will be the first Black-owned country-and-western bar in the Midwest. Williams, an ally of ...


Gay News

SAVOR Let's Talk Womxn's 'More Than March'; Adobo Grill's tequila dinner
2024-03-06
I was fortunate enough to be invited to a culinary event that celebrates the achievement of women—and, fittingly, it happened during Women's History Month. On March 1, Let's Talk Womxn Chicago held its annual "More Than ...


Gay News

Without compromise: Holly Baggett explores lives of iconoclasts Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap
2024-03-04
Jane Heap (1883-1964) and Margaret Anderson (1886-1973), each of them a native Midwesterner, woman of letters and iconoclast, had a profound influence on literary culture in both America and Europe in the early 20th Century. Heap ...


Gay News

Anti-LGBTQ+ Republican McConnell to step down from leading U.S. Senate
2024-02-29
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) will step down from Senate leadership in November, having served in that capacity longer than any senator in history, The Advocate noted. McConnell has been a senator since 1985 and has ...


Gay News

ELECTIONS 2024 Raymond Lopez talks congressional run, Chuy Garcia, migrant crisis
2024-02-26
Chicago Ald. Raymond Lopez has been a member of City Council since 2015, representing the 15th Ward and making history as one of the city's first LGBTQ+ Latine alderman. Now, he is setting his sights on ...


Gay News

SAG Awards honor Streisand, few LGBTQ+ actors
2024-02-25
Queer entertainers made their mark—although not a major one—at the 2024 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, held Feb. 24 in Los Angeles. The event was live-streamed on Netflix for the first time. Indigenous and Two-Spirit actor ...


Gay News

Samuel Savoir-Faire Williams's violin stylings help COH mark Black History Month
2024-02-23
As part of its celebration of Black History Month, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St., presented a solo jazz performance by violinist Samuel Savoir-Faire Williams on Feb. 21. The two-hour long performance presented a showcase ...


Gay News

Oprah Winfrey, Niecy Nash-Betts to be honored at the 35 annual GLAAD Media Awards in LA March 14
2024-02-20
--From a press release - Los Angeles, CA -Feb. 20, 2024 - GLAAD announced that global media leader, producer, philanthropist, actress and author Oprah Winfrey will receive GLAAD'sVanguard Award and Emmy-winning actress and producer Niecy ...


Gay News

SHOWBIZ Raven-Symone, women's sports, Wayne Brady, Jinkx Monsoon, British Vogue
2024-02-09
In celebration of Black History Month, the LA LGBT Center announced that lesbian entertainer Raven-Symone will be presented with the Center's Bayard Rustin Award at its new event, Highly Favored, per a press release. She joins ...


Gay News

GALECA announces nominees for the Dorian Film Awards
2024-02-07
--From a press release - Feb. 5, 2024 - GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, consisting of over 500 entertainment critics, journalists and media icons, today announced the group's democratically chosen nominees for its 15th Dorian Film Awards. All of ...


 


Copyright © 2024 Windy City Media Group. All rights reserved.
Reprint by permission only. PDFs for back issues are downloadable from
our online archives.

Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings, and
photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no
responsibility may be assumed for unsolicited materials.

All rights to letters, art and photos sent to Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago
Gay and Lesbian News and Feature Publication) will be treated
as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and as such,
subject to editing and comment. The opinions expressed by the
columnists, cartoonists, letter writers, and commentators are
their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature Publication).

The appearance of a name, image or photo of a person or group in
Nightspots (Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times
(a Chicago Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature
Publication) does not indicate the sexual orientation of such
individuals or groups. While we encourage readers to support the
advertisers who make this newspaper possible, Nightspots (Chicago
GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay, Lesbian
News and Feature Publication) cannot accept responsibility for
any advertising claims or promotions.

 
 

TRENDINGBREAKINGPHOTOS







Sponsor


 



Donate


About WCMG      Contact Us      Online Front  Page      Windy City  Times      Nightspots
Identity      BLACKlines      En La Vida      Archives      Advanced Search     
Windy City Queercast      Queercast Archives     
Press  Releases      Join WCMG  Email List      Email Blast      Blogs     
Upcoming Events      Todays Events      Ongoing Events      Bar Guide      Community Groups      In Memoriam     
Privacy Policy     

Windy City Media Group publishes Windy City Times,
The Bi-Weekly Voice of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Community.
5315 N. Clark St. #192, Chicago, IL 60640-2113 • PH (773) 871-7610 • FAX (773) 871-7609.