UWS community gathers to recognize non-violence organizer Bayard Rustin

When University of Wisconsin-Superior students, faculty and community residents gather for the march in recognition of Bayard Rustin at 3 p.m. today, Mary Alice Harvey will be glad to see the honor given to a man she met and admired. Mary Alice, a resident of Duluth and member of the Duluth-Superior Friends Meeting (Quakers), had the pleasure of meeting the renowned non-violence organizer and mentor of Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights Movement.

"I am glad to see that he is finally being recognized for his role in fostering non-violence in the Civil Rights movement. His role was all but forgotten because he worked behind the scenes so his homosexuality wouldn't detract from the movement message."

Rustin, the executive director of the March on Washington, is being honored by a march from UWS' Swenson Hall to the Douglas County Courthouse on Tuesday. The march is organized by the University of Wisconsin Superior Gender Equity Center, Alliance, and its Black Student Union.

Rustin was raised by a Quaker grandmother, became one of the most influential organizers of the non-violence movement, and was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during WWII. He was forced to work behind the scenes after being jailed for homosexuality in the 1950s. He was a collaborator with black labor organizer Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King. An organizational genius, he made Randolph's proposed 1941 march on Washington a history-changing reality in 1963.

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