War by Other Means by Daniel Akst

Author:Daniel Akst [Akst, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

A ONE-MAN ARMY

PEACE COULD HAVE HAD no more captivating emissary during the war than the FOR’s roving ambassador, Bayard Rustin, whose travels afforded him a panorama of pacifist struggles at a time when many conscientious objectors were quite literally in the wilderness. But he observed, as well, the movement’s stubborn vitality—and its potential. Based in New York, where much of FOR headquarters was already in his thrall, Rustin nonetheless spent a great deal of his time on the road. In December of 1942 he reported that “Since September I have traveled some seven thousand miles from coast to coast, in New England, and in the South. In all I have visited 24 states, presented our message to some five thousand people, counselled with numerous men in eight C.P.S. camps from San Dimas, California to Coshocton, Ohio. I visited the Japanese concentration camp at Manzanar. I spoke before a number of luncheon service clubs such as Kiwanis and Rotary, presented the principles of non-violence in a score of colleges and to many young people’s groups and high school assemblies. I visited about fifty F.O.R local groups and cells.”[1]

Rustin covered all this ground by train, bus, or hitchhiking. Impressive though his itinerary may be, it doesn’t begin to capture the impact he had on people everywhere he went. The editors of Fellowship called Rustin, with some justification, “FOR’s one-man nonviolent army.”[2] He captivated audiences with his oratory, transported them with his heartrending tenor singing voice, rejected discrimination anywhere he encountered it, and withstood violence with disarming stoicism and dignity. Once, according to the pacifist Bronson Clark, Rustin was traveling through Texas on a train carrying seven German POWs who were being taken to the dining car for an early meal. On the way a woman stood and slapped one of the Germans across the face. When Rustin asked the military policeman in charge if he could speak with the Germans he was told it was against regulations. “But there is no regulation saying I cannot sing to them,” Rustin persisted, and the MP admitted as much. “So Bayard sang, in German, Schubert’s ‘Serenade’ followed by ‘A Stranger in a Distant Land.’ ”[3]

Carolyn Lindquist, an undergraduate at Ohio Wesleyan University, said she would “never forget that man and his nonviolent approach to solving problems,” adding that “he was one of the unsung heroes of my time.” Her black classmate Wallace Nelson was converted to pacifism by his encounter with Rustin. “I was always yelling and getting dragged out of public places when I protested against racial discrimination. It was Bayard Rustin who explained and demonstrated to me the demeanor you should adopt…simply insist on your dignity and your rights as a human being.” (As a draft resister, Nelson would spend time at a CPS camp and in prison, later becoming a tax resister and leading figure in CORE.) And a former student at the Oakwood School, a Friends institution in Poughkeepsie, New York, recalled Rustin giving a “marvelous speech” there about nonviolence. “He concluded by singing beautifully to us a program of black spirituals and Elizabethan songs.

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