Latest Bayard Rustin Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• If anyone thinks they're going to get anything out of the Reagan administration for any particular group, they're wrong! 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

  Children, School, Fighting

  Source: kalamu.com

• If we want to do away with the injustice to gays it will not be done because we get rid of the injustice to gays. It will be done because we are forwarding the effort for the elimination of injustice to all. And we will win the rights for gays, or blacks, or Hispanics, or women within the context of whether we are fighting for all.

  Bayard Rustin

  Fighting, Gay, Winning

  Source: kalamu.com

• Every gay who is in the closet is ultimately a threat to the freedom of gays. 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

  Fighting, Gay, Thinking

  Source: kalamu.com

• Black gay activists should try to build coalitions of people for the elimination of all injustice.

  Bayard Rustin

  Gay, People, Black

  Source: kalamu.com

• If people do not organize in the name of their interest, the world will not take them as being serious. And that is the chief reason that every person who is gay should join some gay organization. Because he must prove to the world that he cares about his own freedom.

  Bayard Rustin

  Gay, Names, Organization

  Source: kalamu.com

• People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.

  Bayard Rustin

  Fighting, People, Given

  Source: kalamu.com

• You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people. Therefore join the movement as individuals against anti-Semitism, join the movements for the rights of Hispanics, the rights of women, the rights of gays. In other words, I think that each movement has to stand on its own feet because it has a particular agenda, but it can ask other people.

  Bayard Rustin

  Gay, Thinking, Rights

  Source: kalamu.com

• I believe there are certain types of movements which cannot be married.

  Bayard Rustin

  Believe, Movement, Married

  Source: kalamu.com

• 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, I would say that the black newspapers have played it very straight. If I was attacked they simply published that I was attacked, if I was defended they simply said I had been defended. But I don't think they have taken any effort at maligning me or maligning gays or making any effort to give to people anything that wasn't news.

  Bayard Rustin

  Taken, Gay, Thinking

  Source: kalamu.com