Yesterday, as I listened to President Obama's rousing speech at the NAACP convention, I was reminded that a pioneering gay activist's adoptive mother was a charter member of the NAACP. The organization is celebrating its centennial of historic activity in American civil rights. Bayard Rustin's mother Julia Rustin, a black Quaker, distinguished herself for her lifetime of community activism. It's a fascinating historical footnote. Given the acceptance of LGBT people that Quakers later displayed, Julia Rustin might have been a PFLAG mom if she had lived today.
Outsports Readers can check out the profile of Bayard Rustin that I wrote for Outsports earlier this year, focusing on how he started his own civil-rights activism in the 1930s, while playing high school football in his Pennsylvania home town.
Yesterday, as I listened to President Obama's rousing speech at the NAACP convention, I was reminded that a pioneering gay activist's adoptive mother was a charter member of the NAACP. The organization is celebrating its centennial of historic activity in American civil rights. Bayard Rustin's mother Julia Rustin, a black Quaker, distinguished herself for her lifetime of community activism. It's a fascinating historical footnote. Given the acceptance of LGBT people that Quakers later displayed, Julia Rustin might have been a PFLAG mom if she had lived today.
Outsports Readers can check out the profile of Bayard Rustin that I wrote for Outsports earlier this year, focusing on how he started his own civil-rights activism in the 1930s, while playing high school football in his Pennsylvania home town.
