Recognizing Bayard Rustin for his lifelong leadership in the civil rights, labor, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights movements and for his exemplary dedication to realizing true equality and freedom in the United States.

Whereas Bayard Rustin was born March 17, 1912, in West Chester, Pennsylvania; Whereas Bayard Rustin combined the pacifism of his Quaker religion with nonviolent movements of Mahatma Gandhi; Whereas Bayard Rustin was inspired by James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. Du Bois, among others, to protest Jim Crow laws in the West Chester community; Whereas Bayard Rustin attended City College in New York, where he was active in the movement to defend and free the Scottsboro Boys in 1936; Whereas Bayard Rustin was a principal leader in planning a March on Washington in June 1941 to protest discrimination in the armed forces and defense sector, in response to which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt preemptively issued an Executive order ending segregation in the defense industries; Whereas Bayard Rustin worked in the State of California to protect the property rights of Japanese-Americans imprisoned in internment camps as a result of World War II; Whereas Bayard Rustin, while imprisoned in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary for conscientious objection to World War II, organized a protest against segregated seating in the prison dining hall; Whereas Bayard Rustin was an early leader of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), and participated in a CORE initiative to integrate interstate buses by challenging race-based seating requirements on buses in Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee; Whereas Bayard Rustin advised Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on nonviolent tactics during the Montgomery Bus Boycotts; Whereas Bayard Rustin, along with Dr. King, led the initial organization of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to coordinate the Black faith community in political activism; Whereas Bayard Rustin served as chief organizer for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, the landmark event credited with the passages of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act; Whereas Bayard Rustin, as the co-founder of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, worked tirelessly to achieve equality for African-Americans in the labor movement; Whereas Bayard Rustin championed the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights movement throughout his career, working as a human rights advocate and testifying for New York State’s Gay Rights Bill; and Whereas Bayard Rustin died August 24, 1987, a leader in civil rights and democracy in the United States and an inspiration to generations of activists after him: Now, therefore, be it That the House of Representatives recognizes Bayard Rustin for his lifelong leadership in the civil rights, labor, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights movements and for his exemplary dedication to realizing true equality and freedom in the United States.

Summary: Recognizes Bayard Rustin for his leadership in the civil rights, labor, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights movements and for his dedication to realizing equality and freedom in the United States.