Any account of Rustin’s career, and his unique role as a theorist and practitioner of nonviolent resistance, must emphasize the international dimension of his work. Gandhi personally invited Rustin to voyage to India to participate in an international gathering of pacifists (that became the World Pacifist Congress) in early 1949. Although Gandhi was assassinated before the conference took place, Rustin’s visit to India and his in-depth conversations with Gandhi’s followers were formative experiences. This connection to Gandhi’s political philosophy, which many have argued Rustin articulated in a more coherent and consistent way than any other committed follower, was so deep and enduring that near the end of Rustin’s life, when a statue of Gandhi was dedicated in New York’s Union Square Park in October 1986, Rustin was tapped to be the keynote speaker.
The movie “Rustin” opens with a series of instantly recognizable images of the violence and vitriol with which white Americans reacted to Brown v. Board of Education — the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled racial segregation of children in public schools unconstitutional. We see the year 1960 appear on screen as we hear the important civil rights leader Ella Baker saying, “Things need to change and change now,” followed by notice of Rustin’s plan (in the end unrealized) to disrupt the Democratic Party’s national convention in Los Angeles that summer and call for urgent action on civil rights. This introduces the idea that between 1954 and the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, King had come to see Rustin as an important advisor and strategist. Yet Rustin’s reputation as the leading American exponent of Gandhi’s beliefs and methods was established by the early 1950s, and it was this that led Baker and others to urge a young King to seek Rustin out, as we see dramatized in the movie’s opening scene.
The relationship between Rustin and King began amid the 1955-1956 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. To protest segregated seating, African Americans refused to ride on city buses — an action triggered when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus. From that encounter until King’s assassination 12 years later, Rustin was a central — and contentious — figure in the civil rights movement, always pushing the movement in general, and King in particular, to take stances that were as bold and transformative as possible.