Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This study charts Bayard Rustin’s contentious career as a biographical subject, from 1987 to 2013. Interpreting biographies of Rustin as “ethically constitutive stories,” I argue that shifting accounts of his life-history address public debates over issue definition and political conduct in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. At stake in rival portrayals of Rustin, then, is not just memory of him but the very idea of civil rights, including how and by whom such rights were—and ought to be—pursued. The article examines the production and reception of two distinct waves of biographical representation, with close attention to how each narrates the pursuit and proper locus of civil rights. I end with notes toward an alternate rendering of Bayard Rustin. Instead of recovering his singular authority vis-à-vis the Civil Rights Movement, the concluding “story” reckons with the manifold history of black politics by reappraising the specificity of “black and gay” peoplehood.
Author: Marcus Lee
Institution: Princeton University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,450
OpenAlex ID: W4406149213