[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 39 (Tuesday, March 5, 2019)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E242]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              INTRODUCTION OF THE BAYARD RUSTIN STAMP ACT

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                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, March 5, 2019

  Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Bayard 
Rustin Stamp Act. This bill would direct the United States Postmaster 
General to issue a forever stamp to commemorate the life and work of 
Bayard Rustin.
  Born March 17, 1912, Bayard Rustin became one of the most important 
leaders in the 20th century civil rights movement. At a young age, 
Rustin learned the values of nonviolence and peacekeeping from his 
grandparents' Quaker faith, and he would continue to build these values 
into his life as a civil rights movement leader.
  Rustin attended City College of New York, where he joined a 
progressive club that aimed to remedy racial issues during turbulent 
times. His time with the club was short lived, but it inspired him to 
join the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an organization that became a 
champion for labor rights, equity and world peace.
  His time with the Fellowship of Reconciliation led Rustin to become a 
leader in the 1947 ``Journey to Reconciliation,'' where white and black 
people across the South rode buses together to challenge segregation 
laws, a precursor to the Freedom Rides.
  Rustin was an advisor in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s inner circle as he 
advocated pacifism and nonviolence for achieving equal treatment for 
African Americans. He applied his brilliant strategic mind to the use 
of aggressive, peaceful action in the civil rights movement and 
throughout his life as an activist.
  His most important role was as the chief organizer of the 1963 March 
on Washington, D.C., the largest demonstration ever organized at the 
time, in which a quarter of a million people turned out to demand civil 
rights for African Americans.
  In the years after the civil rights movement, Rustin used his 
background as a gay man to inspire others to advocate for and to 
achieve LGBT rights. He remained a strategist and public speaker for 
workers' rights movements, including co-founding the A. Philip Randolph 
Institute for black trade union members. Rustin committed to promoting 
social good, and advocating for the disenfranchised, until his death, 
in 1987.
  I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

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