In thinking about what I wanted to talk about for July Fourth this year, I had a bunch of candidates. The contrarian in me wanted to put up something on "what to the slave was the magna carta" -- but I couldn't come close to Tom Ginsburg's outstanding op-ed in the New York Times. And I thought about reposting a classic, on the origins of the game of Monopoly in early-twentieth century socialist thought. But I wanted something new and also related to the work that I'm doing these days: the campaign for equality in the years before Brown. Paul Robeson, Karl Llewellyn's stand against lynching, and Bayard Rustin are all pieces of this.
I'm particularly interested in Rustin because of his Quaker background and probably not the least because I grew up in the same town. His civil rights activism stretched to my new hometown of Chapel Hill -- where he was arrested for trying to integrate a bus in 1947. That's another of the shameful episodes in Chapel Hill's history with Jim Crow.
So today I'm posting a picture of one of the two houses were Rustin lived while he was growing up in West Chester, Pennsylvania that are still extant. The reason I chose this house is because it's on the same block as where Horace Pippin lived. Hence it's testimony to something very exciting going on in African America culture here in West Chester.
Anyway, happy fourth of July to you and your family.
Just in case anyone else is interested in this, as far as I can tell, Rustin had at least three addresses in West Chester -- the first comes from the 1920 census (113 North New Street -- it's no longer extant); the second from the 1930 census (316 West Gay Street -- which is pictured above); the third from the 1932 West Chester City Directory (132 East Union Street). After Rustin left for New York City in 1937 there are two other addresses for his grandparents (who are the people who raised him). One from the 1940 census (336 East Market Street, which is no longer extant) and one from his grandfather's death certificate, 131 East Barnard Street.
Update as of July 4, 2016: I'm thinking about this morning on Marc Poirier's question of where should we commemorate the legal history of the struggle for gay rights? We made a long stride toward that recently with the dedication of Stonewall as a national monument. But I continue to think there are a lot of places around the country, such as Bayard Rustin's childhood homes and also Rufus King's homes and grave.
Also a particularly appropriate choice in light of the recent Obergefell case.
Posted by: Howard Katz | July 04, 2015 at 05:14 PM