Sarah Azaransky Spoke on U.S. Civil Rights Activist Bayard Rustin

On November 2, 2017, Sarah Azaranksy, an assistant professor of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary, spoke at the Schell Center’s Human Rights Workshop on the work and legacy of civil rights activist and intellectual Bayard Rustin. Rustin is the focus of Azaransky’s latest book, This Worldwide Struggle: Religion and the International Roots of the Civil Rights Movement. As Azaransky stressed at the Human Rights Workshop, Rustin’s work has important implications for understanding the U.S. civil rights movement and rethinking contemporary advocacy.

Azaransky has long been interested in the history of social movements and ethics. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1998, she researched cross-community peace organizing by women in Northern Ireland, Israel and the West Bank, and Sri Lanka as a Watson Fellow. She then obtained her Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2007.

At the Human Rights Workshop, Azaransky began by discussing Rustin’s significant (though frequently overlooked) contributions to the civil rights movement. Among these were organizing nonviolent campaigns a decade before such boycotts and other nonviolent actions became widespread, writing the draft of Martin Luther King’s first piece of published work, “Our Struggle,” and helping to organize the March on Washington in 1963.

She then described Rustin’s commitment to a global racial consciousness. Rustin was one of a group of black Christian intellectuals who traveled in the 1930s–1950s to nations engaged in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles. Rustin and others emerged from these trips convinced that American democracy lagged behind other nations and needed to be transformed. According to Azaransky, such convictions greatly influenced the later phases of the U.S. civil rights movement. She also maintains that despite the realistic attitude that Rustin and his colleagues had towards the state of race relations in the U.S., they “had this confidence in the possibility of the American project.” But, she added, “I’m not sure they’d have that same confidence now.”

After giving this historical background, Azaransky emphasized, “I am most interested in what Rustin and his colleagues can teach us about ethics.” Rustin’s Quaker faith and upbringing led him to advocate nonviolent resistance and argue that only collective power could bring justice for all. Rustin held that it was a moral obligation to refuse to cooperate in processes and systems that rely on violence. To Azaransky, these beliefs show that Rustin “had an intuitive understanding of human rights,” even if he never used the term ‘human rights.’

Azaransky explained that Rustin also cared deeply about the practical applications of his beliefs. For instance, he promoted noncooperation not only as a moral necessity but also as a strategic tool that could open up space for new and creative means of advocacy. Azaransky suggested that Rustin would be impressed by the Black Lives Matter movement for developing a decentralized, local social movement and inventing new forms of activism. Moreover, she maintained that today’s activists can learn from Rustin’s ideas. Azaransky expressed frustration that many contemporary advocates are overly concerned with outcomes; Rustin, she said, would caution them: “We never know what’s going to happen, but we have to do the right thing, and that’s all we can control.”

Azaransky also shared her disappointment that many of her students today are skeptical of the nonviolent resistance that Rustin championed. “Nonviolence has become coded as naiveté,” she lamented. “People don’t understand what it is philosophically, religiously, or practically.” Azaransky posited that if we thought more about what nonviolence means, intellectually and practically, it would be more readily adopted as a tool for social justice. But, as Azaransky added, it takes great “moral courage” to follow in the footsteps of those who led and participated in nonviolent movements, and she admitted that she is still working to turn Rustin’s teachings into action.