Abstract:
While communities grapple with combining the discourses of race and sexuality, as well as reviving the accomplishments of LGBTQ individuals through/in our public memories, the voice of Bayard Rustin, celebrated activist and noted contributor of the nonviolent resistance movement of the 1960s, demands to be heard. Though historians have modestly attended to Rustin's contributions and historical legacy, his ethos as a rhetorical figure has eluded scholarship within communication studies. Building upon a grounded construct of theoretical frameworks connecting public memory, queer public address, and intersectionality this study engages the rhetoric and public memory of Bayard Rustin. This study explores the rhetorical strategies available to a gay civil rights leader and how these strategies affect the legacy of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the future of gay rights, and discourses at the intersection of race and sexuality. Through examining his most popular pieces of discourse from 1942 to 1987, this study first attempts to recover the rhetoric of Rustin by comparing his rhetorical tactics across temporal and situational spaces. Second, this study analyzes the rhetoric surrounding contemporary sites of Rustin's memory in the service of intersectional resistance, queer history, and LGBTQ politics through a reading of the PBS documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, and subsequent curricula and discussion guides developed for middle and high school students. As a result, critique of Rustin's discourse offers the field of rhetorical studies implications concerning counter memory and intersectionality.
