Rooting Out Injustice, First in Ourselves

Meet Bayard Rustin, the Quaker heart of the civil rights movement.

Chief tactician of the civil rights movement. Principal organizer of the March on Washington. Bayard Rustin was these things and more—a powerhouse in the struggle for racial equality in the United States and in the peace movement around the world. His accomplishments place him among the twentieth century’s most consequential activists. Yet something essential has been missing from nearly every account of his life: his faith.

Speaking to an audience early in his career, Rustin urged them to oppose injustice in all aspects of life, both within themselves and in the world around them. It was a conviction he would spend the rest of his life enacting—and it was a conviction grounded in Quaker belief and practice.

Rooting Out Injustice, First in Ourselves is a groundbreaking biography that reveals the faith at the heart of Rustin’s story. The book shows how Quaker belief and practice animated everything Rustin did: from his broad-reaching trainings in nonviolence, to the speeches and articles he ghost-wrote for Martin Luther King Jr., to his vision of a new political majority. It also illuminates Rustin’s complex identity as a gay Black man within the Quaker tradition. When we read Rustin with knowledge of Quaker theological commitments and ethics, we see him with fresh eyes—recognizing him not only as one of the architects of the civil rights movement, but as a significant religious thinker in his own right.

Rustin’s nonviolence was simultaneously a spiritual practice and a political strategy, and his vision remains illuminating for organizers today. A compelling read for anyone interested in modern American history, social justice, and the interplay of faith and action.