Guilford College unveiled the remodeled Bayard Rustin Center for LGBTQA Activism, Education and Reconciliation on March 16. The space was previously named the Queer and Allied Resource Center, but faculty and students worked to rededicate the space in honor of the late civil rights leader and openly gay Bayard Rustin. Rustin, who was raised a Quaker, believed strongly in nonviolence and influenced the civil rights movement both ideologically and strategically, planning the historic March on Washington.
The event included a keynote address by black lesbian social justice activist Mandy Carter, pictured here watching two students display the banner for the new space. Among other things, Carter cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition and Southerners On New Ground.
"It scares me that we don't know our history in terms of what's been done," Carter said to a packed room in the Gilmer Room on campus.
She said if she had known about Rustin while growing up, it would have had a tremendous positive impact on her life because she had a lack of queer black role models.
Professor Martha Lang, who helped generate the idea for the renamed center, emphasized a number of lessons and reminders to the audience.
"Think about our solidarity — the strength of our differences coming together," she said.
Other local events have commemorated Rustin recently, including a screening of the film Brother Outsider about his life in Winston-Salem and at UNC Greensboro. Check back with YES! Weekly soon for coverage of the emerging Queer People of Color Collective in Greensboro, who are hosting a meet and greet at the Glenwood public library this Saturday from 3-6 p.m.
photo and story by Eric Ginsburg
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