This panel examines how two “fellow travelers” of the Quakers, Charles C. Burleigh (1810-1878) and Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), theorized and practiced the relationship between pacifism and racial justice in their respective political projects. A broader discussion with an esteemed respondent will explore how Quaker attitudes toward racial justice transformed from the Civil War through the mid-twentieth century.
Charles Calistus Burleigh (1810-1878) was a proponent of Immediate Abolition who was also a committed adherent to principles of peace and non-violence. His pacifism and non-resistant ideas were tried in actual struggle, as he was present at some infamous attacks upon the Abolitionists, such as the attempt in Boston to attack William Lloyd Garrison (1835) and the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall (1838). Based primarily on original archival research, this presentation looks at his combination of theory and practice, aided by an eclectic approach to religious resources from groups as disparate as the Congregationalists, Baptists and Quakers, that highlight how Burleigh's direct engagement with the struggle helped accelerate the diffusion of non-violent ideas from many sources into a genuine practice that, despite its shortcomings, can speak to issues of social justice that remain cogent today, including race, gender, capital punishment and the violence of war.
Scholars have underplayed Bayard Rustin’s Quakerism. Labeled a “Gandhian,” Rustin is said to have prioritized techniques Gandhi tested in India over biblically-based teachings about nonviolence from a distant past. Gandhi did influence Rustin; however, I argue that Quakerism played a key role, as shown in Rustin’s “holy experiments'' at the Ashland Federal Penitentiary and at interracial institutes he organized. Rustin’s Quakerism is revealed as a radical habitus (N. Crossley). Rustin called on fellow Quakers to “expend our energies in developing a creative method of dealing non-violently with conflict,” to “make war impossible in ourselves and then make it impossible in society,” and to share with others what Quakers already have at hand: “a pattern for a ‘way of life that can do away with the occasion of war.’” Rustin’s experiments, grounded in this “way of life,” powerfully influenced non-violent direct actions he organized.
| Emma Lapsansky-Werner | elapsans@haverford.edu | View |