title: Tony Accardo

text: In the 1940s, Accardo continued to gain power in the Outfit. As the decade progressed, senior members of the Outfit were investigated and charged with using the threat of strike action by the labor unions they controlled to extort millions of dollars from Hollywood studios. Nitti, who was claustrophobic and fearful of serving a second prison term, committed suicide in 1943. Paul "The Waiter" Ricca, who had been the "de facto" boss since Capone's imprisonment, took the role officially and named Accardo as underboss. Ricca and Accardo would run the Outfit for the next 30 years until Ricca's death in 1972. When Ricca subsequently received a 10-year prison sentence for his part in the Hollywood scandal, Accardo became acting boss. Three years later, when Ricca was barred from contact with mobsters as a condition for his parole, Accardo then became boss of the Outfit; in practice, he shared power with Ricca, who remained in the background as a senior consultant.


title: Tony Accardo

text: Under Accardo's leadership in the late 1940s, the Outfit moved into slot and vending machines, counterfeiting cigarette and liquor tax stamps, and expanding narcotics smuggling. Accardo placed slot machines in gas stations, restaurants and bars throughout the Outfit's territory. Outside of Chicago, the Outfit expanded into Las Vegas and took influence over gaming away from the Five Families of New York City. Accardo made sure that all the legal Las Vegas casinos used his slot machines. In Kansas and Oklahoma, he took advantage of the official ban on alcohol sales to introduce bootlegged alcohol. The Outfit eventually dominated organized crime in most of the western United States. To reduce the Outfit's exposure to legal prosecution, Accardo phased out some traditional activities such as labor racketeering and extortion. He also converted the Outfit's brothel business into call girl services. The result of these changes was a golden era of profitability and influence for the Outfit.


title: Tony Accardo

text: Accardo and Ricca emphasized keeping a low profile and let flashier figures, such as Sam Giancana, attract attention instead. For example, when professional wrestlers Lou Albano and Tony Altomare, wrestling as a Mafia-inspired tag team called "The Sicilians", came to Chicago in 1961, Accardo persuaded the men to drop the gimmick to avoid any mob-related publicity. By using tactics such as these, Accardo and Ricca were able to run the Outfit much longer than Capone. Ricca once said, "Accardo had more brains for breakfast than Capone had in a lifetime".


title: Tony Accardo

text: After 1957, Accardo turned over the official position as boss to Giancana, because of "heat" from the IRS. Accardo then became the Outfit's "consigliere", stepping away from the day-to-day running of the organization, but he still retained considerable power and demanded ultimate respect. Giancana still had to obtain the sanction of Accardo and Ricca on major business, including murders.


title: Tony Accardo

text: However, this working relationship eventually broke down. Unlike Accardo, the widowed Giancana lived an ostentatious lifestyle, frequenting posh nightclubs and dating high-profile singer Phyllis McGuire. Giancana also refused to distribute some of the lavish profits from Outfit casinos in Iran and Central America to the rank-and-file members. Many in the Outfit also felt that Giancana was attracting too much attention from the FBI, which was forever tailing his car around the Chicago metropolitan area. Around 1966, after spending a year in jail on federal contempt of court charges, Accardo and Ricca replaced Giancana with Aiuppa. In June 1975, after spending most of his Outfit-exile years in Mexico and unceremoniously being booted from that country, Giancana was murdered in the basement apartment of his home, in Oak Park, Illinois, while cooking Italian sausages and escarole.


title: Tony Accardo

text: Shortly afterwards, the three suspected thieves and four related persons were found strangled and with their throats cut. Law enforcement officials believed Accardo had ordered the killings in retaliation for the burglary. In 2002, this theory was confirmed on the witness stand by Outfit turncoat Nicholas Calabrese, who had participated in all of the murders. The surviving assassins were all convicted in the Family Secrets trial, and sentenced to long prison terms.


title: Tony Accardo

text: In 1934, Accardo met Clarice Pordzany, a Polish-American chorus girl. They later married and had two daughters, Marie Judith and Linda Lee, and adopted two sons, Joseph Frank and Anthony Ross.


title: Tony Accardo

text: Several of Accardo's family members have had careers in the National Football League. His daughter Marie married Palmer Pyle, who played guard for the Baltimore Colts, Minnesota Vikings, and Oakland Raiders. Their son Eric Kumerow played linebacker for the Miami Dolphins, and Eric's son Jake currently plays wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills. Eric's sister Cheryl married John Bosa, who played defensive end for the Dolphins. They have two sons, Joey and Nick, both of whom also currently play defensive end: Joey for the Los Angeles Chargers, and Nick for the San Francisco 49ers.


title: Tony Accardo

text: For most of his married life, Accardo lived in River Forest, Illinois. The six-bedroom, six-bath home he owned on Franklin Avenue in River Forest contained two bowling lanes, an indoor swimming pool and a pipe organ. When he started receiving attention from the IRS about his apparent high lifestyle, he bought a ranch home on the 1400 block of North Ashland Avenue, in River Forest, and installed a vault. His neighbor and friend Dr. Jim Carto lived across the street off Ashland Ave in the Mars Candy Mansion and was rumored to have assisted in providing medical care. Due to their similar sounding last names, Dr. Carto was often confused with Accardo and became respected as a member of the Accardo family. Dr. Carto and his wife Rose (Kolanko) who was a nurse, Dr. Leon Kolanko (brother) were rumored as Accardo's personal physicians who may have helped assist in medical care "off the books." Accardo's official job was that of a beer salesman for a Chicago brewery.


title: Tony Accardo

text: In the late 1970s, Accardo bought a home in Palm Springs, California, flying to Chicago to preside over Outfit "sit-downs" and mediate disputes. By this time, his personal holdings included legal investments in commercial office buildings, retail centers, lumber farms, paper factories, hotels, car dealerships, trucking companies, newspaper companies, restaurants and travel agencies.


title: Tony Accardo

text: Accardo spent his last years in Barrington Hills, Illinois living with his daughter and son-in-law. On May 22, 1992, Anthony Accardo died of respiratory and heart conditions at age 86. Accardo is buried in a crypt in the mausoleum at Queen of Heaven Cemetery, in Hillside, Illinois. Despite an arrest record dating back to 1922, Accardo spent only one night in jail or avoided the inside of a cell entirely (depending on the source).


title: Second Balkan War

text: The Second Balkan War was a conflict which broke out when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 16 (O.S.) / 29 (N.S.) June 1913. Serbian and Greek armies repulsed the Bulgarian offensive and counter-attacked, entering Bulgaria. With Bulgaria also having previously engaged in territorial disputes with Romania and the bulk of Bulgarian forces engaged in the south, the prospect of an easy victory incited Romanian intervention against Bulgaria. The Ottoman Empire also took advantage of the situation to regain some lost territories from the previous war. When Romanian troops approached the capital Sofia, Bulgaria asked for an armistice, resulting in the Treaty of Bucharest, in which Bulgaria had to cede portions of its First Balkan War gains to Serbia, Greece and Romania. In the Treaty of Constantinople, it lost Adrianople to the Ottomans.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The political developments and military preparations for the Second Balkan War attracted an estimated 200 to 300 war correspondents from around the world.


title: Second Balkan War

text: During the First Balkan War, the Balkan League (Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece) succeeded in driving out the Ottoman Empire from its European provinces (Albania, Macedonia, Sandžak and Thrace), leaving the Ottomans with only East Thrace. The Treaty of London, signed on 30 May 1913, which ended the war, acknowledged the Balkan states' gains west of the Enos–Midia line, drawn from Midia (Kıyıköy) on the Black Sea coast to Enos (Enez) on the Aegean Sea coast, on an "uti possidetis" basis, and created an independent Albania.


title: Second Balkan War

text: However, the relations between the victorious Balkan allies quickly soured over the division of the spoils, especially in Macedonia. During the pre-war negotiations that had resulted in the establishment of the Balkan League, Serbia and Bulgaria signed a secret agreement on 13 March 1912 which determined their future boundaries, in effect sharing northern Macedonia between them. In case of a postwar disagreement, the area to the north of the Kriva Palanka–Ohrid line (with both cities going to the Bulgarians), had been designated as a "disputed zone" under Russian arbitration and the area to the south of this line had been assigned to Bulgaria. During the war, the Serbs succeeded in capturing an area far south of the agreed border, down to the Bitola–Gevgelija line (both in Serbian hands). At the same time, the Greeks advanced north, occupying Thessaloniki shortly before the Bulgarians arrived, and establishing a common Greek border with Serbia.


title: Second Balkan War

text: When Bulgarian delegates in London bluntly warned the Serbs that they must not expect Bulgarian support on their Adriatic claims, the Serbs angrily replied that that was a clear withdrawal from the prewar agreement of mutual understanding according to the Kriva Palanka-Adriatic line of expansion, but the Bulgarians insisted that in their view, the Vardar Macedonian part of the agreement remained active and the Serbs were still obliged to surrender the area as agreed. The Serbs answered by accusing the Bulgarians of maximalism, pointing out that if they lost both northern Albania and Vardar Macedonia, their participation in the common war would have been virtually for nothing.


title: Second Balkan War

text: When Bulgaria called upon Serbia to honor the pre-war agreement over northern Macedonia, the Serbs, displeased at the Great Powers' requiring them to give up their gains in northern Albania, adamantly refused to evacuate any more territory. The developments essentially ended the Serbo-Bulgarian alliance and made a future war between the two countries inevitable. Soon thereafter, minor clashes broke out along the borders of the occupation zones with the Bulgarians against the Serbs and the Greeks. Responding to the perceived Bulgarian threat, Serbia started negotiations with Greece, which also had reasons to be concerned about Bulgarian intentions.


title: Second Balkan War

text: On 19 May/1 June 1913, two days after the signing of the Treaty of London and just 28 days before the Bulgarian attack, Greece and Serbia signed a secret defensive alliance, confirming the current demarcation line between the two occupation zones as their mutual border and concluding an alliance in case of an attack from Bulgaria or from Austria-Hungary. With this agreement, Serbia succeeded in making Greece a part of its dispute over northern Macedonia, since Greece had guaranteed Serbia's current (and disputed) occupation zone in Macedonia. In an attempt to halt the Serbo-Greek rapprochement, Bulgarian Prime Minister Geshov signed a protocol with Greece on 21 May agreeing on a permanent demarcation between their respective forces, effectively accepting Greek control over southern Macedonia. However, his later dismissal put an end to the diplomatic targeting of Serbia.


title: Second Balkan War

text: Another point of friction arose: Bulgaria's refusal to cede the fortress of Silistra to Romania. When Romania demanded its cession after the First Balkan War, Bulgaria's foreign minister offered instead some minor border changes, which excluded Silistra, and assurances for the rights of the Kutzovlachs in Macedonia. Romania threatened to occupy Bulgarian territory by force, but a Russian proposal for arbitration prevented hostilities. In the resulting Protocol of St. Petersburg of 9 May 1913, Bulgaria agreed to give up Silistra. The resulting agreement was a compromise between the Romanian demands for the city, two triangles at the Bulgaria–Romania border and the city of Balchik and the land between it and Romania and the Bulgarian refusal to accept any cession of its territory. However the fact that Russia failed to protect the territorial integrity of Bulgaria made the Bulgarians uncertain of the reliability of the expected Russian arbitration of the dispute with Serbia. The Bulgarian behavior had also a long-term impact on the Russo-Bulgarian relations. The uncompromising Bulgarian position tο review the pre-war agreement with Serbia during a second Russian initiative for arbitration between them finally led Russia to cancel its alliance with Bulgaria. Both acts made conflict with Romania and Serbia inevitable.


title: Second Balkan War

text: In 1912, Bulgaria's national aspirations, as expressed by Tsar Ferdinand and the military leadership around him, exceeded the provisions of the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano, considered even then as maximalistic, since it included both Eastern and Western Thrace and all Macedonia with Thessaloniki, Edirne and Constantinople. Early evidence of the lack of realistic thinking in Bulgarian leadership was that although Russia had sent clear warnings expressed for the first time on 5 November 1912 (well before the First Battle of Çatalca) that if the Bulgarian Army occupied Constantinople they would attack it, they continued their attempts to take the city.


title: Second Balkan War

text: Although the Bulgarian Army succeeded in capturing Edirne, Tsar Ferdinand's ambition in crowning himself Emperor in Constantinople proved also unrealistic when the Bulgarian Army failed to capture the city in the battle of Çatalca. Even worse, the concentration on capturing Thrace and Constantinople ultimately caused the loss of the major part of Macedonia including Thessaloniki and that could not be easily accepted, leading the Bulgarian military leadership around Tsar Ferdinand to decide upon a war against its former allies. However, with the Ottomans unwilling to definitely accept the loss of Thrace in the east, and an enraged Romania (on the north), the decision to open a war against both Greece (to the south) and Serbia (to the west) was a rather adventurous one, since in May the Ottoman Empire had urgently requested a German mission to reorganize the Ottoman army. By mid-June Bulgaria became aware of the agreement between Serbia and Greece in case of a Bulgarian attack. On 27 June Montenegro announced that it would side with Serbia in the event of a Serbian-Bulgarian war. On 5 February Romania settled her differences over Transylvania with Austria-Hungary, signing a military alliance, and on 28 June officially warned Bulgaria that it would not remain neutral in a new Balkan war.


title: Second Balkan War

text: As skirmishing continued in Macedonia, mainly between Serbian and Bulgarian troops, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia tried to stop the upcoming conflict, since Russia did not wish to lose either of its Slavic allies in the Balkans. On 8 June, he sent an identical personal message to the Kings of Bulgaria and Serbia, offering to act as arbitrator according to the provisions of the 1912 Serbo-Bulgarian treaty. Serbia was asking for a revision of the original treaty, since it had already lost north Albania due to the Great Powers' decision to establish the state of Albania, an area that had been recognized as a Serbian territory of expansion under the prewar Serbo-Bulgarian treaty, in exchange for the Bulgarian territory of expansion in northern Macedonia. The Bulgarian reply to the Russian invitation contained so many conditions that it amounted to an ultimatum, leading Russian diplomats to realize that the Bulgarians had already decided to go to war with Serbia. That caused Russia to cancel the arbitration initiative and to angrily repudiate its 1902 treaty of alliance with Bulgaria. Bulgaria was shattering the Balkan League, Russia's best defense against Austrian–Hungarian expansionism, a structure that had cost Russia so much blood, money and diplomatic capital during the last 35 years. Russia's Foreign Minister Sazonov's exact words to Bulgaria's new Prime Minister Stoyan Danev were "Do not expect anything from us, and forget the existence of any of our agreements from 1902 until present." Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was already angry with Bulgaria because of the latter's refusal to honor its recently signed agreement with Romania over Silistra, which had been the result of Russian arbitration. Then Serbia and Greece proposed that each of the three countries reduce its army by one fourth, as a first step to facilitate a peaceful solution, but Bulgaria rejected it.


title: Second Balkan War

text: Bulgaria was already on the track to war, since a new cabinet had been formed in Bulgaria where the pacifist Geshov was replaced by the hardliner and head of a Russophile party, Dr. Danev, as premier. There is some evidence that to overcome Tsar Ferdinand's reservations over a new war against Serbia and Greece, certain personalities in Sofia threatened to overthrow him. In any case, on 16 June the Bulgarian high command, under the direct control of Tsar Ferdinand and without notifying the government, ordered Bulgarian troops to start a surprise attack simultaneously against both the Serbian and Greek positions without declaring war and to dismiss any orders contradicting the attack order. The next day the government put pressure on the General Staff to order the army to cease hostilities, which caused confusion and loss of initiative and failed to remedy the state of undeclared war. In response to the government pressure Tsar Ferdinand dismissed General Savov and replaced him with General Dimitriev as commander-in-chief.


title: Second Balkan War

text: Bulgaria's intention was to defeat the Serbs and Greeks and to occupy areas as large as possible before the Great Powers interfered to end the hostilities. In order to provide the necessary superiority in arms, the entire Bulgarian army was committed to these operations. No provisions were made in case of a (officially declared) Romanian intervention or an Ottoman counterattack, strangely assuming that Russia would assure that no attack would come from those directions, even though on 9 June Russia had angrily repudiated its Bulgarian alliance and shifted its diplomacy towards Romania (Russia already had named Romania's King Carol an honorary Russian field marshal, as a clear warning in shifting its policy towards Sofia in December 1912). The plan was for a concentrated attack against the Serbian army across the Vardar plain to neutralize it and to capture northern Macedonia, together with a less concentrated one against the Greek army near Thessaloniki, which had approximately half the size of the Serbian army, in order to capture the city and south Macedonia. The Bulgarian high command was not sure whether their forces were enough to defeat the Greek army, but they thought them enough for defending the south front as a worst-case scenario, until the arrival of additional forces after defeating the Serbs to the north.


title: Second Balkan War

text: According to the Military Law of 1903, the armed forces of Bulgaria were divided in two categories: the Active Army and the National Militia. The core of the Armed forces consisted of nine infantry and one cavalry division. The Bulgarian Army had a unique organization among the armies of Europe, since each infantry division had three brigades of two regiments, composed of four battalions of six heavy companies of 250 men each, plus an independent battalion, two large artillery regiments and one cavalry regiment, giving a grand total of 25 very heavy infantry battalions and 16 cavalry companies per division, which was more than the equivalent of two nine-battalion divisions, the standard divisional structure in most contemporary armies, as was also the case with the Greek and Serbian armies in 1913. Consequently, although the Bulgarian Army had a total of 599,878 men mobilized in the beginning of the First Balkan War, there were only 9 organizational divisions, giving a divisional strength closer to an Army Corps than to a Division. Tactical necessities during and after the First Balkan War modified this original structure: a new 10th division was formed using two brigades from the 1st and 6th divisions, and an additional three independent brigades were formed from new recruits. Nevertheless, the heavy structure generally remained. By contrast, the Greek Army of Macedonia had also 9 divisions, but the total number of men under arms was only 118,000. Another decisive factor affecting the real strength of the divisions between the opposing armies was the distribution of artillery. The nine-division-strong Greek Army had a total of 176 guns and the ten division-strong Serbian Army, 230. The Bulgarians had 1,116, a ratio of 6:1 against the Greeks and 5:1 against the Serbian Army.


title: Second Balkan War

text: There is a dispute over the strength of the Bulgarian Army during the Second Balkan War. At the outbreak of the First Balkan War, Bulgaria mobilized a total of 599,878 men (366,209 in the Active Army; 53,927 in the supplementing units; 53,983 in the National Militia; 94,526 from the 1912 and 1913 levies; 14,204 volunteers; 14,424 in the border guards). The non-recoverable casualties during the First Balkan War were 33,000 men (14,000 killed and 19,000 died of disease). To replace these casualties Bulgaria conscripted 60,000 men between the two wars, mainly from the newly occupied areas, using 21,000 of them to form the Seres, Drama and Odrin (Edirne) independent brigades. It is known that there were no demobilized men. According to the Bulgarian command the Army had 7,693 officers and 492,528 soldiers in its ranks on 16 June (including the above-mentioned three brigades). This gives a difference of 99,657 men in strength between the two wars. In comparison, subtracting the actual number of casualties including wounded and adding the newly conscripted men produces a total of no less than 576,878 men. The army was experiencing shortages of war materials and had only 378,998 rifles at its disposal.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The 1st and 3rd armies (under generals Vasil Kutinchev and Radko Dimitriev respectively) were deployed along the old Serbian-Bulgarian borders, with the 5th Army under general Stefan Toshev around Kyustendil, and the 4th Army under general Stiliyan Kovachev in the Kočani–Radoviš area. The 2nd Army under general Nikola Ivanov was detailed against the Greek army.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The army of the Kingdom of Serbia accounted for 348,000 men (out of which 252,000 were combatants) divided into three armies with ten divisions. Its main force was deployed on the Macedonian front along the Vardar river and near Skopje. Its nominal commander-in-chief was King Peter I, with Radomir Putnik as his chief of staff and effective field commander.


title: Second Balkan War

text: By early June, the army of the Kingdom of Greece had a grand total of some 142,000 armed men with nine infantry divisions and one cavalry brigade. The bulk of the army with eight divisions and a cavalry brigade (117,861 men) was gathered in Macedonia, positioned in an arc covering Thessaloniki to the north and northeast of the city, while one division and independent units (24,416 men) were left in Epirus. With the outbreak of hostilities, the 8th Infantry Division (stationed in Epirus) was transferred to the front, and with the arrival of new recruits, the army's strength in the Macedonian theater increased eventually to some 145,000 men with 176 guns. King Constantine I assumed command of the Greek forces, with Lt. General Viktor Dousmanis as his chief of staff.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The Kingdom of Montenegro sent one division of 12,000 men under General Janko Vukotić to the Macedonian front.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The Kingdom of Romania had the largest army in the Balkans, although it had not seen action since the Romanian War of Independence against the Ottomans in 1878. Its peacetime strength was 6,149 officers and 94,170 men, and it was well equipped by Balkan standards, possessing 126 field batteries, fifteen howitzer batteries and three mountain batteries, mostly made by Krupp. Upon mobilization, the Romanian army mustered 417,720 men allocated in five corps. Some 80,000 of them were assembled to occupy the Southern Dobruja, while an army of 250,000 was assembled to carry the main offensive into Bulgaria.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The main Bulgarian attack was planned against the Serbs with their 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th Armies, while the 2nd Army was tasked with an attack towards Greek positions around Thessaloniki. However, in the crucial opening days of the war, only the 4th Army and 2nd Army were ordered to advance. This allowed the Serbs to concentrate their forces against the attacking Bulgarians and hold their advance. The Bulgarians were outnumbered on the Greek front, and the low-level fighting soon turned into Greek attack all along the line on 19 June. The Bulgarian forces were forced to withdraw from their positions north of Thessaloniki (except the isolated battalion stationed in the city itself which was quickly overrun) to defensive positions between Kilkis and Struma river. The plan to quickly destroy the Serbian army in central Macedonia by concentrated attack turned out to be unrealistic, and the Bulgarian Army started to retreat even before Romanian intervention, and the Greek advance necessitated disengagement of forces in order to defend Sofia.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The Bulgarian 2nd Army in southern Macedonia commanded by General Ivanov held a line from Dojran Lake south east to Kilkis, Lachanas, Serres and then across the Pangaion Hills to the Aegean Sea. The army had been in place since May, and was considered a veteran force, having fought at the siege of Edirne in the First Balkan War. General Ivanov, possibly to avoid any responsibility for his crushing defeat, claimed after the war that his Army consisted of only 36,000 men and that many of his units were understrength, but a detailed analysis of his units contradicted him. Ivanov's 2nd Army consisted of the 3rd Division minus one brigade with four regiments of four battalions (total 16 battalions plus the divisional artillery), the I/X brigade with the 16th and 25th regiments (total of eight battalions plus artillery), the Drama Brigade with the 69th, 75th and 7th regiments (total of 12 battalions), the Seres Brigade with 67th and 68th regiments (total of 8 battalions), the 11th Division with the 55th, 56th and 57th regiments (total of 12 battalions plus the divisional artillery), the 5th Border Battalion, the 10th Independent Battalion and the 10th Cavalry Regiment of seven mounted and seven infantry companies. In total, Ivanov's force comprised 232 companies in 58 infantry battalions, a cavalry regiment (14 companies) with 175 artillery guns, numbering between 80,000 (official Bulgarian source) and 108,000 (official Greek source according to the official Bulgarian history of the war before 1932). All modern historians agree that Ivanov underestimated the number of his soldiers but the Greek army still had a numerical superiority. The Greek Headquarters also estimated the numbers of their opponents from 80,000 to 105,000 men. A large part of Ivanov's forces and especially the Drama Brigade and the Seres Brigade were composed of completely untrained local recruits.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The Greek army, commanded by King Constantine I, had eight divisions and a cavalry brigade (117,861 men) with 176 artillery guns in a line extending from the Gulf of Orphanos to the Gevgelija area. Since the Greek headquarters did not know where the Bulgarian attack would take place, the Bulgarians would have temporary local superiority in the area chosen for the attack.


title: Second Balkan War

text: On 26 June the Bulgarian Army received orders to destroy the opposing Greek forces and to advance towards Thessaloniki. The Greeks stopped them and by 29 June an order for general counterattack was issued. At Kilkis the Bulgarians had constructed strong defenses, including captured Ottoman guns which dominated the plain below. The Greek 4th, 2nd and 5th divisions attacked across the plain in rushes supported by artillery. The Greek Army suffered heavy casualties but by the following day had carried the trenches. On the Bulgarian left, the Greek 7th Division captured Serres and the 1st and 6th divisions captured Lachanas. The defeat of the 2nd Army by the Greeks was the most serious military disaster suffered by the Bulgarians in the Second Balkan War. Bulgarian sources give a total of 6,971 casualties, over 6,000 prisoners and more than 130 artillery pieces captured by the Greeks, who suffered 8,700 casualties. On 28 June, the retreating Bulgarian army and irregulars burned down the major city of Serres (a predominantly Greek town surrounded by both Bulgarian -to the north and west- and Greek -to the east and south- villages), and the towns of Nigrita, Doxato and Demir Hisar, ostensibly as a retaliation for the burning of the Bulgarian town of Kilkis by the Greeks, which had taken place after the named battle, as well as the destruction of many Bulgarian villages in the region. On the Bulgarian right, Greek Evzones captured Gevgelija and the heights of Matsikovo. As a consequence, the Bulgarian line of retreat through Dojran was threatened and Ivanov's army began a desperate retreat which at times threatened to become a rout. Reinforcements in the form of the 14th Division came too late and joined the retreat towards Strumica and the Bulgarian border. The Greeks captured Dojran on 5 July but were unable to cut off the Bulgarian retreat through Struma Pass. On 11 July the Greeks came in contact with the Serbs and then pushed on up the Struma River. Meanwhile, the Greek forces with the support of their navy landed in Kavala and then penetrated inland to western Thrace. On 19 July the Greeks captured Nevrokop, and on 25 July, in another amphibious operation entered Dedeagac (today Alexandroupoli), thus cutting off the Bulgarians completely from the Aegean sea.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The 4th Bulgarian Army held the most important position for the conquest of Serbian Macedonia. The fighting began on 29–30 June 1913, between the 4th Bulgarian Army and the 1st and 3rd Serbian armies, first along the Zletovska and then after a Bulgarian retreat, along the Bregalnica. Internal confusions led to heavy Bulgarian losses in 1–3 July. The Serbs captured the whole 7th Division of the 4th Bulgarian Army, without any fight. By 8 July, the Bulgarian Army had been severely defeated.


title: Second Balkan War

text: On the north the Bulgarians started to advance towards the Serbian border town of Pirot and forced Serbian Command to send reinforcements to the 2nd Army defending Pirot and Niš. This enabled Bulgarians to stop the Serbian offensive in Macedonia at Kalimanci on 18 July.


title: Second Balkan War

text: On 13 July 1913, General Mihail Savov assumed control of the 4th and 5th Bulgarian armies. The Bulgarians dug into strong positions around the village of Kalimantsi, at the Bregalnica river in the northeastern Macedonia region. On 18 July, the Serbian 3rd army attacked, closing in on Bulgarian positions. The Bulgarians held firm, and the artillery was very successful in breaking up the Serb attacks. If the Serbs had broken through the Bulgarian defences, they might have doomed the 2nd Bulgarian Army and driven out the Bulgarians entirely out of Macedonia. The defensive victory, along with the successes to the north of the 1st and 3rd armies, protected western Bulgaria from a Serbian invasion. Although this boosted the Bulgarians, the situation was critical in the south, with the Greek Army.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The Serbian front had become static. King Constantine, seeing that the Bulgarian Army at his front had already been defeated, ordered the Greek Army to march further into Bulgarian territory and take the capital city of Sofia. Constantine wanted a decisive victory despite objections by his Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, who realized that the Serbs, having won their territorial objectives, now adopted a passive stance and shifted the weight of carrying the rest of the war to the Greeks. In the pass of Kresna (Battle of Kresna Gorge), the Greeks were ambushed by the Bulgarian 2nd and 4th Army which had newly arrived from the Serbian front and had taken defensive positions there. By 21 July, the Greek army was outnumbered by the now counterattacking Bulgarian armies, and the Bulgarian General Staff, attempting to encircle the Greeks in a Cannae-type battle was applying pressure on their flanks. However, after bitter fighting the Greek side managed to break through the Kresna pass and captured Simitli, at 26 July, while at the night of 27–28 July the Bulgarian forces were pushed north to Gorna Dzhumaya (Blagoevgrad), 76 km south of Sofia. Meanwhile, the Greek forces continued their march inland into western Thrace, on 26 July, they entered Xanthi and the next day Komotini. At 28 July, the Bulgarian army, under heavy pressure, was forced to abandon Gorna Dzhumaya.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The Greek army was exhausted and faced logistical difficulties, but resisted strenuously and launched local counter-attacks. By 30 July, the Bulgarian army downscaled its attacks, having to repulse Greek counterattacks on both sides. On the eastern flank, the Greek army launched a counterattack towards Mehomia through the Predela pass. The offensive was stopped by the Bulgarians on the eastern side of the pass and fighting ground to a stalemate. On the western flank, an offensive was launched against Tsarevo Selo with the objective of reaching the Serbian lines. This failed and the Bulgarian army continued advancing, especially in the south. However, after three days of fighting at the sectors of Pehchevo and Mahomia, the Greek forces retained their positions.


title: Second Balkan War

text: Romania mobilized its army on 5 July 1913, intending to seize Southern Dobruja, and declared war on Bulgaria on 10 July. In a diplomatic circular that said, "Romania does not intend either to subjugate the polity nor defeat the army of Bulgaria", the Romanian government endeavoured to allay international concerns about its motives and about increased bloodshed. According to Richard Hall, "[t]he entrance of Romania into the conflict made the Bulgarian situation untenable [and t]he Romanian thrust across the Danube was the decisive military act of the Second Balkan War."


title: Second Balkan War

text: On the day of Romania's declaration, 80,000 men of the 5th Corps under General Ioan Culcer invaded Dobruja, occupying a front from Tutrakan to Balchik. The corps cavalry occupied the port city of Varna until it was clear that there would be no Bulgarian resistance. On the night of 14–15 July, the Danube Army under Prince Ferdinand crossed into Bulgaria at Oryahovo, Gigen and Nikopol. The initial occupation completed, Romanian forces were divided into two groups: one advanced westward, towards Ferdinand (now Montana), and the other advanced southwestward, towards Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, everywhere preceded by a wide fan of cavalry troops in reconnaissance.


title: Second Balkan War

text: On 18 July, Romania took Ferdinand and on 20 July they occupied Vratsa, 116 km north of Sofia. On 23 July, advanced cavalry forces had entered Vrazhdebna, a suburb just from Sofia. The Romanians and Serbs linked up at Belogradchik on 25 July, isolating the important city of Vidin. The Bulgarian rear was entirely exposed, no resistance had been offered, the capital was open to the invader and the northwestern corner of the country was cut off and surrounded. During the invasion, the fledgling Romanian Air Corps performed photoreconnaissance and propaganda leaflet drops. Sofia became the first capital city in the world to be overflown by enemy aircraft.


title: Second Balkan War

text: Romania did not count any combat casualties during its brief war. Its forces were struck by an outbreak of cholera, which cut down 1,600 men.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The lack of resistance to the Romanian invasion convinced the Ottomans to invade the territories just ceded to Bulgaria. The main object of the invasion was the recovery of Edirne (Adrianople), which was held by Major General Vulko Velchev with a mere 4,000 troops. The majority of Bulgarian forces occupying East Thrace had been withdrawn earlier in the year to face the Serbo-Greek attack. On 12 July, Ottoman troops garrisoning Çatalca and Gelibolu reached the Enos–Midia line and on 20 July 1913 crossed the line and invaded Bulgaria. The entire Ottoman invasion force contained between 200,000 and 250,000 men under the command of Ahmed Izzet Pasha. The 1st Army was stationed at the eastern (Midia) end of the line. From east to west it was followed by the 2nd Army, 3rd Army and 4th Army, which was stationed at Gelibolu.


title: Second Balkan War

text: In the face of the advancing Ottomans, the greatly outnumbered Bulgarian forces retreated to the pre-war border. Edirne was abandoned on 19 July, but when the Ottomans did not occupy it immediately the Bulgarians re-occupied it the next day (20 July). Since it was apparent that the Ottomans were not stopping, it was abandoned a second time on 21 July and occupied by the Ottomans on 23 July. Edirne had been conquered by Sultan Murad I in the 1360s and had served as the first European capital of the Empire before the capture of Constantinople in 1453. Minister of War Enver Pasha, called himself the "Second Conqueror of Edirne", although the conquering forces had met no resistance on the way to Edirne.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The Ottoman armies did not stop at the old border, but crossed into Bulgarian territory. A cavalry unit advanced on Yambol and captured it on 25 July. The Ottoman invasion, more than the Romanian, incited panic among the peasantry, many of whom fled to the mountains. Among the leadership it was recognized as a complete reversal of fortune. In the words of historian Richard Hall, "[t]he battlefields of eastern Thrace, where so many Bulgarian soldiers had died to win the First Balkan War, were again under Ottoman control." Like the Romanians, the Ottomans suffered no combat casualties, but lost 4,000 soldiers to cholera. Some 8000 Armenians fighting for the Ottomans were wounded. The sacrifice of these Armenians was praised greatly in Turkish papers.


title: Second Balkan War

text: To help Bulgaria repulse the rapid Ottoman advance in Thrace, Russia threatened to attack the Ottoman Empire through the Caucasus, and send its Black Sea Fleet to Constantinople; this caused Britain to intervene.


title: Second Balkan War

text: Accoridng to the 1918 book "Destruction of the Thracian Bulgarians in 1913", Ottoman forces carried out atrocities against the Bulgarians in Eastern Thrace uring the invasion and aftermath.


title: Second Balkan War

text: With the Romanian army closing in on Sofia, Bulgaria asked Russia to arbitrate. On 13 July, Prime Minister Stoyan Danev resigned in the face of Russian inactivity. On 17 July the tsar appointed Vasil Radoslavov to head a pro-German and Russophobic government. On 20 July, via Saint Petersburg, the Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić invited a Bulgarian delegation to treat with the allies directly at Niš in Serbia. The Serbs and Greeks, both now on the offensive, were in no rush to conclude a peace. On 22 July, Tsar Ferdinand sent a message to King Carol via the Italian ambassador in Bucharest. The Romanian armies halted before Sofia. Romania proposed that talks be moved to Bucharest, and the delegations took a train from Niš to Bucharest on 24 July.


title: Second Balkan War

text: When the delegations met in Bucharest on 30 July, the Serbs were led by Pašić, the Montenegrins by Vukotić, the Greeks by Venizelos, the Romanians by Titu Maiorescu and the Bulgarians by Finance Minister Dimitur Tonchev. They agreed to a five-day armistice to come into effect on 31 July. Romania refused to allow the Ottomans to participate, forcing Bulgaria to negotiate with them separately.


title: Second Balkan War

text: Bulgaria had agreed to cede Southern Dobruja to Romania as early as 19 July. At the peace talks in Bucharest, the Romanians, having obtained their primary objective, were a voice for moderation. The Bulgarians hoped to keep the Vardar river as the boundary between their share of Macedonia and Serbia's. The latter preferred to keep all of Macedonia as far as the Struma. Austro-Hungarian and Russian pressure forced Serbia to be satisfied with most of northern Macedonia, conceding only the town of Štip to the Bulgarians, in Pašić's words, "in honour of General Fichev", who had brought Bulgarian arms to the door of Constantinople in the first war. Ivan Fichev was chief of the Bulgarian general staff and a member of the delegation in Bucharest at the time. When Fichev explained why Bulgaria deserved Kavala, a port on the Aegean occupied by the Greeks, Venizelos is said to have responded, "General, we are not responsible. Before [29] June we were afraid of you and offered you Serres and Drama and Kavala, but now when we see you, we assume the role of victors and will take care of our interests only." Although Austria-Hungary and Russia supported Bulgaria, the influential alliance of Germany—whose Kaiser Wilhelm II was brother-in-law to the Greek king—and France secured Kavala for Greece. Bulgaria retained the underdeveloped port of Dedeagac (Alexandroupoli).


title: Second Balkan War

text: The last day of negotiations was 8 August. On 10 August Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia signed the Treaty of Bucharest and divided Macedonia in three: Vardar Macedonia went to Serbia; the smallest part, Pirin Macedonia, to Bulgaria; and the coastal and largest part, Aegean Macedonia, to Greece. Bulgaria thus enlarged its territory by 16 percent compared to what it was before the First Balkan War, and increased its population from 4.3 to 4.7 million people. Romania enlarged her territory by 5 percent and Montenegro by 62 percent. Greece increased her population from 2.7 to 4.4 million and her territory by 68 percent. Serbia almost doubled her territory enlarging her population from 2.9 to 4.5 million.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The Montenegrins at Bucharest were primarily interested in obtaining a favourable concession from Serbia in the former Sanjak of Novi Pazar. This they did, and it was later confirmed in a treaty signed at Belgrade on 7 November.


title: Second Balkan War

text: In August, Ottoman forces established a provisional government of Western Thrace at Komotini to pressure Bulgaria to make peace. Bulgaria sent a three-man delegation—General Mihail Savov and the diplomats Andrei Toshev and Grigor Nachovich—to Constantinople to negotiate a peace on 6 September. The Ottoman delegation was led by Foreign Minister Mehmed Talat Bey, assisted by future Naval Minister Çürüksulu Mahmud Pasha and Halil Bey. Although Russia tried to intervene throughout August to prevent Edirne from becoming Turkish again, Toshev told the Ottomans at Constantinople that "[t]he Russians consider Constantinople their natural inheritance. Their main concern is that when Constantinople falls into their hands it shall have the largest possible hinterland. If Adrianople is in the possession of the Turks, they shall get it too."


title: Second Balkan War

text: Resigned to losing Edirne, the Bulgarians played for Kırk Kilise (Lozengrad in Bulgarian). Both sides made competing declarations: Savov that "Bulgaria, who defeated the Turks on all fronts, cannot end this glorious campaign with the signing of an agreement which retains none of the battlefields on which so much Bulgarian blood has been shed," and Mahmud Pasha that "[w]hat we have taken is ours." In the end, none of the battlefields were retained in the Treaty of Constantinople of 30 September. Bulgarian forces finally returned south of the Rhodopes in October. The Radoslavov government continued to negotiate with the Ottomans in the hopes of forming an alliance. These talks finally bore fruit in the Secret Bulgarian–Ottoman Treaty of August 1914.


title: Second Balkan War

text: As part of the Treaty of Constantinople, 46,764 Orthodox Bulgarians from Ottoman Thrace were exchanged for 48,570 Muslims (Turks, Pomaks, and Roma) from Bulgarian Thrace. After the exchange, according to the 1914 Ottoman census, there still remained 14,908 Bulgarians belonging to the Bulgarian Exarchate in Ottoman Empire.


title: Second Balkan War

text: On 14 November 1913 Greece and the Ottomans signed a treaty in Athens bringing to a formal end the hostilities between them. On 14 March 1914, Serbia signed a treaty in Constantinople, restoring relations with the Ottoman Empire and reaffirming the 1913 Treaty of London. No treaty between Montenegro and the Ottoman Empire was ever signed.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The Second Balkan War left Serbia as the most militarily powerful state south of the Danube. Years of military investment financed by French loans had borne fruit. Central Vardar and the eastern half of the Sanjak of Novi Pazar were acquired. Its territory grew in extent from 18,650 to 33,891 square miles and its population grew by more than one and a half million. The aftermath brought harassment and oppression for many in the newly conquered lands. The freedom of association, assembly and the press guaranteed under the Serbian constitution of 1903 were not introduced into the new territories. The inhabitants of the new territories were denied voting rights, ostensibly because the cultural level was considered too low, in reality to keep the non-Serbs who made up the majority in many areas out of national politics. Opposition newspapers like "Radicke Novine" remarked that the 'new Serbs' had had better political rights under the Turks. There was a destruction of Turkish buildings, schools, baths, mosques. In October and November 1913 British vice-consuls reported systematic intimidation, arbitrary detentions, beatings, rapes, village burnings and massacres by Serbs in the annexed areas. The Serbian government showed no interest in preventing further outrages or investigating those that had taken place. When the Carnegie Commission, composed of an international team of experts, selected for their impartiality, arrived in the Balkans, they received virtually no assistance from Belgrade.


title: Second Balkan War

text: The treaties forced the Greek Army to evacuate Western Thrace and Pirin Macedonia, which it had occupied during operations. The retreat from the areas that had to be ceded to Bulgaria, together with the loss of Northern Epirus to Albania, was not well received in Greece; from the areas occupied during the war, Greece succeeded in gaining only the territories of Serres and Kavala after diplomatic support from Germany. Serbia made additional gains in northern Macedonia and having fulfilled its aspirations to the south, turned its attention to the north where its rivalry with Austro-Hungary over Bosnia-Herzegovina led the two countries to war a year later igniting the First World War. Italy used the excuse of the Balkan wars to keep the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean which it had occupied during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 over Libya, despite the agreement that ended that war in 1912.


title: Second Balkan War

text: At the strong insistence of Austria-Hungary and Italy, both hoping to control for themselves the state and thus the Otranto Straits in Adriatic, Albania acquired officially its independence according to the terms of the Treaty of London. With the delineation of the exact boundaries of the new state under the Protocol of Florence (17 December 1913), the Serbs lost their outlet to the Adriatic and the Greeks the region of Northern Epirus (Southern Albania). This was highly unpopular with the local Greek population, who, after a revolt, managed to acquire local autonomy under the terms of the Protocol of Corfu.


title: Second Balkan War

text: After its defeat, Bulgaria turned into a revanchist local power looking for a second opportunity to fulfill its national aspirations. After Bucharest, the head of the Bulgarian delegation, Tonchev, remarked that "[e]ither the Powers will change [the territorial settlement], or we ourselves will destroy it." To this end, it participated in the First World War on the side of the Central Powers, since its Balkan enemies (Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Romania) were pro-Entente (see articles on the Serbian Campaign and the Macedonian front of World War I). The resulting enormous sacrifices during World War I and renewed defeat caused Bulgaria a national trauma and new territorial losses.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Bayard Rustin (; March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an African American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin worked with A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement, in 1941, to press for an end to racial discrimination in employment. Rustin later organized Freedom Rides, and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership and teaching King about nonviolence; he later served as an organizer for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Rustin worked alongside Ella Baker, a co-director of the Crusade for Citizenship, in 1954; and before the Montgomery bus boycott, he helped organize a group, called "In Friendship", amongst Baker, Stanley Levison of the American Jewish Congress, and some other labor leaders. "In Friendship" provided material and legal assistance to those being evicted from their tenant farms and households in Clarendon County, Yazoo, and other places. Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO's A. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia. At the time of his death in 1987, he was on a humanitarian mission in Haiti.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin was a gay man and, due to criticism over his sexuality, he usually acted as an influential adviser behind the scenes to civil-rights leaders. In the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes, speaking at events as an activist and supporter of human rights.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Later in life, while still devoted to securing workers' rights, Rustin joined other union leaders in aligning with ideological neoconservatism, and (after his death) President Ronald Reagan praised him. On November 20, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin was born in 1912 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, to Florence Rustin and Archie Hopkins, but raised by his maternal grandparents, Julia (Davis) and Janifer Rustin, as the ninth of their twelve children; growing up he believed his biological mother was his older sister. His grandparents were relatively wealthy local caterers who raised Rustin in a large house. Julia Rustin was a Quaker, although she attended her husband's African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was also a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). NAACP leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in the Rustin home. With these influences in his early life, in his youth Rustin campaigned against racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: One of the first documented realizations Rustin had of his sexuality was when he mentioned to his grandmother that he preferred to spend time with males rather than females. She responded, "I suppose that's what you need to do".


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 1932, Rustin entered Wilberforce College, a historically black college (HBCU) in Ohio operated by the AME Church. Rustin was active in a number of campus organizations, including the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. He was expelled from Wilberforce in 1936 after organizing a strike, and later attended Cheyney State Teachers College (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania). Cheyney honored Rustin with a posthumous "Doctor of Humane Letters" degree at its 2013 commencement.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: After completing an activist training program conducted by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Rustin moved to Harlem in 1937 and began studying at City College of New York. There he became involved in efforts to defend and free the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men in Alabama who were accused of raping two white women. He joined the Young Communist League for a small period of time in 1936, before becoming disillusioned with the party. Soon after arriving in New York City, he became a member of Fifteenth Street Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin was an accomplished tenor vocalist, an asset that earned him admission to both Wilberforce University and Cheyney State Teachers College with music scholarships. In 1939, he was in the chorus of the short-lived Broadway musical "John Henry" that starred Paul Robeson. Blues singer Josh White was also a cast member and later invited Rustin to join his gospel and vocal harmony group, "Josh White and the Carolinians", with whom he made several recordings. This gave Rustin the opportunity to become a regular performer at the Café Society nightclub in Greenwich Village, widening his social and intellectual contacts. A few albums on Fellowship Records featuring his singing, such as "Bayard Rustin Sings a Program of Spirituals", were produced from the 1950s through the 1970s.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: At the direction of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and its members were active in supporting civil rights for African Americans. The CPUSA, at the time following Stalin's "theory of nationalism", favored the creation of a separate nation for African Americans to be located in the American Southeast where the greatest proportion of the black population was concentrated. In 1941, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Communist International ordered the CPUSA to abandon civil rights work and focus on supporting U.S. entry into World War II.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Disillusioned, Rustin began working with members of the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas, particularly A. Philip Randolph, the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Another socialist mentor was the pacifist A. J. Muste, leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). FOR hired Rustin as a race relations secretary in the late summer of 1941.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: The three of them proposed a march on Washington, D.C., in 1941 to protest racial segregation in the armed forces and widespread discrimination in employment. Meeting with President Roosevelt in the Oval Office, Randolph respectfully and politely, but firmly told President Roosevelt that African Americans would march in the capital unless desegregation occurred. To prove their good faith, the organizers canceled the planned march after Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (the Fair Employment Act), which banned discrimination in defense industries and federal agencies. The leader of the organizers, Randolph, canceled the march against Rustin's advisement. The armed forces, in which Black troops typically had white commanding officers, were not desegregated until 1948, under an Executive Order issued by President Harry S. Truman, although the various branches took years to abide by the order, with the U.S. Marines Corps in 1960 being the last to desegregate.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Randolph felt that FOR had succeeded in their goal and wanted to dissolve the committee. Again, Rustin disagreed with him and voiced his differing opinion in a national press conference, which he later said he regretted.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin traveled to California to help protect the property of the more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans (most of whom were U.S.-born citizens) who had been imprisoned in internment camps. In the 6-3 Korematsu Decision, the Supreme Court upheld the forcible internment. Impressed with Rustin's organizational skills, A.J. Muste appointed him as FOR's secretary for student and general affairs.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin was also a pioneer in the movement to desegregate interstate bus travel. In 1942, he boarded a bus in Louisville, bound for Nashville, and sat in the second row. A number of drivers asked him to move to the back, according to Southern practice of Jim Crow, but Rustin refused. The bus was stopped by police 13 miles north of Nashville and Rustin was arrested. He was beaten and taken to a police station but was released uncharged.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: He spoke about his decision to be arrested, and how that moment also clarified his witness as a gay person, in an interview with the "Washington Blade":


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 1942, Rustin assisted two other FOR staffers, George Houser and James Farmer, and activist Bernice Fisher as they formed the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Rustin was not a direct founder, but was later described as "an uncle of CORE". CORE had been conceived as a pacifist organization based on the writings of Mohandas Gandhi, who used non-violent resistance against British rule in India. CORE was also influenced by his protégé Krishnalal Shridharani's book "War without Violence".


title: Bayard Rustin

text: As declared conscientious objectors who refused induction into the military, Rustin, Houser, and other members of FOR and CORE were convicted of violating the Selective Service Act. From 1944 to 1946, Rustin was imprisoned in Ashland Federal Prison in Kentucky, and later the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, in Pennsylvania. At both, he organized protests against racially segregated housing and dining facilities. During his incarceration, he also organized FOR's Free India Committee. After his release from prison, he was frequently arrested for protesting against British colonial rule, in both India and Africa.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Just before a trip to Africa while college secretary of the FOR, Rustin recorded a 10-inch LP for the Fellowship Records label. He sang spirituals and Elizabethan songs, accompanied on the harpsichord by Margaret Davison.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin and Houser organized the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947. This was the first of the Freedom Rides to test the 1946 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in "Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia" that banned racial discrimination in interstate travel as unconstitutional. Rustin and CORE executive secretary George Houser recruited a team of fourteen men, divided equally by race, to ride in pairs through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The NAACP opposed CORE's Gandhian tactics as too meek. Participants in the Journey of Reconciliation were arrested several times. Arrested with Igal Roodenko and Joe Felmet, Rustin served twenty-two days on a chain gang in North Carolina for violating state Jim Crow laws regarding segregated seating on public transportation. On June 17, 2022, Chapel Hill Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour, with full consent of the state, dismissed the 1947 North Carolina charges against the four Freedom Riders, with members of the exonerees' families in attendance.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 1948, Rustin traveled to India to learn techniques of nonviolent civil resistance directly from the leaders of the Gandhian movement. The conference had been organized before Gandhi's assassination earlier that year. Between 1947 and 1952, Rustin also met with leaders of independence movements in Ghana and Nigeria. In 1951, he formed the committee to Support South African Resistance, which later became the American Committee on Africa.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin was arrested in Pasadena, California, in January 1953 for sexual activity with two men in their 20s, in a parked car. Originally charged with vagrancy and lewd conduct, he pleaded guilty to a single, lesser charge of "sex perversion" (as sodomy was officially referred to in California then, even if consensual) and served 60 days in jail. (In 2020 California governor Gavin Newsom granted Rustin a posthumous pardon for this conviction.) The Pasadena arrest was the first time that Rustin's homosexuality had come to public attention. He had been and remained candid in private about his sexuality, although homosexual activity was still criminalized throughout the United States. Rustin resigned from the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) because of his convictions. They also greatly affected Rustin's relationship with A. J. Muste, the director of the FOR. Muste had already tried to change Rustin's sexuality earlier in their relationship with no success. Later in Rustin's life, they continued their relationship with more tension than they had previously. Rustin became the executive secretary of the War Resisters League. Later, in Montana, an American Legion chapter made his conviction in Pasadena public to try to cancel his lectures in the state.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin served as an unidentified member of the American Friends Service Committee's task force to write "", published in 1955. This was one of the most influential and widely commented upon pacifist essays in the United States. Rustin had wanted to keep his participation quiet, as he believed that his known sexual orientation would be used by critics as an excuse to compromise the 71-page pamphlet when it was published. It analyzed the Cold War and the American response to it, and recommended non-violent solutions.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin took leave from the War Resisters League in 1956 to advise minister Martin Luther King Jr. of the Baptist Church on Gandhian tactics. King was organizing the public transportation boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, which became known as the Montgomery bus boycott. According to Rustin, "I think it's fair to say that Dr. King's view of non-violent tactics was almost non-existent when the boycott began. In other words, Dr. King was permitting himself and his children and his home to be protected by guns." Rustin convinced King to abandon the armed protection, including a personal handgun. In a 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book "Who Speaks for the Negro?," Rustin also reflected that his integrative ideology began to differ from King's. He believed a social movement "has to be based on the collective needs of people at this time, regardless of color, creed, race."


title: Bayard Rustin

text: The following year, Rustin and King began organizing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Many African American leaders were concerned that Rustin's sexual orientation and past Communist membership would undermine support for the civil rights movement. After the organization of the SCLC, Rustin and King planned a march. However, they did not plan on the march to be included in the Democratic National Convention. This did not sit well with U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Powell threatened to leak to the press rumors of a fake affair between Rustin and King. King, acting in his interests, canceled the march, and Rustin left his position in the SCLC. King received criticism for this action from "Harper's" magazine, which wrote about him, "Lost much moral credit ... in the eyes of the young". Although Rustin was open about his sexual orientation and his convictions were a matter of public record, the events had not been discussed widely beyond the civil rights leadership. Rustin did not let this setback change his direction in the movement.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: A few weeks before the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond railed against Rustin as a "Communist, draft-dodger, and homosexual", and had his entire Pasadena arrest file entered in the record. Thurmond also produced a Federal Bureau of Investigation photograph of Rustin talking to King while King was bathing, to imply that there was a same-sex relationship between the two. Both men denied the allegation of an affair.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin became involved in the March on Washington in 1962 when he was recruited by A. Philip Randolph. The march was planned to be a commemoration of the Emancipation Proclamation one hundred years earlier. Rustin was instrumental in organizing the march. He drilled off-duty police officers as marshals, bus captains to direct traffic, and scheduled the podium speakers. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Rachelle Horowitz were aides. Despite King's support, NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins did not want Rustin to receive any public credit for his role in planning the march. Roy Wilkins said, "This march is of such importance that we must not put a person of his liabilities at the head." Because of this conflict, Randolph served as the director of the march and Rustin as his deputy. During the planning of the march, Rustin feared his previous legal issues would pose a threat to the march. Nevertheless, Rustin did become well known. On September 6, 1963, a photograph of Rustin and Randolph appeared on the cover of "Life" magazine, identifying them as "the leaders" of the March.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: At the beginning of 1964, Reverend Milton Galamison and other Harlem community leaders invited Rustin to coordinate a citywide boycott of public schools to protest their de facto segregation. Prior to the boycott, the organizers asked the United Federation of Teachers Executive Board to join the boycott or ask teachers to join the picket lines. The union declined, promising only to protect from reprisals any teachers who participated. More than 400,000 New Yorkers participated in a one-day February 3, 1964 boycott. Historian Daniel Perlstein notes that "newspapers were astounded both by the numbers of black and Puerto Rican parents and children who boycotted and by the complete absence of violence or disorder from the protesters." It was, Rustin stated, and newspapers reported, "the largest civil rights demonstration" in American history. Rustin said that "the movement to integrate the schools will create far-reaching benefits" for teachers as well as students.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: The protest demanded complete integration of the city's schools (which would require some whites to attend schools in black neighborhoods), and it challenged the coalition between African Americans and white liberals. An ensuing white backlash affected relations among the black leaders. Writing to black labor leaders, Rustin denounced Galamison for seeking to conduct another boycott in the spring and soon abandoned the coalition.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin organized a May 18 March which called for "maximum possible" integration. Perlstein recounts. "This goal was to be achieved through such modest programs as the construction of larger schools and the replacement of junior high schools with middle schools. The UFT and other white moderates endorsed the May rally, yet only four thousand protesters showed up, and the Board of Education was no more responsive to the conciliatory May demonstration than to the earlier, more confrontational boycott."


title: Bayard Rustin

text: When Rustin was invited to speak at the University of Virginia in 1964, school administrators tried to ban him, out of fear that he would organize a school boycott there.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In the spring of 1964, Martin Luther King was considering hiring Rustin as executive director of SCLC but was advised against it by Stanley Levison, a longtime activist friend of Rustin's. He opposed the hire because of what he considered Rustin's growing devotion to the political theorist Max Shachtman. "Shachtmanites" have been described as an ideologically cultish group with ardently anti-communist positions, and attachments to the Democratic Party and the AFL–CIO.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, which followed Freedom Summer in Mississippi, Rustin became an adviser to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP); they were trying to gain recognition as the legitimate, non-Jim Crow delegation from their state, where blacks had been officially disenfranchised since the turn of the century (as they were generally throughout the South) and excluded from the official political system. DNC leaders Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey offered only two non-voting seats to the MFDP, with the official seating going to the regular segregationist Mississippi delegation. Rustin, following a line set by Shachtman and AFL–CIO leaders, urged the MFDP to take the offer. MFDP leaders, including Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses, angrily rejected the arrangement; many of their supporters became highly suspicious of Rustin. Rustin's attempt to compromise appealed to the Democratic Party leadership.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Rustin advocated closer ties between the civil rights movement and the Democratic Party, specifically the party's base among the white working class, many of whom still had strong union affiliations. With Tom Kahn, Rustin wrote an influential article in 1964 called "From Protest to Politics", published in "Commentary" magazine; it analyzed the changing economy and its implications for African Americans. Rustin wrote presciently that the rise of automation would reduce the demand for low-skill high-paying jobs, which would jeopardize the position of the urban African American working class, particularly in northern states. He believed that the working class had to collaborate across racial lines for common economic goals. His prophecy has been proven right in the dislocation and loss of jobs for many urban African Americans due to the restructuring of industry in the coming decades.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin believed that the African American community needed to change its political strategy, building and strengthening a political alliance with predominately white unions and other organizations (churches, synagogues, etc.) to pursue a common economic agenda. He wrote that it was time to move from protest to politics. Rustin's analysis of the economic problems of the Black community was widely influential.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin argued that since black people could now legally sit in the restaurant after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they needed to be able to afford service financially. He believed that a coalition of progressive forces to move the Democratic Party forward was needed to change the economic structure.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: He also argued that the African American community was threatened by the appeal of identity politics, particularly the rise of "Black power". He thought this position was a fantasy of middle-class black people that repeated the political and moral errors of previous black nationalists, while alienating the white allies needed by the African American community. "Nation" editor and Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy noted later that, while Rustin had a general "disdain of nationalism", he had a "very different attitude toward Jewish nationalism" and was "unflaggingly supportive of Zionism".


title: Bayard Rustin

text: "Commentary" editor-in-chief Norman Podhoretz had commissioned the article from Rustin, and the two men remained intellectually and personally aligned for the next 20 years. Podhoretz and the magazine promoted the neoconservative movement, which had implications for civil rights initiatives as well as other economic aspects of the society. In 1985, Rustin publicly praised Podhoretz for his refusal to "pander to minority groups" and for opposing affirmative action quotas in hiring as well as black studies programs in colleges.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Because of these positions, Rustin was criticized as a "sell-out" by many of his former colleagues in the civil rights movement, especially those connected to grassroots organizing. They charged that he was lured by the material comforts that came with a less radical and more professional type of activism. Biographer John D'Emilio rejects these characterizations, and "portrays the final third of Rustin's life as one in which his reputation among his former allies was routinely questioned. After decades of working outside the system, they simply could not accept working within the system." However, Randall Kennedy wrote in a 2003 article that descriptions of Rustin as "a bought man" are "at least partly true", noting that his sponsorship by the AFL–CIO brought him some financial stability but imposed boundaries on his politics.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Kennedy notes that despite Rustin's conservative turn in the mid-1960s, he remained a lifelong socialist, and D'Emilio argues that in the final phase of his life, Rustin remained on the left: "D'Emilio explains, even as Rustin was taking what appeared to be a more "conservative" turn, he remained committed to social justice. Rustin was making radical and ambitious demands for a basic redistribution of wealth in American society, including universal healthcare, the abolition of poverty, and full employment."


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin increasingly worked to strengthen the labor movement, which he saw as the champion of empowerment for the African American community and for economic justice for all Americans. He contributed to the labor movement's two sides, economic and political, through the support of labor unions and social-democratic politics.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: He was the founder and became the Director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which coordinated the AFL-CIO's work on civil rights and economic justice. He became a regular columnist for the AFL-CIO newspaper.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: On the political side of the labor movement, Rustin increased his visibility as a leader of the American movement for social democracy. In early 1972, he became a national co-chairman of the Socialist Party of America. In December 1972, when the Socialist Party changed its name to Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) by a vote of 73–34, Rustin continued to serve as national co-chairman, along with Charles S. Zimmerman of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). In his opening speech to the December 1972 Convention, Co-Chairman Rustin called for SDUSA to organize against the "reactionary policies of the Nixon Administration"; Rustin also criticized the "irresponsibility and élitism of the 'New Politics' liberals". In later years, Rustin served as the national chairman of SDUSA.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: During the 1960s, Rustin was a member of the League for Industrial Democracy. He would remain a member for years, and became vice president during the 1980s.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Like many liberals and some socialists, Rustin supported President Lyndon B. Johnson's containment policy against communism, while criticizing specific conduct of this policy. In particular, to maintain independent labor unions and political opposition in Vietnam, Rustin and others gave critical support to U.S. military intervention in the Vietnam War, while calling for a negotiated peace treaty and democratic elections. Rustin criticized the specific conduct of the war, though. For instance, in a fundraising letter sent to War Resisters League supporters in 1964, Rustin wrote of being "angered and humiliated by the kind of war being waged, a war of torture, a war in which civilians are being machine-gunned from the air, and in which American napalm bombs are being dropped on the villages."


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Along with Allard Lowenstein and Norman Thomas, Rustin worked with the CIA-sponsored Committee on Free Elections in the Dominican Republic, which lent international credibility to a 1966 ballot effectively rigged against the socialist former president, Juan Bosch.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin worked as a human rights and election monitor for Freedom House.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 1970, Rustin called for the U.S. to send military jets in the fight against Arab states by Israel; referring to a "New York Times" article he authored, Rustin wrote to Prime Minister Golda Meir "...I hope that the ad will also have an effect on a serious domestic question: namely, the relations between the Jewish and the Negro communities in America." Rustin was concerned about unity between two groups that he argued faced discrimination in America and abroad, and also believed that Israel's democratic ideals were proof that justice and equality would prevail in the Arab territories despite the atrocities of war. His former colleagues in the peace movement considered it to be a profound betrayal of Rustin's nonviolent ideals.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin maintained his strongly anti-Soviet and anti-communist views later in his life, especially with regard to Africa. Rustin co-wrote with Carl Gershman (a former director of Social Democrats, USA and future Ronald Reagan appointee) an essay entitled "Africa, Soviet Imperialism & the Retreat of American Power", in which he decried Russian and Cuban involvement in the Angolan Civil War and defended the military intervention by apartheid South Africa on behalf of the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). "And if a South African force did intervene at the urging of "black" leaders and on the side of the forces that clearly represent the "black" majority in Angola, to counter a non-African army of Cubans ten times its size, by what standard of political judgment is this immoral?" Rustin accused the Soviet Union of a classic imperialist agenda in Africa in pursuit of economic resources and vital sea lanes, and called the Carter Administration "hypocritical" for claiming to be committed to the welfare of blacks while doing too little to thwart Russian and Cuban expansion throughout Africa.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 1976, Rustin was a member of the anti-communist Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), founded by politician Paul Nitze. Nitze was a member of Team B, the independent analysts commissioned by George Bush to scrutinize the CIA's assessments of the Soviet nuclear threat. CPD promoted Team B's controversial intelligence claims about Soviet foreign policy, using them as an argument against arms control agreements such as SALT II. This cemented Rustin's leading role in the neoconservative movement.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: The plight of Jews in the Soviet Union reminded Rustin of the struggles that blacks faced in the United States. Soviet Jews faced many of the same forms of discrimination in employment, education, and housing, while also being prisoners within their own country by being denied the chance to emigrate by Soviet authorities. After seeing the injustice that Soviet Jews faced, Rustin became a leading voice in advocating for the movement of Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel. He worked closely with Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, who introduced legislation that tied trade relations with the Soviet Union to their treatment of Jews. In 1966 he chaired the historic Ad hoc Commission on Rights of Soviet Jews organized by the Conference on the Status of Soviet Jews, leading a panel of six jurors in the commission's public tribunal on Jewish life in the Soviet Union. Members of the panel included Telford Taylor, the Nuremberg war trial prosecutor and Columbia University professor of law, Dr. John C. Bennett, president of the Union Theological Seminary; Reverend George B. Ford, pastor emeritus of the Corpus Christi Church; Samuel Fishman representing United Automobile Workers; and Norman Thomas, veteran Socialist leader. The commission collected testimonies from Soviet Jews and compiled them into a report that was delivered to the secretary-general of the United Nations. The report urged the international community to demand that the Soviet authorities allow Jews to practice their religion, preserve their culture, and emigrate from the USSR at their will. The testimonies from Soviet Jews were published by Moshe Decter, the executive secretary of the Conference on the Status of Soviet Jews, in a book—"Redemption! Jewish freedom letters from Russia", with a foreword by Rustin. Through the 1970s and 1980s Rustin wrote several articles on the subject of Soviet Jewry and appeared at Soviet Jewry movement rallies, demonstrations, vigils, and conferences, in the United States and abroad. He co-sponsored the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry. Rustin allied with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an outspoken advocate for Soviet Jewry, and worked closely with Senator Henry Jackson, informing the Jackson–Vanik amendment, vital legislation that restricted United States trade with the Soviet Union in relation to its treatment of Jews.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Davis Platt, Bayard's partner from the 1940s, said "I never had any sense at all that Bayard felt any shame or guilt about his homosexuality. That was rare in those days. Rare."


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin did not engage in any gay rights activism until the 1980s. He was urged to do so by his partner Walter Naegle, who has said that "I think that if I hadn't been in the office at that time, when these invitations [from gay organizations] came in, he probably wouldn't have done them."


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Due to the lack of marriage equality at the time, Rustin and Naegle took the then not unusual step to solidify their partnership and protect their union legally through adoption: in 1982 Rustin adopted Naegle, 30 years old at the time. Naegle explained that Bayard:


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin testified in favor of New York State's Gay Rights Bill. In 1986, he gave a speech "The New Niggers Are Gays" in which he asserted:


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Also in 1986, Rustin was invited to contribute to the book "In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology". He declined, explaining:


title: Bayard Rustin

text: I was not involved in the struggle for gay rights as a youth... I did not "come out of the closet" voluntarily—circumstances forced me out. While I have no problem with being publicly identified as homosexual, it would be dishonest of me to present myself as one who was in the forefront of the struggle for gay rights... I fundamentally consider sexual orientation to be a private matter. As such, it has not been a factor which has greatly influenced my role as an activist.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin died on August 24, 1987, of a perforated appendix. An obituary in "The New York Times" reported, "Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote: 'The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics; 2) constitutional means; 3) democratic procedures; 4) respect for human personality; 5) a belief that all people are one. Rustin was survived by Walter Naegle, his partner of ten years.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin's personal philosophy is said to have been inspired by combining Quaker pacifism with socialism (as taught by A. Philip Randolph), and the theory of non-violent protest popularized by Mahatma Gandhi.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: President Ronald Reagan issued a statement on Rustin's death, praising his work for civil rights and "for human rights throughout the world". He added that Rustin "was denounced by former friends, because he never gave up his conviction that minorities in America could and would succeed based on their individual merit".


title: Bayard Rustin

text: According to journalist Steve Hendrix, Rustin "faded from the shortlist of well-known civil rights lions", in part because he was active behind the scenes, and also because of public discomfort with his sexual orientation and former communist membership. In addition, Rustin's tilt toward neo-conservatism in the late 1960s led him into a disagreement with most civil rights leaders. But, the 2003 documentary film "", a Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize nominee, and the March 2012 centennial of Rustin's birth have contributed to renewed recognition of his extensive contributions.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Rustin served as chairman of Social Democrats, USA, which, "The Washington Post" wrote in 2013, "was a breeding ground for many neoconservatives". French historian Justin Vaïsse classifies him as a "right-wing socialist" and "second age neoconservative", citing his role as vice-chair of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, which was involved in the second incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: According to Daniel Richman, former clerk for United States Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, Marshall's friendship with Rustin, who was open about his homosexuality, played a significant role in Marshall's dissent from the court's 5–4 decision upholding the constitutionality of state sodomy laws in the later overturned 1986 case "Bowers v. Hardwick".


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Several buildings have been named in honor of Rustin, including the Bayard Rustin Educational Complex located in Chelsea, Manhattan; Bayard Rustin High School in his hometown of West Chester, Pennsylvania; Bayard Rustin Library at the Affirmations Gay/Lesbian Community Center in Ferndale, Michigan; the Bayard Rustin Social Justice Center in Conway, Arkansas, and the Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice in Princeton, New Jersey. Rustin is one of two men who have both participated in the Penn Relays and had a school, West Chester Rustin High School, named in his honor that participates in the relays. In 1985, Haverford College awarded Rustin an honorary doctorate in law.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 1995, a Pennsylvania State Historical Marker was placed at Lincoln and Montgomery Avenues, West Chester, Pennsylvania, on the grounds of Henderson High School, which he attended.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: The West Chester Area School District voted in 2002 to approve the creation of Bayard Rustin High School in a 6–3 vote. Those in favor mentioned Rustin's involvement in the civil rights movement, and opposition was tied to Rustin's sexuality and political views. The school opened in 2006.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In July 2007 after a year's collaboration starting in June 2006, a group of San Francisco Bay Area Black LGBT community leaders officially formed the Bayard Rustin Coalition (BRC), with the permission of the Estate of Bayard Rustin. The BRC promotes greater Black participation in the electoral process, advances civil and human rights issues, and promotes the legacy of Rustin.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 2011, the Bayard Rustin Center for LGBTQA Activism, Awareness, and Reconciliation was announced at Guilford College, a Quaker school. Formerly the Queer and Allied Resource Center, the center was rededicated in March 2011 with the permission of the Estate of Bayard Rustin and featured a keynote address by social justice activist Mandy Carter.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 2012, Rustin was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBTQ history and people. In 2013, Rustin was selected as an honoree in the United States Department of Labor Hall of Honor.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: On August 8, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. The citation in the press release stated:


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Bayard Rustin was an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all. An advisor to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he promoted nonviolent resistance, participated in one of the first Freedom Rides, organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and fought tirelessly for marginalized communities at home and abroad. As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: At the White House ceremony on November 20, 2013, President Obama presented Rustin's award to Walter Naegle, his partner of ten years at the time of Rustin's death.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 2014, Rustin was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields". In April 2018, the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland voted to name the Bayard Rustin Elementary School after Rustin.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: Canadian writer Steven Elliott Jackson wrote a play that stages an imaginary meeting and one-night-stand between Rustin and Walter Jenkins of the Johnson administration called "The Seat Next to the King". The play won the award for Best Play at the 2017 Toronto Fringe Festival. A full-length play with music, written by Steve H. Broadnax III, "Bayard Rustin Inside Ashland", dramatizing Rustin's World War II prison experience and its central role in his lifetime of activism, had its world premiere on May 22, 2022, at People's Light and Theatre Company in Malvern, Pennsylvania.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In June 2019, Rustin was one of the inaugural fifty American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument (SNM) in New York City's Stonewall Inn. The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history, and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 2018, the Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice was established in Princeton, New Jersey, with Naegle acting as Board Member Emeritus. It is a community activist center and safe space for LGBTQ kids, intersectional families, and marginalized people.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In January 2020, California State Senator Scott Wiener, chair of the California Legislative LGBT Caucus, and Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, called for Governor Gavin Newsom to issue a pardon for Rustin's 1953 arrest for having sex with a man in a car, citing Rustin's legacy as a civil rights icon. Newsom issued the pardon on February 5 while also announcing a new process for fast-tracking pardons for those convicted under historical laws making homosexuality illegal.


title: Bayard Rustin

text: In 2021, Higher Ground Productions, founded by Michelle and Barack Obama, announced production of "Rustin", a biopic about Rustin's life directed by George C. Wolfe and starring Colman Domingo in the titular role.


title: Aled Jones

text: Aled Jones, (born 29 December 1970) is a Welsh singer and radio and television presenter. As a teenage chorister, he reached widespread fame during the mid-1980s. Since then he has worked in television with the BBC and ITV, and radio (for Classic FM).


title: Aled Jones

text: In September 2012, Jones joined ITV Breakfast where he presented "Daybreak" (2012–2014), alongside Lorraine Kelly and Kate Garraway.


title: Aled Jones

text: For the BBC, he has presented "Songs of Praise" (2004–), "Cash in the Attic" (2010–2012), "Escape to the Country" (2010–2013) and "Going Back Giving Back" (2016–present).


title: Aled Jones

text: Jones was born in St. David's Hospital in Bangor, Caernarfonshire, the only child of Nest Rowlands, a teacher, and Derek John Jones, a draughtsman for a shipbuilder. He was raised in the small Welsh-speaking community of Llandegfan on Anglesey, and attended Ysgol David Hughes (a secondary school). Jones joined the choir of Bangor Cathedral at age nine and was lead soloist within two years, although he was never Head Chorister. The remarkable quality of Jones' treble voice was appreciated by a member of the congregation, Hefina Orwig Evans, who wrote a letter to record company Sain, and he was duly signed. In 1982, Jones won the Cerdd Dant solo competitions for competitors under 12 at the Urdd Eisteddfod.


title: Aled Jones

text: Jones became famous for the cover version of "Walking in the Air", the song from Channel 4's animated film "The Snowman", based on the book by Raymond Briggs. The record reached No. 5 in the UK charts in 1985. Although it is often reported that Jones sang the version used in the 1982 film, that was actually performed by Peter Auty, a St. Paul's Cathedral choirboy.


title: Aled Jones

text: In June 1985, Jones was the subject of an Emmy Award-winning BBC Omnibus documentary entitled "The Treble". Jones, with the National Philharmonic Orchestra, was behind the "Santa Claus The Movie", original motion picture soundtrack, "Every Christmas Eve" of 1985. Also in 1985, Jones was called by Mike Oldfield to sing on Oldfield's single "Pictures in the Dark", a three-voice song, on which he performed with Anita Hegerland and Barry Palmer, and which became fairly popular. In 1986, he sang the theme song for the Siriol Animation film "A Winter Story". The song was a modest success, reaching number 51 in the UK Singles Chart.


title: Aled Jones

text: Jones' recording career was temporarily halted when his voice broke at 16. By then he had recorded 16 albums, sold more than six million copies, and sung for Pope John Paul II, the Queen, and the Prince and Princess of Wales in a private recital, as well as presenting numerous children's television programmes. He sang at the wedding of celebrities Bob Geldof and Paula Yates in 1986. Jones also had the distinction of being the first artist to have two classical albums listed simultaneously in the popular music charts, and worked with Leonard Bernstein ("Chichester Psalms"). In 1986, he sang the oratorio "Athalia" with Emma Kirkby.


title: Aled Jones

text: In September 1990, Jones made his acting debut at the Royal Theatre (Northampton) in Shaun McKenna's adaptation of Richard Llewellyn's "How Green Was My Valley" playing the teenage Huw Morgan.


title: Aled Jones

text: Jones went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, before beginning his adult recording career which has featured a largely religious/inspirational repertoire. In 1995 he took the leading role in the long-running production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat" at the Blackpool Wintergardens Opera house stage. From September 1996 to May 1997 Jones played the young Tom Gradgrind (a non-singing role) in a large-scale national touring production of Charles Dickens's "Hard Times". Theatres at which the play was presented included Theatre Royal, Brighton, Bath Theatre Royal and Richmond Theatre.


title: Aled Jones

text: In 2005, Jones launched his autobiography, "Aled: The Autobiography", written in collaboration with Darren Henley. In 2013, Jones released his extended autobiography, "Aled Jones: My Story".


title: Aled Jones

text: Following the launch of his first baritone album, "Aled" on the Universal Music label in Australia in May 2003, Jones visited the country on a promotional tour. He has since successfully toured in concert there five times: in Dec 2003, Aug 2006, Oct 2008, Aug/Sep 2010 and Feb 2015, performing in eight cities.


title: Aled Jones

text: From 3 July to 30 August 2008, Jones played the lead role of Caractacus Potts in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff. He returned to the stage, playing Bob Wallace in "White Christmas" at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth, and at The Lowry, Salford Quays, from November 2009 until 9 January 2010, and again from 11 to 26 November 2011 at the Mayflower Theatre, Southampton, from 1 to 17 December at the Grand Canal Theatre, Dublin, and at the Empire Theatre, Liverpool (22 December 2011 to 7 January 2012) On 8 November 2014 Jones made his West End debut, again playing Bob Wallace in "White Christmas", this time at the Dominion Theatre, Tottenham Court Road.


title: Aled Jones

text: Following the publication of "Aled's Forty Favourite Hymns" in 2009, a further book, "Favourite Christmas Carols", was published on 28 October 2010; Jones took the book on his UK tour in November and December 2010. On 29 November, his CD, "Aled's Christmas Gift", was issued to accompany the book.


title: Aled Jones

text: On 11 October 2010, Jones was confirmed to take over as stand-in presenter of the early morning breakfast slot on BBC Radio 2 following the departure of Sarah Kennedy, a role he occasionally covered in the years leading up to her departure. Jones covered this slot for six weeks until the beginning of his UK tour.


title: Aled Jones

text: Jones is mentoring Isabel Suckling, the youngest classical recording artist signed by Decca Records and first choirgirl to sign a record contract with a major music label. Suckling's debut album was strongly endorsed by Jones, who described it as "breathtaking" and it was released on 29 November 2010.


title: Aled Jones

text: In 2011, Jones hosted the television and DVD series, "Classical Destinations III, Aled Jones' Ultimate Travel Guide to Classical Music" which was filmed on his travels in the UK, Europe, Scandinavia and Australia.