The men and women who made the greatest improvements in the United States did so out of love for America and belief in her greatness.
Shortly before he died in 1987, the legendary civil rights leader Bayard Rustin spoke of “a tribute to the founding fathers who did produce a document in the eighteenth century that was creative and positive. Yes, but that it was basically flawed, that it basically lead to a civil war that was horrible but the glory is that the American people kept at that document for the purpose of clarifying it. Therefore, it is not only a tribute to the founding fathers, it is in a greater sense a tremendous tribute to the eternal wisdom of the American people that they will not live with a flawed document, that they will insist upon a Bill of Rights. They will insist upon over half the amendments to that Constitution having to do with broadening the franchise so that they eliminated the fact that you had to have so much property or money. They eliminated the fact that women couldn’t vote. We eliminated the fact that blacks and all others couldn’t vote.”
In a 1980 speech, Rustin said:
I have lived through many struggles in the U.S. I have seen much suffering in this country. Yet despite all this, I can confidently assert that I would prefer to be a black in America than a Jew in Moscow, a Chinese in Peking, or a black in Uganda, yesterday or today. For the democratic principles which are an integral part of America’s tradition are the greatest legacy and the greatest gift of all.
Rustin’s mentor, the equally legendary A. Philip Randolph, refused to be associated with any organization that was anti-American. When he discovered that the National Negro Congress he was a part of had been taken over by Communists, who declared that black Americans would never fight for America against the Soviet Union, he resigned in outrage.
“If the U. S. declared war upon Communist Russia tomorrow, the Negro would fight Russia, with all the fervor and patriotism of any other 100 per cent American,” he said.
Randolph repeated this a few years later:
Speaking in Richmond Sunday, Mr. Randolph took exception to the widely publicized statement attributed to Paul Robeson saying that the Negro would not fight for the United States in a war against Russia. He termed Mr. Robeson a “Johnny Come Lately,” a wealthy man, and in no position to speak for the Negro.
He said Negroes would fight for the United States, their homeland, against Soviet Russia, as they have done in every war in which this country has been engaged since “the fall of Crispus Attucks.”
(“Randolph Exposes Red Enemies: Communism Termed Foes Of Religion, Negroes And Labor,” New Journal and Guide, Jan 28, 1950)
The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the work of Randolph and Rustin.
Not long ago, I had the privilege of interviewing two civil rights and labor leaders, Norman and Velma Hill, who worked alongside A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. One of the questions I asked was how Rustin and Randolph maintained their extraordinary patriotism, and avoided becoming bitter and disgruntled over the discrimination they faced:
Velma: It’s important that you read and you understand history, and I think that both of them had a real understanding of history.
Understanding a lot about this country made you feel like you wanted to be a part of it. And change it for the better, or change it more. Extend democracy. That’s how we felt about it.
Norman: They really believed that they could take advantage of the base, basic democratic framework – although flawed, pertaining to the treatment of blacks – that was in place in this country.
They always had the feeling that it’s possible to make and get change, to do so democratically. Because they were about extending democracy and making the country a more democratic form for all people.
They themselves were small d democrats. And that they had a faith that democratic rights could be extended. They never excepted the status quo — they had a belief that change could take place, and could take place through non-violence and mass action and demonstration. And I think that, in fact, what they did proved that they were right.
Perhaps nobody expressed these views better than Martin Luther King, Jr. In his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, he wrote:
“One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”