They ringed the sanctuary, black and white together, singing "We Shall Overcome." They stretched around the varnished pews of the Bethel A.M.E. Church in West Chester, clasping hands and singing in memory of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin - for what he had accomplished and for what they had yet to do.
At the hourlong memorial service last week, about 100 mourners came to celebrate the West Chester native who they said never forgot his friends at home. Rustin, 77, died Aug. 24.
In a service organized by Clifford E. DeBaptiste, president of DeBaptiste Funeral Homes Inc. of Bryn Mawr and West Chester, several of Rustin's colleagues spoke, with musical interludes by the church choir.
Before the service began, people furling umbrellas walked to the front of the church for a better glimpse of the black-and-white photographs of Rustin and his friend Charles Alexander Melton, who also died recently, tucked into bouquets of multicolored mums.
"Today we take the time for Bayard Rustin, who gave us his time, his energy, for racial justice," DeBaptiste said.
In 1947, Rustin was among the first to challenge segregation on buses. In 1942, he aided Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. In 1963, as a special assistant to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he organized the March on Washington. In 1975, he organized a black group in support of Israel, and in 1986, he visited Thai refugee camps.
Dr. W.T.M. Johnson of Glen Mills, president of the United Political Action Committee of Chester County, said that in 1965, Rustin spoke at the West Chester Community Center, protesting racial discrimination in the West Chester schools.
"We went around to every black bar and social club to drum up support for the meeting," Johnson remembered. "This is one of the many times that Bayard Rustin came home to help his people - people of all colors, fighting for peace and justice."
And at other times, Rustin "stood up to black mob violence as much as white bigotry," Johnson said.
Johnson said that Rustin took up the fight against AIDS in the months before he died.
Ethel Closson of West Chester remembered Rustin as a friend of her family's. She recalled his dancing and singing and lauded him for organizing the March on Washington and for always remaining "modest, faithful, unselfish and humble."
