In his own words.

Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin * Edited by Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise * Cleis Press * $16.95

"Because we stand in the center of progress toward democracy, [gay people] have a terrifying responsibility to the whole society," writes Bayard Rustin in Time on Two Crosses, a collection of his writings edited by Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise. Rustin's words reach out to anyone who has bemoaned the gay rights movement's insulation from broader efforts for social justice. His insistence on the unity of these causes is bracing and inspiring.

Some of the book's most valuable pieces illustrate Rustin's development as an activist and thinker. Writings such as 1942's "Nonviolence vs. Jim Crow" offer a vivid glimpse of the tactics that would shape the civil rights movement.

Here, Rustin describes refusing to move from the front to the back of a Nashville-bound bus: "'I believe that I have a right to sit here,' I said quietly. 'If I sit in the back of the bus I am depriving that child--' I pointed to a little white child of five or six--'of the knowledge that there is injustice here.'" Only an activist who devoted a lifetime to a vision of broad-based, spiritually informed equality could write with such moral force.