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{{cquote|CCNY had a well-deserved reputation in the 1930s as the nation's most radical campus. It featured both a Marxist Cultural Society and a very active branch of the Young Communist League. As at other colleges, there were two main political groupings at CCNY, but they weren't Democrats and Republicans. The major political tension on campus was  between pro-Stalin Communists and a minority of Trotskyites. No American college came close to matching CCNY's level of activism until the upheavals of the late 1960s.<ref>Steven T. Usdin, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=QTdWLFXKw_UC Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley] (Yale University Press, 2008) ISBN 0300127952, p. 10</ref>}}

{{cquote|CCNY had a well-deserved reputation in the 1930s as the nation's most radical campus. It featured both a Marxist Cultural Society and a very active branch of the Young Communist League. As at other colleges, there were two main political groupings at CCNY, but they weren't Democrats and Republicans. The major political tension on campus was  between pro-Stalin Communists and a minority of Trotskyites. No American college came close to matching CCNY's level of activism until the upheavals of the late 1960s.<ref>Steven T. Usdin, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=QTdWLFXKw_UC Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley] (Yale University Press, 2008) ISBN 0300127952, p. 10</ref>}}

In 1936, Rustin joined the Young Communist League, the youth wing of the Communist Party USA. “They seemed the only people who had civil-rights at heart,” he later explained. “The Party played a very active role in most civil-rights cases, like the [[Scottsboro case]].”<ref>Thomas R. Brooks, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=zsljcCM9k1cC Till Noon]'' (Xlibris Corporation, 2009) ISBN 1477167110, p. 207</ref> Despite his claim that he was attracted to the Communists by their concern for civil rights, Rustin remained a party member throughout Stalin's bloody purges.

In 1936, Rustin joined the [[Young Communist League]], the youth wing of the Communist Party USA. “They seemed the only people who had civil-rights at heart,” he later explained. “The Party played a very active role in most civil-rights cases, like the [[Scottsboro case]].”<ref>Thomas R. Brooks, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=zsljcCM9k1cC Till Noon]'' (Xlibris Corporation, 2009) ISBN 1477167110, p. 207</ref> Despite his claim that he was attracted to the Communists by their concern for civil rights, Rustin remained a party member throughout Stalin's bloody purges.

Despite his vaunted reputation as a Quaker pacifist, Rustin worked as a youth organizer for the CPUSA throughout the [[Nazi-Soviet]] pact and Hitler and Stalin's ensuing bloody joint invasion and division of Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and the Balkans. He didn't quit the party until 1941, when Nazi Germany, invaded the Soviet Union, causing the party line to reverse, switching from attacking the US as racist to attacking African-American protestors as subverting the war effort.<ref>Jerald Podair, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=gBH5GRFw-fkC Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer]'' (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 20080, ISBN 742564800, p. 17</ref> As NAACP leader Roy Wilkins would recount in 1949:

Despite his vaunted reputation as a Quaker pacifist, Rustin worked as a youth organizer for the CPUSA throughout the [[Nazi-Soviet]] pact and Hitler and Stalin's ensuing bloody joint invasion and division of Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and the Balkans. He didn't quit the party until 1941, when Nazi Germany, invaded the Soviet Union, causing the party line to reverse, switching from attacking the US as racist to attacking African-American protestors as subverting the war effort.<ref>Jerald Podair, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=gBH5GRFw-fkC Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer]'' (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 20080, ISBN 742564800, p. 17</ref> As NAACP leader Roy Wilkins would recount in 1949: