He was a key leader of the Black civil rights movement—a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the principal organizer of the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom—but owing to his sexuality he often worked behind the scenes and remains, to this day, less well-known than he deserves to be.
Image: Seventeen-year-old Bayard Rustin, 1929. Courtesy of the Estate of Bayard Rustin.
Bayard Rustin
(March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) received this advice from his grandmother: “Always associate with people who have as much to lose as you have.” Bayard was openly gay and Black at a time when being either meant facing relentless prejudice.
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