Bayard Rustin —The Man That History Forgot
Gay, black, and unabashed
He was the man that history forgot.
Bayard Rustin, more than any other civil rights hero, lived and operated in the shadows, not because he was a secretly gay man but because he didn’t try to disguise who he was.
He was a close adviser of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the mastermind behind the 1963 March on Washington. This March, which is best known for Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, paved the way for the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Unfortunately, Rustin was a socialist and a gay man at a period when both were generally despised.
The early years
Bayard Rustin was one of 12 children raised by his grandparents in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 17, 1912. Rustin’s lifelong commitment to nonviolence and activism began with his Quaker upbringing and the influence of his grandmother. Her involvement in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People resulted in black community leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Mary McLeod Bethune paying visits to the Rustin home during his childhood.
As a teenager, Rustin wrote poetry, played left tackle on the high school football team, and legend has it, staged an impromptu sit-in at a…
