2022.0207.0003...

Bayard Rustin

In 1953 Rustin, who was homo­sexual, was arrested in Cali­for­nia after he was discovered having sex with a man. He served 50 days in jail and was registered as a sex offender. While his sexual orientation resulted in him taking a less public role, he was hugely influential within the civil rights movement. In the mid-1950s Rustin became a close adviser to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and he was the principal orga­nizer of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Rustin later was the chief architect of the March on Washington (August 1963), a massive demonstration to rally support for civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress. In 1964 he directed a one-day student boycott of New York City’s public schools in protest against racial imbalances in that system. Rustin subsequently served as president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a civil rights organization in New York City, from 1966 to 1979. Soon thereafter he became involved in the gay rights movement. In 2013 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2020 Rustin was pardoned for his 1953 conviction.