Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Rustin.
Directed byMa Rainey’s Black Bottom’sGeorge C. Wolfe, Netflix’s newest biopic,Rustin, aims to honor the memory of an often unsung hero of the Civil Rights movement. More specifically, it purports to pay tribute to a man whose contributions to the cause were for a long time erased due to his sexual orientation.Colman Domingostars as Bayard Rustin, a man who was not only a trusted advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. (Aml Ameen), but was also instrumental to orchestrating the 1963 March on Washington, an episode that served as a turning point to American history in what it pertains to the treatment of Black citizens. Alas, throughout the movie, much like throughout his life, Rustin suffers with the homophobia of many of his fellow activists.
WhetherRustinsucceeds in making the story of Bayard Rustin an interesting cinematic experience is up to debate. Still, the movie, which was released in select theaters and is now available to stream on Netflix, does manage to raise awareness about his importance to a movement without which the US would certainly be another country entirely. But who exactly was Bayard Rustin? What was his involvement in the Civil Rights movement, and why is it so important to commemorate his legacy?
Activist Bayard Rustin faces racism and homophobia as he helps change the course of Civil Rights history by orchestrating the 1963 March on Washington.
Who Was Bayard Rustin and What Part Did He Play in the March on Washington?
Well, to answer these questions, we first have to understand the importance of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The protest, in which Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now classic“I have a dream” speech, gathered about 250,000 people in the United States’ capital on August 28. At the National Mall,activists also heard the words of Black trade unionist A. Philip Randolph(Glynn Turman), as well as the voice and guitar of white folk singerJoan Baezin what became known as the greatest public act organized by the members of the civil rights movement, calling for the desegregation of American life.
Despite not actually being a part of the program on that fateful day,Rustin was an integral part of the March on Washington. A key organizer of the March, which brought together numerous organizations fighting for civil rights in the US, he oversaw the whole thing from start to finish. His efforts even earned him the nickname “Mr. March-on-Washington”,given to him by Randolph.
From an organizational standpoint, the March was a roaring success. And, in the following years, Congress would pass civil rights legislation that was in accordance with the movement’s demands. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act integrated schools and other public facilities and made work segregation illegal. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act outlawed many discriminatory practices put in place by Southern states to discourage the participation of Black voters, including the requirement of literacy tests.
But the fact that the March was successful does not mean it didn’t face opposition. There were many efforts to sabotage it, including allegations by South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond that its main organizer was a “pervert” as well as a communist. Said organizer was, of course, Rustin, who dedicated his entire life to fighting for civil rights, but never had an easy time doing so, not even inside his own movement.
Bayard Rustin Was an Openly Gay Black Man in the 1960s
At a time in which homosexuality was still a crime in a large portion of the country and considered a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association,Rustin lived as an openly gay Black man. This cost him a great deal in the Civil Rights movement, even leading to his expulsion from Reverend King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization founded in 1957 with the goal of achieving racial equality through nonviolent resistance.
Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1912, to a Quaker family and raised by his grandmother, Julia, who was also the founder of their local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter, Rustin is often described as the one who actually convinced King of the benefits of nonviolence. Starting his organizing career in the New York neighborhood of Harlem, in 1937, after studying music in college, Rustin was originally affiliated with the Communist Party. As the party abandoned its racial equality agenda in favor of the war effort, though, he co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), with whom he helped organize the 1941 March on Washington.
Aimed at segregation policies at the armed forces, the march would have drawn an estimate of 100,000 people to the US capital, but was called off after president Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Committee, which purported to desegregate the armed forces. Still, the March on Washington Movement (MOWM) remained active for six years, and helped define the actual protest that happened in 1963.
Sent to prison in 1944 for draft dodging — as a good Quaker, Rustin opposed war in all its forms — he organized an effort to integrate prison common areas, as well as to teach US history to white inmates in Kentucky’s Ashland Federal Prison. It was in prison, however, that he first came in contact with the hardships that could come from his sexual orientation. According toSmithsonian Magazine, warden Robert Hagerman canceled his course after other inmates complained of “sexual misconduct” and placed Rustin in isolation. The prejudice that he faced led him to make his sexual orientation more of a secret while imprisoned, understanding his race as the biggest part of his identity, for he “could hide his sexuality, but he [couldn’t] hide that he was a Black man,” says historian Jerry Watkins III.
Rustin left prison in 1946 and quickly resumed his work as an activist. Traveling the world as part of his organization work, he came to understand the connection between the anti-racism movement in the US and decolonization struggles in Africa. In 1947, he was arrested again and spent 22 days in prison, this time for participating in CORE’s Journey of Reconciliation, a protest aimed at testing theSupreme Court’s ruling that any state forcing segregation laws on buses crossing state lines would be in violation of the Commerce Clause.
But his activism was still hindered by homophobia. In 1953, after being arrested for having sex with two men following a speech delivered in Pasadena, California, and forced to register as a sex offender, Rustin found himself with no option but to leave FOR. He became disgraced in the eyes of his once mentor, Dutch American theologian A.J. Muste. In that very same year, though, he was appointed executive secretary of the War Resister League, remaining in the job until 1965.
Rustin Crossed Paths with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1956
But Rustin never gave up on his political activism. And, in 1956, his life took a turn when he was called to advise Martin Luther King Jr. in the organization of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the first big public act organized by the reverend for the desegregation of the Deep South. At the time, King still used guns to protect himself and his family from white terrorists, and it was Rustin who introduced him to the idea of nonviolence. Having spent seven weeks in India to study Gandhi’s approach to the tactic, he brought the idea back to the States with him and made it an integral part of the civil rights movement.
Later, Rustin told historian John D’Emilio: “The glorious thing is that he [King] came to a profoundly deep understanding of nonviolence through the struggle itself, and through reading and discussions which he had in the process of carrying on the protest.”
The Montgomery Boycott was successful, andRustin became a member of King’s inner circle, as well as of the SCLC. King was well aware of Rustin’s homosexuality and knew that it could pose a problem for other leaders of the movement, but his contribution was just too great to ignore. Rustin became King’s proofreader, ghostwriter, and one of his key strategists. He even helped draft parts of King’s memoir,Stride Toward Freedom, but refused to be credited in the book.
Together, the two organized marches outside the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Said marches, however, were undermined by the NAACP’s Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins (Chris Rock) and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (Jeffrey Wright), two Black leaders that saw King’s rise as a threat to their power in the movement. Wilkins and Powell threatened to accuse King and Rustin of being in a romantic relationship, which led to the latter resigning from the SCLC.
Rustin, however, remained dedicated to the cause, organizing not only the 1963 March on Washington, but various other protests across the US.He also became a vocal gay rights activist, particularly in the 80s, as the AIDS crisis raged on. He’s credited with once stating:
“Twenty-five, 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.”
Towards the end of his life, he adopted a more institutional approach to politics, working closely behind the scenes with labor movements and the Democratic Party. When he died, in 1987, his memory had all but disappeared from the history of the civil rights movement. As part of an effort to recognize his importance,president Barack Obama - whose production company Higher Ground co-producesRustin- posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2020, California governor Gavin Newsom pardoned his 1953 arrest.
