"A Black History Month Moment..."

Remembering

Bayard Rustin

(1912-1987)

Bayard Rustin was an American civil rights activist.  As a premiere architect of the American Civil Rights Movement, Rustin organized the very first Freedom Rides.  He is credited as the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Rustin who counseled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on techniques of nonviolent resistance, traveled to India to learn the Ghandian technique firsthand.

He was openly gay and spoke out on gay rights later in his life.

On November 20, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Clip taken from:

"Out of the Past" - 400 Years of Lesbian and Gay History in America a Documentary.