On August 28, 1963, approximately 250,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. They had traveled from across the country by bus, by car, by train, on foot. They assembled peacefully, they marched, they listened to speeches, and they heard a man tell them about a dream. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is remembered as one of the most significant moments in American civil rights history. The man who made it logistically possible was kept as far from the cameras as his colleagues could manage.
His name was Bayard Rustin.
Rustin was born in 1912 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, raised by his Quaker grandparents in a household that took seriously the idea that all people were equal before God and that acting on that belief was not optional. He became involved in civil rights work in the 1940s, working with A. Philip Randolph and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, studying the nonviolent direct action methods of Gandhi, and helping to found the Congress of Racial Equality. He was, by any measure, one of the most talented organizers and strategic thinkers in the American civil rights movement.
He was also openly gay at a time when that fact was considered — by allies and opponents alike — a liability that could not be managed.
In 1953, Rustin was arrested in Pasadena, California on a morals charge related to a consensual sexual encounter between adults. The arrest was used against him repeatedly for the rest of his career by those who wished to discredit him or remove him from positions of influence. When he was brought in to organize the March on Washington, several prominent leaders of the movement argued against including him. Strom Thurmond read Rustin's arrest record into the Congressional Record in an attempt to smear the March by association.
Rustin stayed. He organized. In six weeks, working from a cramped office with a small staff, he coordinated the transportation, the staging, the sound system, the program, the marshals, the portable toilets, the water, and the logistics for a quarter of a million people descending on a single location with the eyes of the nation upon them. The March was, by every measure, a logistical triumph. It helped build the political momentum that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
His name was not on the program. He stood at the back.
After the March, Rustin was increasingly pushed to the margins of the civil rights movement — the price of his sexuality, extracted quietly and without formal acknowledgment. He continued working, continued writing, continued advocating for nonviolence and economic justice until his death in 1987. He was 75 years old.
In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously. The citation acknowledged his role in the March on Washington. It did not fully reckon with what had been done to him.
Bayard Rustin built something extraordinary and was made to stand at the back of it. He did so without apparent bitterness, without abandoning his beliefs, without becoming smaller than he was. That is a kind of dignity that demands acknowledgment.
He built the March. The least we can do is say his name.
The Bayard Rustin Embodiment of Pride Tank and Tee are part of the Identité et Humanité collection. A portion of proceeds from each sale supports LGBTQ+ organizations continuing the work he began.