“We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers. Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable. All we have is our bodies. We need to tuck them, tuck them, tuck them, in places so that the wheels don’t turn.”

These are the words of Bayard Rustin. Though largely uncredited during his lifetime, Rustin was one of the leading architects of the civil rights movement in the United States and one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most-trusted advisors.

It was Rustin, schooled in the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence, who convinced King that nonviolent protest was the way to go. It was also Rustin who organized the historic 1963 March on Washington where 250,000 people gathered to hear King give his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Years before, Rustin took part in 1947’s Journey of Reconciliation to fight interstate racial segregation on buses in the South, which was one of the first Freedom Rides; and he lent support to the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama in 1956. That’s how he first met King.

So why isn’t Bayard Rustin a household name? Rustin was an openly gay man.[…]

Read More: https://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/proud-gay-black-and-proud-bayard-rustin/