Bayard Rustin (1912 - 1987)

On today’s Juneteenth holiday, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, we honor strategist and activist Bayard Rustin, who organized the 1963 March on Washington, during which Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered. Rustin also facilitated the the first of the historic Freedom Rides, testing discriminatory state laws that mandated segregated seating on public transportation and for which he was sentenced to 22 days on a chain gang. Rustin preferred to remain behind the scenes, due to criticism of his acknowledged homosexuality. However, encouraged by his partner Walter Naegle, he became an unyielding public advocate on behalf on gay and humanitarian causes everywhere in the 1980s. Rustin was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.