page_title: Bayard Rustin
section_title: March on Washington
hierarchical_section_title: Bayard Rustin / Influence on the Civil Rights Movement / March on Washington
caption_attribution_description: In front of 170 W 130 St., March on Washington, l to r, Bayard Rustin, Deputy Director, and Cleveland Robinson, Chairman of Administrative Committee / World Telegram &amp; Sun photo by O. Fernandez.
context_page_description: Bayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights.
  Rustin worked with A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement, in 1941, to press for an end to racial discrimination in employment. Rustin later organized Freedom Rides, and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership and teaching King about nonviolence; he later served as an organizer for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Rustin worked alongside Ella Baker, a co-director of the Crusade for Citizenship, in 1954; and before the Montgomery bus boycott, he helped organize a group, called "In Friendship", amongst Baker, George Lawrence, Stanley Levison of the American Jewish Congress, and some other labor leaders. "In Friendship" provided material and legal assistance to those being evicted from their tenant farms and households in Clarendon County, Yazoo, and other places. Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO's A. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions, and promoted the unionization of African Americans.
context_section_description: Despite shunning from some civil rights leaders, 
  [w]hen the moment came for an unprecedented mass gathering in Washington, Randolph pushed Rustin forward as the logical choice to organize it.
  A few weeks before the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond railed against Rustin as a "Communist, draft-dodger, and homosexual," and had his entire Pasadena arrest file entered in the record. Thurmond also produced a Federal Bureau of Investigation photograph of Rustin talking to King while King was bathing, to imply that there was a same-sex relationship between the two. Both men denied the allegation of an affair.
  Rustin became involved in the March on Washington in 1962 when he was recruited by A. Philip Randolph. The march was planned to be a commemoration of the Emancipation Proclamation one hundred years earlier. Rustin was instrumental in organizing the march. He drilled off-duty police officers as marshals, bus captains to direct traffic, and scheduled the podium speakers. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Rachelle Horowitz were aides. Despite King's support, NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins did not want Rustin to receive any public credit for his role in planning the march. Roy Wilkins said, "This march is of such importance that we must not put a person of his liabilities at the head." Because of this conflict, Randolph served as the director of the march and Rustin as his deputy. During the planning of the march, Rustin feared his previous legal issues would pose a threat to the march. U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond attacked him about them three weeks before the march. Nevertheless, Rustin did become well known. On September 6, 1963, a photograph of Rustin and Randolph appeared on the cover of Life magazine, identifying them as "the leaders" of the March.
caption: Rustin and Cleveland Robinson of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 7, 1963
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