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He stood 6 feet 3 inches tall, weighed 190 pounds, and moved with the grace of an athlete. Bayard Rustin, a smartly dressed man who favored linen shirts and elegant ties, sported a Clark Gable mustache and a British accent that gave him an even more suave demeanor.
There was no civil rights leader who looked or spoke like Rustin. He was the nonviolent spiritual mentor of the Rev. Martin Luther King, the lead organizer of the epic March on Washington in 1963, and an openly gay black man who “never apologized for who he was, what he believed, or whom” in a time of homosexuality he wished.” was seen as a perversion deserving of prison time.
“He looked great on a speaking platform,” says Arch Puddington, who worked with Rustin at a labor organization in the early 1970s This encouraged black workers to become more actively involved in unions.
“He stood up and spoke to some of these black listeners, and he was able to really set them on fire,” Puddington told CNN. “And he hardly ever spoke from a text. I would text him and he would just completely ignore it.”
The man who organized what was then the largest peace protest in American history eventually became known as the movement’s “unsung hero” and was largely forgotten after his death in 1987.
But now Rustin is back in the spotlight. “Rustin,” a biopic that shows how Rustin overcame a series of personal and political hurdles to pull off the March on Washington, arrives on Netflix today.
Made by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, the film comes amid a mini-Rustin renaissance. Recent months have also seen the release of a new musical, “Bayard Rustin: Inside Ashland,” and a new book, “Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics,” edited by Michael G. Long.
The new film is a good introduction to Rustin and how social change occurs. Directed by George C. Wolfe, the film crackles with energy. Actor Colman Domingo captures much of Rustin’s charisma and sharp intelligence. The film also shows how some of the biggest battles civil rights activists launched were among themselves, over turf and ego.
Much of the film’s urgency comes from its tight focus. The film centers on Rustin’s frantic campaign to organize the march, showing how he and 200 volunteers called 250,000 protesters to Washington with just two months of planning. They did this in a time of clattering typewriters, landline telephones and mimeograph machines – long before the internet or social media.
The Denver Post/Getty Images
Martin Luther King Jr. addresses hundreds of thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.
“It was the greatest moment of my life,” Rustin said in an oral history of the civil rights movement called “Voices of Freedom.”
It was also one of the greatest moments in American history. However, the film offers more than just a history lesson. It offers at least three lessons on leadership and social change.
Character, they say, is who you are when no one is watching. Rustin’s film and his life illustrate this lesson in several ways.
The civil rights movement was full of charismatic speakers. But many of the greatest leaders were defined not by what they said on camera, but by the decisions they made in private.
Malcolm X, for example, could get an audience in the mood like no other. But his decision to break with Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, helped seal his greatness. He knew his decision would probably cost him his life, but because of his integrity, he was willing to take that risk.
King’s decision to oppose the Vietnam War was also largely unpopular. He lost the support of an American president, black leaders turned against him, and donations to the civil rights organization he co-founded dried up. But he did so because, like Malcolm, he had a core commitment to his integrity.
Many pivotal moments in “Rustin” and in the activist’s life rest on the same moral calculation.
In a tense, private meeting depicted in the film, A. Philip Randolph (played superbly by actor Glynn Turman) stands up for Rustin when other civil rights activists tried to exclude him from the march because of his sexual orientation.
One of the ways Rustin earned the respect of people like Randolph and King was what he did when the cameras weren’t on him.
He was a pacifist who preferred to go to prison during World War II rather than violate his faith. He was a member of a chain gang and was brutally beaten several times because of his involvement, but refused to take revenge because he believed in non-violence.
He also spent time in India studying Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, which he later passed on to King – leading some to refer to him as the “Non-Violent.” “American Gandhi.”
Bureau of Prisons/Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Bayard Rustin, seen in a mugshot on August 3, 1945, at Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania after being convicted of failing To for military service.
Rustin was heavily involved in virtually all of the major civil rights struggles of the mid-20th century, when many of these movements were neither popular nor reported in the press.
“He [Rustin] “established a standard of honesty and fortitude that was unusually high in his time and much needed in our time,” Puddington wrote in an essay about Rustin.
Rustin’s character could also be seen in the way he handled his sexual orientation: no excuses; no double life.
In one scene in the film, he tells King that he will not hide who he is from other civil rights activists.
“The day I was born black, I was also born gay,” he says. “They either believe in freedom and justice for all or they don’t.”
General Omar Bradley, an American commander in World War II, famously said, “Amateurs talk strategy and professionals talk logistics.”
Bradley’s quote may be apocryphal, but it reflects a truism in warfare. The best-supplied armies often win. Victories on the battlefield are often the result not of clever strategy, but of logistics – ensuring that troops have enough supplies and work equipment.
The same principle applies in sports. In the NBA, for example, there are certain unassuming players on championship teams who are known as “glue guys.” They do the dirty work of setting screens, committing hard fouls, rebounding and playing defense.
Rustin was the “Glue Man” leader of the civil rights movement. Every movement needs one.
Parrish Lewis/Netflix
Colman Domingo, center, as Bayard Rustin in “Rustin,” which premiered on Netflix on November 17 after a brief theatrical run.
Rustin was a great organizer because he paid attention to details. He knew how many sandwiches and portable toilets the March on Washington participants needed. He knew how to raise money, how to charter buses to Washington and how to negotiate with sound engineers to ensure King’s voice could be heard throughout the mall as he delivered his evocative “I Have a Dream” speech.
Watching Rustin organize the march in the film felt more exciting than the film’s depiction of the march itself.
There is a scene in the film in which Ella Baker, one of the leaders of the civil rights movement who was never given justice because of her gender, tells Rustin about the ying and yang that every movement needs: a person in front and a logistical master behind scenes. She sees this in Rustin’s partnership with King.
“Alone, you and Martin are fine,” she says to Rustin. “But together you are fire.”
Author Rebecca Solnit once wrote, “Hope calls to action; Without hope, action is impossible.”
Solnit says some of the biggest enemies of social change are cynicism and pessimism. Opponents of movements often try to convince protesters that they have no reason to expect victory.
But Rustin had the ability to convince marginalized people that they could win. One of the best parts of the film shows him shaping a group of young black, brown and white civil rights activists into a top team that would organize the March on Washington.
David Lee/Netflix
Colman Domingo as Bayard Rustin admonishes young civil rights activists in a scene from “Rustin.”
Rustin’s exuberance reflected the spirit of the times. He lived in a different America full of energy. The country had defeated fascism in World War II; He rebuilt Europe and promised to send a man to the moon and eradicate poverty with President Johnson’s Great Society program. This optimism runs through the film.
Some of this patriotism may seem naive today, but it gave enormous vitality to the civil rights movement. There are scenes in the film as Rustin mobilizes his young volunteers that evoke memories of former President Obama’s first campaign, when young people across America united for “hope and change.”
At one point in the film, a young organizer suggests a crazy idea, and while others shout the person down, Rustin praises the volunteer.
“Don’t suppress an impulse before it’s born,” he exclaims with a broad smile.
Optimism was a central organizing principle for Rustin, says Puddington, who is also senior researcher emeritus at Freedom House, a group that defends human rights and promotes democratic change around the world.
“Bayard was one of those rare people who believed that your time would come when your cause was just and you had access to the basic tools of democracy,” Puddington wrote in an essay about Rustin.
“For gay people today living in democratic circumstances, Bayard’s optimism has been confirmed with each new victory for equality.”
There’s a risk that comes with re-appreciating Rustin: it’s easy to underestimate its complexity. He is invariably defined primarily by his sexual orientation – as his enemies often did.
But Rustin said his faith as a Quaker is central to his identity.
“My activism is not because I am Black,” he once said. “It’s essentially rooted in my Quaker upbringing.”
A. Camerano/AP
This April 1969 file photo shows Rustin in his office on Park Avenue in New York City. A Quaker and pacifist, Rustin served as chief strategist for Martin Luther King’s march, but largely stayed in the background as some organizers viewed him as a liability.
Rustin said that these Quaker values were based “on the concept of a single human family” and that racial injustice presented a challenge to this belief.
“It required that I participate in the struggle to achieve interracial democracy,” he said, “but it is very likely that I would have been involved if I had been a white man with the same philosophy.”
Rustin has been labeled with many labels: a great Human rights activist, a gay pioneer, an “American Gandhi” and “Mr. March on Washington.” Maybe it’s time we just described it the way author Cathy Young once did in an essay:
As a “great American and true hero.”
John Blake is the author of “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”