Bayard Rustin (1912-1987)

Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 to August 24, 1987) was an American activist who shaped the civil rights, peace, and labor movements. A Quaker and committed pacifist, he mentored Martin Luther King Jr. in Gandhian nonviolence and served as the principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which drew roughly 250,000 people. Rustin was openly gay at a time when that carried real danger, and opponents used his sexuality, along with an earlier arrest, to try to sideline him from public leadership. In his later years he spoke out directly for gay rights. In 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.