refinery29:
We’re sharing some of our favorite Black History Month figures you need to know about.
This is Bayard Rustin, a leading figure in the civil rights movement and advisor to Martin Luther King. He was the architect of the 1963 March on Washington and was heavily involved in the first Freedom Rides.
He was also gay and a registered communist who went to jail for his sexual orientation.
Although widely heralded, he was attacked even by fellow activists for his faith in nonviolence, unapologetic queerness, and attention to income equality. President Obama honored Rustin posthumously with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.
