Query a Queer: LGBT in the Civil Rights Movement
Leah: During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Bayard Rustin was an openly gay man and of one of the key fighters for racial civil rights. As one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest friends, he organized and led the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Rustin was committed to active non-violence. He embraced those values while working with Gandhi and shared with other civil rights leaders including Dr. King. Rustin was often criticized and marginalized as a “pervert” or “deviant” due to stigmas towards LGBT people in the 1950s through the 1970s (dynamics that unfortunately are still present today). Despite public discomfort toward his sexual orientation, Rustin continued to advocate for civil rights, economic and labor rights, and later gay rights.