Rustin’s homosexuality had always been an issue, and not just to his opponents on the American right or to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

Many progressive activists who were open-minded on matters relating to civil and labor rights were much less so when it came to Rustin’s sexuality.

Rustin had been fired by the Fellowship of Reconciliation after his 1953 conviction in Pasadena, California, on what was then known as a “public indecency” offense, involving sex with two other men in a parked car.

A few years later, King forced him out of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, fearful of the damage the issue of Rustin’s homosexuality could do to his organization.

It took the direct intervention of Randolph, Rustin’s lifelong friend and champion, to get King and other major civil rights leaders to agree to his selection as the organizer and orchestrator of the March on Washington in 1963.

Rustin then had to survive a denunciation by segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond on the floor of Congress shortly before the march, during which the South Carolina lawmaker read from FBI reports on Rustin’s flirtation with communism – he had belonged to the Communist Party briefly as a young man – and his homosexuality and arrest in Pasadena.

But Rustin’s ability to organize was now too valuable to lose, and this time King stood by him.

As my research shows, King knew that only Rustin, who had spent the previous two decades leading demonstrations and walking picket lines, had the knowledge and experience to move 250,000 people in and out of Washington, D.C., on a hot summer day.

King also knew that Rustin could manage everything in between, including the order of the speakers.

By insisting that King be placed last on the program, Rustin ensured that King would have the final word and maximum dramatic effect. Though Rustin didn’t know it at the time, King’s “I Have a Dream” remarks eventually constituted one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in American history.

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