Bayard Rustin movie spotlights contributions of Black, queer Civil Rights activists

As the battle over teaching Black history unfolds in schools across the nation, a film premiering in theaters Friday highlights one of its most controversial aspects: the intersection of African American and queer studies.

“Rustin” details the life and legacy of the Black gay activist Bayard Rustin, who was close friends with revolutionaries such as Martin Luther King Jr. and A. Philip Randolph, and how he played an instrumental part in the Civil Rights movement. 

Born on March 17, 1912, Rustin was one of 12 children raised by his grandparents. He was his high school’s valedictorian, a varsity athlete and a thespian who sang in the choir. 

And he was one of the masterminds behind the 1963 March on Washington. 

The movie, directed by George C. Wolfe, produced by the Obama family’s Higher Ground media company and streaming on Netflix starting Nov. 17, delves into Rustin’s past, including how his face was injured when police brutally beat him for refusing to give up his seat on a bus en route to Tennessee, long before Rosa Parks’s act of defiance. 

But it also explores the vitriol and danger he faced as a gay man in midcentury America, including an instance when radio host Strom Thurmond revealed Rustin’s 1953 arrest in Pasadena, Calif., for having consensual sex with two men in a parked car.  

The film is premiering at a time when legislators across the country are seeking to limit certain aspects of both LGBTQ rights and the teaching of Black history. 

“When I think about what it means for us to be living in a year where the governor of Florida and others are horse-trading parts of our history, [that] there’s so many people don’t know the life and legacy of Bayard has been a problem,” said David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), a civil rights organization dedicated to securing and protecting the rights of the Black LGBTQ community.  

Earlier this year, the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, banned an Advanced Placement African American studies program from public schools in the state. One of the reasons, DeSantis said, was because of a lesson on LGBTQ studies.

“What’s one of the lessons about? Queer theory,” DeSantis said at a press conference in January. “Now, who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory?”

But Johns told The Hill’s The Switch Up podcast earlier this year that it is “impossible” to talk about the Civil Rights movement, the March on Washington or even King without naming Rustin. 

He doesn’t remember exactly when he first read about Rustin, but says he became fascinated as a graduate student. 

“I fell in love with … this man who always seemed to be present, and maybe even omnipresent, but at the same time was also enigmatic,” Johns said. 

“I carry that with me, sort of an understanding of his biography, foundational parts of it like him being a Quaker and having a loving grandmother who affirmed all parts of him, including the parts that the world told him to shrink and hide and ignore,” he added. “I understood his commitment to civil unrest that showed up as passive nonviolent organizing, and that he not only learned from Gandhi and sharpened it around the world, but then taught it to Dr. King. He was, if nothing else, a master organizer.”

Leslie Hall, director of the historically Black colleges and universities program at the Human Rights Campaign, said “Rustin,” which stars Colman Domingo as the title character, “holds immense significance” for its representation.

“By shedding light on the contributions of Black LGBTQ+ individuals, this film challenges societal norms and sparks vital conversations about intersectionality,” Hall said. “It serves as a powerful call to persist in the fight for justice and equality, honoring Rustin’s legacy while striving to create a future where everyone, regardless of race or sexual orientation, is valued and respected.” 

Rustin and his contributions have faced decades of relative obscurity, but that began to change in 2013, when then-President Obama posthumously awarded the organizer the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

This week, Obama told “CBS News Sunday Morning” that he hopes the film finally gives Rustin the credit he deserves.

“What I thought was important — and Michelle and I, you know, it’s the reason that we were interested in this story — was this reminds us that the fight for justice is typically not just about one group of people or another group of people. It’s often in tandem. We have to figure out how do we lift up all people,” Obama said.

“To see somebody who could bring the kind of strategic sense that helped to organize some of the seminal moments in the early Civil Rights movement, to learn about someone like that, did inspire me,” he added. “Now I have to make a very clear caveat here: I never was able to organize as good as he organized. But it did get me thinking about my own role as somebody who could maybe work at a grassroots level and change the country from the bottom up.”