Encounter 32 · 32 of 42 · 28 August 1963
The organizer asked to step back
Bayard Rustin organized the March on Washington. Some of the men whose names were on the posters asked him to stay out of the photograph. He stayed deputy director. He made the buses run.
Washington, D.C.
Rustin was a gay former Communist pacifist, which in 1963 was three usable weapons against a march. Strom Thurmond used them on the Senate floor. Some civil-rights leaders flinched. A. Philip Randolph refused to dump him. Rustin built the buses, the toilets, the timetable, the marshals.
What they knew
- The March needed a logistics mind.
- His name was a liability in some rooms.
- Randolph would not fire him.
What they could not know
- Whether the day would come off.
- Whether the photograph would include the man who made the buses run.
Rustin had been a Communist in the 1930s, a pacifist, and a gay man, which in 1963 was three usable weapons. Strom Thurmond used them on the Senate floor. Some of the men whose names would be on the posters flinched. A. Philip Randolph refused to dump him. Rustin stayed deputy director and built the buses, the toilets, the timetable, the marshals: the unphotogenic conditions of a day that had to come off.
1963
The schedule
Deputy director. Buses. Toilets. A timetable. Marshals. The day ran.
2013
A later medal
Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously.King’s speech is the memory most people own. The medal is fifty years later. A speech Rustin was not asked to give is not invented.
The 1963 day is logistics. A later honor is not the clipboard.
What was at stake
A day that had to come off, and a man who would not be its face.
The next move
He stayed deputy director. He made the day run.
What they had
- Buses
- A sound system
- A refusal, from Randolph, to fire him
What happened
The March happened. The 1963 day is buses, toilets, a timetable, marshals.
The 1963 day is buses.
Private. No one else will see it.