Throughline - Bayard Rustin and the March on Washington

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

When people remember the March on Washington they often recall the giant crowds or Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.” Less known is the person who made the event possible. Today on the show, the story of Bayard Rustin, the man behind the March on Washington. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is America in Pursuit, a limited-run series from NPR and ThruLine. I'm Randad Vett Da'Acht. Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the U.S. that began 250 years ago. And hear me, we are requesting all citizens to move into Washington, to go by plane, by car, bus. 250,000 people, black and white, marched on the nation's capital. It nationalized the southern freedom struggle. It was really glorious. August 28, 1963, the March on Washington,

lives in many of our minds as a single moment, a single voice, a single dream. I have a dream that one day... But what you probably don't know is there's a man standing behind Martin Luther King Jr. as he's making this speech, just a few feet to his right. He's tall, thin, wearing thick, black-framed glasses. And this moment would never have happened without him.

His name, Bayard Rustin. Bayard. Bayard. Bired. Bired Rustin. Today on the show, the story of civil rights activist Bired Rustin, the man behind the march on Washington. That's coming up after a quick break. Since the beginning of this nation, we have attempted to make a moral and psychological analysis of prejudice, the economic and social degradation to which it has led, and I'm afraid we are still doing so.

In the early 1960s, the civil rights movement to end segregation and institutionalized racism was heating up. Sit-ins, boycotts, and marches were consuming cities across the south, a movement that was beginning to spread to northern cities too. And Bayard Rustin was a busy strategist, organizer, and political leader. Rustin has this almost utopian idealism. This is John Demilio, author of Lost Profit, the life and times of Bayard Rustin. This is the world that we're aiming for,

And as human beings with our moral sense, we can move in that direction. Central to Byrd's concept of utopian idealism was his dedication to nonviolence, an idea that had been instilled from an early age by his grandma, Julia Davis Rustin, a devout Quaker who had raised him as her own child. Julia was, I would say, the primary influence on Bayard, certainly in his childhood. This is Walter Nagel. Walter was Byrd's partner

until Byard's death in 1987. Later in life, Bayard would say, quote, my activism did not spring from being black. Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker upbringing and the values instilled in me by my grandparents who reared me.

He was also greatly inspired by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace. I know the value of discipline and truth. Gandhi just took things to the next level for Byrd. He believed an empire had been torn down and a nation changed with little more than words and peaceful protest.

That was revolutionary for him. And Gandhi's voice would echo through Byard's activism for the rest of his life. They wanted us to talk about violence so they could destroy us. So long as we were adhering to nonviolence, they could not destroy us. It was a viewpoint that Bayard held fast to in all of his work, and especially as he began working on something he'd been dreaming about for a long time.

A massive march directed toward and on the nation's capital. I have long a walk for people, a march for jobs, and for economic progress, for all people. Byard and a group of organizers presented his dream of a big march to A. Philip Randolph, a labor rights leader who was then at the center of the civil rights movement. Randolph called himself a socialist and firmly believed that a decent, well-paying job would lead to social and political freedom, especially for black people. For hours, they brainstormed, trying to imagine what this march would be,

what its goals were, who would come, and how they would market it to the war. January, 1963, the 100 years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation have witnessed no fundamental government action to terminate the economic subordination of the American Negro. Negroes seek as an integral part of their own struggle as a people, the creation of more jobs for all Americans. Therefore, the project described below must be a massive effort involving coordinated participation by all progressive sectors of the liberal, labor, religious, and Negro communities. Walter was there for all the planning. They developed a two-day proposal. In the congressional offices, those who were opposed to civil rights legislation.

This is Norman Hill, then the National Program Director of the Congress of Racial Equality. The second day was to be a mass demonstration. There were two main objectives. A, the project should call for action by the president and Congress listing concrete demands. B, we should emphasize the theme that no worker in America is generally free. We now demand a program of action in 1963 that will ensure the emancipation of all labor, regardless of color, race, or creed. In other words, jobs and economic justice were going to be the focus. of the event. Randolph liked it, and it was decided. They would host a march on Washington

that summer. So now, all that was loved to do was, you know, pull off the most ambitious protest in American history in just a few months. Well, Mr. Randolph asked me if I would set up the logistics for the march, which I immediately began to do, and to get every agency in America, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, intellectuals, labor movement, everybody involved, and to contain it so it was intensely nonviolent. In the spring of 1963, Bayard assembled a team to begin organizing the march. He made us feel like we were players in history and that he took us seriously. People like Rochelle Horowitz, who traveled around the country convincing people that the march should take place.

I was the transportation director of the March on Washington, and also I assisted Bayard generally during the march. They got buy-in from a lot of people and set up meetings with heads of the Civil Rights Movement, aka the Big Six, which included A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, the leader of the National Association for the Advancing of the Color of People, Whitney Young,

leader of the National Urban League, James Farmer, of the Congress of Racial Equality, John Lewis, of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Martin Luther King, Jr. President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. And at the same time,

Bayard was making tweaks to the proposal. He changed the mission statement to include two goals. Jobs and freedom. Freedom, meaning racial justice. President John F. Kennedy was working on a civil rights bill, and Bayard figured the Big Six

wouldn't want to take attention away from it, especially since Kennedy had already made it clear he opposed the march. He indicated that there might be violence, which would set back the cause of civil rights. And Bayard made another tweak. He reduced the event from two days to one, and then presented the revised proposal to the Big Six. And they were on board, except Roy Wilkins of the NACP had one condition. He didn't want Bayard Rustin, a gay former communist, to be the top organizer of the march. So it was decided that Randolph should chair the march.

He said it would do so in one condition that he'd be given the right to name his deputy to do the day-to-day organizing of the march. And he named Byrd Rustin. This wouldn't be the first time that Byrd was pushed behind the scenes. The march was announced to the world in early June of 1963.

It was scheduled to take place on August 28, 1963. And then the organizing sped up. We worked six days a week. Day and night, engaging in outreach to as many groups and people as we could. Folding letters, mailing out mailings, calling them people on the phone. Because remember, we didn't have social media. We used mammograph machines.

We used telephones. It was like the dark ages. Word began to spread, and they could tell people were interested in coming. Only problem was... We didn't know how many people would come. So they were feeling their way through the dark, trying to plan travel, food, lodging, around maybes and what-ifs. Disagreements came up along the way. Some were minor. Barrett at one meeting announced that the National Council, I think, of Negro women were preparing thousands of sandwiches.

Peanut butter and jelly. And I joked, oh, peanut butter and jelly. Really, first time you ever got really angry, he said, Rochelle, it doesn't say. spoil. So we weren't going to have people sick on the morning. But other disagreements were more substantial, like the fact that no women were scheduled to speak at the march. I remember Mrs. Hamer, Van Lerhamer, you know, speaking so articulately about the problems we were faced. But I don't remember her standing behind the pulpit saying those things. Author Joyce Ladner had grown up in the heart of the Jim Crow South. At the time, she was busy working with the student nonviolent coordinating committee, or SNCC.

There were some preachers and said it was bad luck for a woman to cross the pulpit. There was still an era where male domination was accepted, you know. But everyone involved in the march from the top down agreed on one thing. The march had to be nonviolent. Anything less could spell disaster for the movement. Byrne, I think, knew from day one that he was going to ask the New York City black policemen to volunteer as marshals. And then he proceeded every day during the march to take a group of them out in the courtyard of back of the friendship building and train them in nonviolent crowd control, holding hands and encircling people should there be a disturbance.

We're nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us, but we are not. not nonviolent with anyone who is violent with us. And Richel says activists who had a more militant approach, like Malcolm X, were uninvited. Byrd knew that the march hinged on perceptions. Plenty of people were waiting for it to fail. So the crowd had to remain nonviolent. In the public face of the march, also had to be non-threatening and wildly inspirational. It had to be Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. With the march just a few weeks away, things were looking good. Everything was going according to Byrd's plan. But Jay Edgar Hoover, the notoriously shady director of the FBI at the time, tried to dig up some dirt on people linked to the march. And a gay, black socialist, former communist and conscientious objector... How many jeopardies can you afford? Was the perfect target.

And Hoover knew exactly who to pass the judge. dirt to. A segregationist senator from South Carolina named Strom Thurman. Strom Thurman on the floor of the United States Congress, attacked by Rustin as being a perfect and a draft order. A media firestorm ensued, and the big question was, what would happen to Byrd? It was a question that Bayard had faced many times before, including eight years prior when he had worked with Martin Luther King Jr. At a given point, there was so much pressure on Dr. King about my being gay, and particularly because I would not deny it, that he set up a committee to explore whether it would be

dangerous for me to continue working with him. Since then, he had effectively been cast out, only returning to the movement to plan the march on Washington. And now it looked like he would be exiled again. Except this time... A. Philip Randolph at that point called a press conference and indicated that Bayard Rustin would remain the deputy director and chief organizer

of the march, that he had full and complete confidence in the ability of Bayard Rustin and that the march would indeed go forward. This is from the New York Times of August 16th, 1963, which says Negro rally aid rebut senator. That certainly was a turning point in Byrusting Civil Rights career. He was given credit for being the organizing architect of the march itself. For the first time in his life, Bayer didn't have to retreat. Exposure didn't lead to exile, all because A. Philip Randolph decided to break the cycle. Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one day left until the march.

It's very strange. I have a bit of amnesia about how I can't remember how I got to Washington. I think Joyce told me we flew down. We all took trains down to Washington. And we all checked into the Stadley Hilton. The one person who didn't take the train down was Illinois Homes Norton. Because Bayer felt that one person should stay behind to take any last-minute calls or whatever. What I remember mostly about that day is, you know, running around, trying to set things up. It's just a lot of people, people I'd never seen before, you know, leaders like Norm Hill. And I was, you know, just so excited.

whenever I saw someone from Mississippi. There was both great anticipation and also hesitancy and some fear. No one knew exactly what the numbers would be like. You know, it was like, they were done all the plan and now we hold our breath and see how it all comes to fruition. But there was the famous moment

when fired came dashing through this big room that we were using at the Stadler, He said, where's John Lewis? Get John Lewis. The fact is that John Lewis wrote a speech, which was not within the guidelines of what the leadership had agreed to. Cortland Cox had put John Lewis's speech out on the table, and all the reporters immediately got copies of it.

And it hit the fan. There's a section in John's speech, something like, if violence doesn't stop, that we will have no choice but to march through the south, the way General Sherman did. August 28, 1916. We woke up very early. We had breakfast at the hotel.

And afterwards, we walked over, walked on the mall over to the side of the march. Where there was to be a pre-march musical presentation. I remember being there to hear Bobbitt. We called Bob Dylan Badi and John Baez sang, as did Peter Paul and Mary. Reporters saw him and moved toward him because at that point, being that early in the morning, there was no evidence of marchers. And they asked Byrd Rustin, in effect, where was the march? Would it still come off? And so, using a British accent, he pulled a piece of paper out of his coat jacket and said,

indeed, gentlemen, everything is on schedule. What they didn't know was that the piece of paper was blank. And an hour later, the marches began coming into Washington, D.C. in historic fashion. We were all very ecstatic because the people were just coming in by throngs. they were singing, they were happy, and we knew it was going to be a success. We are gathered here in the largest demonstration. We are the advance guard of a massive moral revolution for jobs and freedom. I have the pleasure to present to this great audience, young John Lewis,

National States for Jobs and Freedom. down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. The first demand is that we civil rights. People have asked me often, what was the thing you remember most about the March on Washington? And I always say the crowd. It was unimaginable to see 200,000 people anywhere at that time. looking out at that crowd from a small town in Mississippi, I have this kind of feeling that comes up in me,

a sense of awe and pride and so on. It feels a certain way. And I still get it. I remember thinking very clearly that they support us. They support us. That's it for this week's America in Pursuit. If you want to hear the full-length episode about Bayard Rustin, check out the man behind the March on Washington.

And join us next week when we hear directly from journalists during the Vietnam War. I remember the day after I got there, I was asked to a party. There was roses and champagne and all kinds of wonderful things you think you were at home, you know. But then over the edge of the parapet, you could see these flares coming up. And the question was, whether it was incoming or outwe. going. You never know until it happened. The Vietnam War. That's next week. Don't miss it. This episode was produced by Kiana Mogadam and edited by Christina Kim with help from the through line production team.

Music by Ramtin Adablui and his band, Drop Electric. Special thanks to Julie Kaine, Irene Noguchi, Beth Donovan, Casey Minor, and Lindsay McKenna. I'm Randadadad Fattah. Thanks for listening. Thank you.