As I began writing “Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer,” my biography of the 20th-century radical leader and activist, one of my colleagues cautioned me not to “fall in love.”This, of course, is good advice for any biographer, and I tried to follow it.But it wasn’t easy, because Bayard Rustin was America’s signature radical voice during the 20th century, and yes, I believe those voices includes that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Rustin trained and mentored.His vision of nonviolence was breathtakingly broad.He was a civil rights activist, a labor unionist, a socialist, a pacifist and, later in life, a gay rights advocate.Today, scholars would call Rustin an intersectionalist, a man who understood the complex effects of multiple forms of discrimination, including racism, sexism and classism.
Bayard Rustin led a long and complicated life dedicated to the fight for equal rights. Targeted by the FBI, Rustin became a close adviser to Martin Luther King Jr.
