March on Washington Gays

FILE - In this August 24, 1963, file photo Bayard Rustin points to a map showing the path of the March on Washington during a news conference at the New York City headquarters. Months before Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" declaration galvanized a quarter-million people at the 1963 March on Washington, Rustin was planning all the essential details to keep the crowd orderly and engaged. A Quaker, and a pacifist, Rustin served as chief strategist for King's march over the objections of some leaders, but was kept mostly in the background with some organizers considering him a liability. Notably, he was gay in an era when same-sex relations were widely reviled in American society. He died in 1987, and is sometimes forgotten in civil rights history. (AP Photo, File)