Bayard Rustin's life and civil rights legacy in photos

Bayard Rustin, born in 1912, helped lead the organizing of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. A close advisor to Martin Luther King Jr., Rustin was a queer figure in the Civil Rights Movement.

Rustin often kept his activism and leadership behind the scenes due to being both outed but also because once he was outed, he lived out and proudly, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Besides his work in the u.S., Rustin went on humanitarian missions to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Haiti during the 1970s and 1980s, the museum notes.

And in the 1980s, he joined the LGBTQ+ rights movement and became an advocate for AIDS education.

THE NMAAAHC reports that in testimony on behalf of New York State's Gay Rights Bill in the mid-1980s, Rustin said that “gay people are the new barometer for social change.”

Rustin died August 24, 1987, due to a perforated appendix.

Below are images of the Black gay pioneer Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin, which features historic documents and interviews of and from Rustin.

But the book also boasts a fascinating visual history of the Black gay pioneer who is credited as the architect of the 1963 civil rights march. Take a look at a sample of photographs of Bayard in his youth and throughout his years of activism.

Rustin on the high school football team, 1931 Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate

A moment of relaxation in the early 1940s. Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

The Wilberforce Quartet, 1933. Rustin pictured at far right.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

Rustin at a protest in Washington, D.C., during the mid-1940s.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

Posing with the lute he taught himself to play while incarcerated as a conscientious objector, 1947.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

Rustin along with a handful of his fellow participants in the Journey of Reconciliation, 1947. Left to right: Worth Randle, Wally Nelson, Ernest Bromley, James Peck, Igal Roodenko, Rustin, Joe Felmet, George Houser, Andrew Johnson.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

Meeting with Indian Prime Minister Nehru at the All India Congress Party, 1948.Courtesy Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Rustin with Muriel Lester, International FOR traveling secretary and friend of Gandhi, in India, 1948.Courtesy Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Rustin at an antiwar demonstration in Philadelphia, 1950.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

Meeting with Kwame Nkrumah in Accra, Ghana, 1952. Courtesy Fellowship of Reconciliation

Rustin and Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Nigerian independence leader, 1952.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

Taking a break with Malcolm X and debate moderator Michael R. Winston at Howard University, October 1961.Courtesy Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University Archives.

With the March on Washington less than a month away, Rustin poses in front of the National Headquarters office on West 130th Street, New York City, August 1, 1963.Photo: Associated Press/Wide World.

The triumphant Life magazine cover, crediting A. Philip Randolph and Rustin as the leaders of the March on Washington.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

Rustin and author James Baldwin calling on President Kennedy to send troops into Alabama to "break the hold" of segregationist Gov. George Wallace. The armbands pictured were worn to protest the murder of African-American children in Birmingham, September 1963.Photo: Associated Press/Wide World.

Rustin at the A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1972.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

Meeting with Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, 1976.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

Under the auspices of Freedom House, Rustin attends a political rally in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, April 1979.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

Rustin with children displaced by civil unrest in El Salvador, 1983.Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.

An exuberant Rustin at age 71 in London's Trafalgar Square, 1983. Courtesy Bayard Rustin Estate.