Bayard Rustin was openly gay, a “lanky, cane swinging, poetry-quoting black Quaker intellectual who wore his hair in a graying pompadour” as described in the Washington Post.

With the 48th Anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington approaching, the Washington Post ran a story this week on the often-overlooked man behind the March. Tapped by March director A. Philip Randolph to organize the event, Rustin pulled off an impressive logistical feat, meticulously managing thousands of behind-the-scenes details. Most notably, Rustin succeeded in bringing together leaders of the major civil rights organizations, religious denominations, and labor unions. As he recalled in a television interview twenty years later: