1963 march on washington and adviser to martin luther king jr. and an openly gay man. mr. russen s rustin s letters cover over 40 years of his life, and the correspondents include eleanor holmes norton and martin luther king jr. this is about an hour, 20 minutes. thank you for coming. i, as a lifetime human rights activist, i m especially excited to be talking about bayard rustin because, um, as you can see in his collective letters and as i d like to ask michael to talk about, he was really the, the in some ways sole vote in the civil rights movement who really saw a complete set of linkages between all forms of injustice. and, you know, there s a very sad story of the split between civil rights and human rights in the united states that, actually, the schomburg center s going to be looking at on march 30th which is certainly the subject of a whole other discussion. but it s one of the things that s very inspiring in his story is that he saw so clearly that indignity and