0:00 When two hundred thousand people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in August of 1963, only ONE man had the entire schedule mapped out down to the minute.0:11 Ey up, Earl.0:12 You know, last time you were telling me about JoAnn Morgan, sitting all on her own in that Apollo launch room, keeping the moon shot steady.0:23 That's it, Bridget.0:24 And it got me thinking how the person who actually lays the track rarely gets to ride the train in the lead car.0:33 I'm rocking on the porch this morning thinking about Bayard Rustin.0:38 Rustin.0:38 Now, that's not a name you hear read out with the big speeches, is it?0:44 No, ma'am, it sure isn't.0:46 But A.0:46 Philip Randolph, the great labor leader, called him "Mr.0:50 March-on-Washington." Bayard was the deputy director.0:54 And he put that whole national march together in less than two months.1:00 Less than two months?1:01 For two hundred thousand folk?1:04 Lord above, Earl, I can barely get my five grandkids round the dinner table inside an hour without someone losing a shoe!1:13 Well, that's what made him a master mechanic of movements.1:17 You see, Rustin was raised Quaker.1:20 He believed right down in his marrow in nonviolent direct action.1:25 Way back in 1947, on the Journey of Reconciliation, he rode buses down South to test the law, and he took forty days on a North Carolina chain gang for his trouble.1:37 Hard labor just for sitting on a seat.1:40 Bless him.1:41 He served twenty-six months in prison during World War Two as a conscientious objector, too.1:48 So by 1955, when young Martin Luther King Jr.1:52 was leading the bus boycott in Montgomery, Rustin went down there.1:57 He actually convinced King to adopt Gandhi's philosophy of total nonviolent resistance.2:03 So he was the one teaching the principles from the start.2:08 But why keep him in the shadows, then?2:11 Well, look, here's the hard truth.2:13 Bayard Rustin was an openly gay Black man in mid-century America.2:18 In nineteen-sixty, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell threatened to spread lies about Rustin and King just to smear them.2:27 Movement leaders got spooked, and they forced Rustin out of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.2:35 Oh, that's a bitter pill, isn't it?2:38 Cast aside by his own people just for who he loved.2:42 It was.2:42 He was viewed as a political liability.2:45 But when nineteen sixty-three rolled around and they needed someone who could mobilize the entire country— well, King knew nobody else had the chops.2:57 King wrote that Bayard's expertness would be of inestimable value.3:02 So they had to call him back to build the engine.3:05 Exactly.3:06 Even then, Senator Strom Thurmond went on the Senate floor right before the march, trying to scuttle the whole thing by attacking Rustin's character.3:17 But this time, civil rights leaders stood firm behind him.3:22 Good on them!3:23 It's reeeally summat how fear makes folk hide their best minds, until the water gets too deep to swim without them.3:32 That's the honest truth.3:33 And on that blazing August day, while the world watched Martin give that legendary speech, Rustin was right there on the steps, reading out the march's demands: civil rights legislation, integrated education, voting rights, and fair housing.3:52 And he got to stand on the platform after all.3:55 He did.3:56 He even made the cover of Life magazine alongside Randolph.4:00 Though for decades after, history books kind of...4:04 set him aside.4:05 It wasn't until 2013 that he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.4:12 Well, fifty years late, but at least the truth had its day, chuck.4:17 It reminds me of what me old mum used to say over a fresh brew: the loudest voice in the parlor isn't always the one keeping the roof up.4:27 And that, Bridget, is why you always check the record.4:32 The headlines only tell you who held the trumpet—never who built the stage.4:37 Aye.4:38 Right then, Earl, put your feet up.4:40 Night night, sleep tight, chuck.4:43 Night, Bridget.4:44 Well.4:44 That is about the size of it.
