Monday, January 15, celebrates the birthday of celebrated civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. No figure is more closely identified with the mid-20th century struggle for civil rights than Martin Luther King, Jr. His adoption of nonviolent resistance to achieve equal rights for Black Americans earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. But, there was another black hero of the civil rights movement which never received due recognition until recently when Netflix launched a movie based on his life. The movie was Rustin. And the unsung hero is Bayard Rustin, who organized the famous 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech. Rustin was also a gay man for which he was forced to live with the constraints and prejudices of the time, including beatings and arrests. In 1953 he spent 50 days in jail and was registered as a sex offender after being discovered having sex in a parked car in Pasadena, California. But he refused to hide his sexuality. After the split from MLK’s civil rights movement, Rustin went on to serve as president of the A Philip Randolph Institute, a civil rights organization in New York, from 1966 to 1979. Later in life, he turned his attention to LGBTQ+ activism and its intersection with the continuing civil rights struggle. He was the first to bring the Aids crisis to the attention of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Rustin died in 1987 at age 75 in New York City. In 2013 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Produced by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, and directed by George C. Wolfe, Netflix’s Rustin is a must watch movie. #Black Culture