AMY GOODMAN: The White House has announced it will posthumously award the highest civilian honor in the United States, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to the trailblazing civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. Obama will honor Rustin and 16 others, including President Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and baseball great Ernie Banks, at the White House later this year.

In his own day, Bayard Rustin was a minority within a minority who tirelessly agitated for change, spending nights in jail opposing U.S. policy at home and abroad. He was an African American fighting against segregation, a gay man fighting against homophobia, and a pacifist fighting against endless warfare. Rustin was a key adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King and introduced him to Gandhi’s teachings on nonviolence. He helped Dr. King start the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. Six years later, Bayard Rustin was the chief organizer of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, rallying hundreds of thousands of people for economic justice, full employment, voting rights and equal opportunity.

BAYARD RUSTIN: We demand that segregation be ended in every school district in the year 1963! We demand that we have effective civil rights legislation—no compromise, no filibuster—and that include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, FEPC and the right to vote. What do you say? We demand the withholding of federal funds from all programs in which discrimination exists. What do you say?

AMY GOODMAN: That was Bayard Rustin speaking 50 years ago this month, August 28, at the March on Washington 1963. In later years, Bayard Rustin spoke publicly about the importance of equal rights for gay men and lesbians, suggesting it was the new frontier of the civil rights movement. On August 24, 1987, Bayard Rustin died of a perforated appendix. He was survived by Walter Naegle, his partner of 10 years.

For more, we’re joined now by three guests, including Walter Naegle here in our studios at Democracy Now! He was Bayard Rustin’s partner, now archivist of the Bayard Rustin Estate.

In Chicago, Illinois, we’re joined by John D’Emilio, a professor of history and gender studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, the author of the award-winning biography of Bayard Rustin called Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, also recently published a new edition of the book Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America.

And via Democracy Now! video stream we’re joined by Julian Bond, leading civil rights activist, former chair of the board of theNAACP. Julian Bond helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, state legislator in Georgia for over two decades, wrote the foreword to the book I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s first go to Florida to Julian Bond. When you heard that President Obama would be awarding Bayard Rustin the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, your thoughts, having known Bayard for many years?

JULIAN BOND: Well, I was just—I was just overcome. It just seemed like something that was long overdue. I was happy to hear it, surprised to hear it, and glad to hear it.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/12/black_gay_and_a_pacifist_bayard