My latest for EBONY is on the front page: "March on Washington ‘Master Strategist’ Bayard Rustin Finally Recognized".
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama posthumously named Bayard Rustin as one of the newest recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Rustin organized the logistics—from buses and lunches to child care and celebrity speakers—and was the top lieutenant to King and labor leader A. Phillip Randolph. Rustin is generally credited with mentoring King and helping to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was a "master strategist of social change" wrote historian John D'Emilio in the 2003 biography Lost Prophet.
"Rustin was a logistical genius," Earl D. Fowlkes, Jr. told EBONY. Fowlkes is President/CEO of the Center for Black Equity and the newly-elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee's LGBT Caucus. "He was an advocate for earth-moving change through peaceful action and conscience-raising."
"I never read about Rustin in high school and did not hear his name until years later when I was coming out as a young Black lesbian," adds Mandy Carter, the veteran social justice activist who co-founded the NBJC. Carter lead the organization's 2013 Bayard Rustin Commemoration Project.
The interviews include Earl Fowlkes, President/CEO of the Center for Black Equity and the newly-elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee's LGBT Caucus; National Black Justice Coalition Executive Director Sharon Lettman-Hicks; veteran social justice activist and NBJC co-founder Mandy Carter; Reverend MacArthur Flournoy, director of Faith Partnership and Mobilization for the Human Rights Campaign; author and activist Darnell Moore and others.
Read the article HERE. There is much more at EBONY's thorough March on Washington coverage—including a gallery of brilliant archival images.