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Every story on the site, figure by figure, in shirt order. Or get one picked for where you are.
Bayard Rustin
Civil rights strategist and chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.
Biography & essays
Bayard Rustin Biography
Pacifist, strategist, and the hidden architect of the 1963 March on Washington.
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March on Washington
How 250,000 people were organized in under three months.
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The First Freedom Ride
The first Freedom Ride, a chain gang, and an apology from the bench 75 years later.
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Arrested, Attacked, Pardoned
A 1953 arrest, a senator's attack two weeks before the March, and a governor's pardon 67 years later.
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Born in West Chester
His hometown voted to name a high school after him. Then it had to vote again.
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Inside Ashland and Lewisburg
A bus seat he would not give up, and a prison he would not let stay segregated.
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The Dining Car, 1947
Refused a seat in a train's dining car, he took the railroad to court. The file survives in the National Archives.
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Rustin Abroad
India, Ghana, London, the Sahara, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Vienna, Haiti: one man's nonviolence on four continents.
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Before the March
Three rehearsals on the same Mall: 25,000 people in 1957, then thousands of students in 1958 and 1959.
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Heed Their Rising Voices
He helped write a newspaper ad to raise money for King. Four years later it changed what Americans may say about their officials.
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The Copy Congress Kept
Somebody in Congress circled his name. The House's files show who wanted the March on Washington stopped, and how.
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Mao, Wilkins, and the March
Mao backed the marchers and Beijing held a rally. The answer from the March's leaders fit in one cable.
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Freedom Day, 1964
More people took part than marched on Washington. Most history books leave it out.
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Home in Chelsea
He organized the March from Harlem, but he went home to apartment 9J. It is on the National Register now.
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The Medal, 2013
Fifty years after the March, the White House gave him its highest civilian honor. The man who accepted it was his partner.
ReadFrom the archive
Scanned 1963 documents from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
March on Washington Program
Organizing Manual No. 2
Organizing Manual No. 1
What marchers carried, 1963
Mao, Peking, and Wilkins
Manual No. 2, the House copy
Rustin v. Southern Railway
Rustin and Chávez, in two languages
From the Bayard Rustin Society
Urvashi Vaid
Lawyer, organizer, and writer who argued that LGBTQ+ freedom is bound up with every other fight for justice.
Biography & essays
Urvashi Vaid Biography
Lawyer, organizer, and writer who tied LGBTQ+ freedom to every other fight for justice.
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What Virtual Equality Means
Her best-known book argued that looking equal is not the same as being free.
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New Delhi to Potsdam
Her father fled the Partition of India and wrote novels in Hindi. She grew up between New Delhi and a small town in northern New York.
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Two Marches
The same Mall, thirty years apart: one march organized by Rustin, one started by Vaid.
ReadIn the federal record
1990–1992, told through White House files, the Congressional Record and a Senate hearing.
Talk Is Cheap
At a president's first big speech on AIDS, she stood up with a sign and would not sit down.
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I Would Not Know This Woman
She answered a congressman on morning television. He answered her in the Congressional Record.
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Struck from the List
The first federal law to name gay people was signed at the White House. The woman with the sign was not allowed in.
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Before the Senate
Six months after the sign, she sat before the Senate to oppose a Supreme Court nominee.
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A Meeting and a Backlash
A campaign chairman met gay leaders in an election year. The letters to the President came within days.
ReadOrganizing
The 1993 March on Washington
She sent the letter that started it. Two years later, hundreds of thousands filled the National Mall.
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AIDS Behind Bars
Her first job out of law school put her inside the prisons, at the start of the AIDS epidemic.
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Creating Change
A training weekend for activists, started in 1988, grew into the movement's biggest yearly gathering. In 2012 the federal government came to it.
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