Screening of Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin

Brother Outsider is the third film in the Fall Film Series sponsored by the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education.

Space is limited and reservations are necessary.  Contact Jody Brumage at [email protected] to reserve a seat.

During his 60-year career as an activist, organizer, and “troublemaker,” Bayard Rustin formulated many of the strategies that propelled the American civil rights movement. His passionate belief in Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence drew Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders to him in the 1940s and 50s; his practice of those beliefs drew the attention of the FBI and police. In 1963, Rustin brought his unique skills to the crowning glory of his civil rights career: his work organizing the March on Washington, the biggest protest America had ever seen. But his open homosexuality forced him to remain in the background, marking him again and again as a “brother outsider.” Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin combines rare archival footage — some of it never before broadcast in the U.S. — with provocative interviews to illuminate the life and work of a forgotten prophet of social change.