BAYARD RUSTIN, an African-American gay man, was one of the most complex and interesting of the black intellectuals during a period of dramatic change in America. He is perhaps best known as the organizer of the 1963 march on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his memorable "I Have a Dream" speech. Although Rustin headed no civil rights organization, during most of his career he was a moral and tactical spokesman for them all. Committed to the Ghandian principle of nonviolence, he was the movement's ablest strategist and an indispensable intellectual resource for such major black leaders as Dr. King, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, Dorothy Height and James Farmer. Rustin not only helped to organize the Montgomery boycott of 1955-56 but also drew up the original plan for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization that spearheaded King's nonviolent crusade.

But Rustin's career predated the more spectacular phase of the civil rights movement and was not limited to the black freedom struggle. Raised as a Quaker, he was a pacifist and human rights activist all his life, starting as an imprisoned conscientious objector during World War II and Continuing on for the next thirty years as a founding member of the Congress of Racial Equality in the 1940s to heading the A. Philip Randolph Institute in the 1960s and '70s. In his later years, he became a controversial figure in the civil rights struggle as he took issue with some of the stances of the black power and black consciousness movements.

In this landmark biography, historian and biographer Jervis Anderson gives a full account of the life of this inspiring figure. With complete access to Rustin's papers and the cooperation of Rustin's friends and colleagues, Anderson has written an enriching and insightful book on the life of one of the most important heroes of the movements for civil rights and social reform.