The man black history erased [View all]

[AmyStrange]

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The man black history erased
By LZ Granderson, CNN Contributor
updated 9:18 PM EDT, Wed August 21, 2013

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/21/opinion/granderson-rustin-erased/index.html

&quot CNN) -- On August 13, 1963, in a last ditch effort to derail the pending March on Washington, Strom Thurmond took the Senate floor and hurled a series of vicious, personal attacks against the man organizing the largest protest in U.S. history.

"Thurmond called him a Communist and a draft dodger.

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"Rustin was imprisoned for challenging racial segregation in the South before the phrase 'Freedom Rider' was ever said. He taught a 25-year-old King the true meaning of nonviolent civil disobedience while the great dreamer was still being flanked by armed bodyguards. And before addressing the crowd of 250,000 that gathered at the National Mall nearly five decades ago, famed actor and activist Ossie Davis introduced him 'as the man who organized this whole thing.'

"No, the reason why you probably have not heard of Bayard Rustin has nothing to do with the significance of his contributions to the March on Washington or the civil rights movement in general. His absence is epitomized by the sentiment woven between the lines of that joke between Jones and Rustin's protege. You see, the organizer of the great march, the man who held a fundraiser at Madison Square Garden to help fund the bus boycott in Montgomery, the intellectual behind the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Council was also unabashedly gay. And it was the discomfort some had with his sexuality that led to his disappearance in our history books... "

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