One of the lesser-known names of the civil rights movement will be in the spotlight this Friday in Peoria.
Bayard Rustin imported Gandhi's doctrine of non-violence to the U.S. He mentored MLK. And he organized the 1963 March on Washington. And he did it all as a Black, gay man in an era where he faced a lot of stigma.
Yet today, he's not as well-known. Tiffany White, executive director of the Dirksen Congressional Center in Pekin, says she hadn't heard of Rustin before she met someone who worked on Brother Outsider, a documentary about his life. His story reminded her of Dirksen's own sometimes understated role in advancing civil rights.
"It occurred to me that here are two relatively unknown figures in the civil rights movement, Everett Dirksen and Bayard Rustin, and that it felt as though we needed to take advantage of the opportunity to connect and to tell both of their stories," she said.
The Dirksen Center is screening Brother Insider at the Peoria Riverfront Museum this Friday. That event will also feature a panel discussion about the film. Bennett Singer was the documentary's co-director. He believes Rustin is often excluded from the broader civil rights story.
"He dared to be open about being a gay man at a time when that was a radical act. Every single state had sodomy laws. You know, to be open in that way was just quite remarkable, and really in some ways, put a target on his back, but also liberated him," Singer said. "So his story, really, I think, has so much resonance for us in this time, in terms of his his work to open up American democracy, to make this a more inclusive society, and his personal authenticity, I think, is such an inspiration."
Walter Naegle was Rustin's partner. He says the idea for a documentary was born in the late '90s, when many of the people who knew and worked with Rustin were still alive.
"At the time that he died, he was well known in the civil rights movement and in the peace movement, but not in the general consciousness. He was not on the front page of the newspapers anymore, very, very, very infrequently, and some of the positions he took later in life were not as popular as some of the things he had done in the 1960s so he was kind of being set aside and forgotten," he said.
Documentary producer Mridu Chandra says Brother Outsider attempts to give a more complete picture of Rustin as a person.
"One of the wonderful things about this film is that it looks at Bayard Rustin's life as a full individual and all aspects of his political thinking and also his personal life, because they can't, as we know, be separated," Chandra said. "And for so many years, he had to live in sections in order to be effective. I think he made those decisions, but the film tries to bring all of that together."
Bennett Singer says there's a common thread of perseverance.
"He kept fighting, he kept reinventing himself. Yes, he changed focus, but he never withdrew. He never became angry, he never became bitter. And that sense of optimism. And I think he just had this sense that he was ahead of his time," Singer said.
Tiffany White of the Dirksen Center says Rustin's story still resonates.
"I think that when we go out of our way to make sure that we are including everybody who was a part of a story that happened yesterday or 60 years ago, we are encouraging and inspiring more people today to connect with that and then to use that as empowerment, to replicate that which is worth replicating in these social justice movements of today," she said.
Bennett Singer agrees. Though more than two decades have passed since Brother Outsider was first released, he says the documentary is taking on a new life.
"The film has been around for a while, actually, since 2003, but it's so heartening that it's now on Netflix. It's reaching a whole new audience, and I think inspiring a whole new generation of folks to think about what activism can achieve," he said.
Singer, Walter Naegle, and Mridu Chandra will be present on Friday for the panel discussion and Q&A session following the film screening. The event starts at 5 p.m.
