Rustin (2023)

This film acts as a a portrait of Rayard Rustin, the gay civil-rights activist, close adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Pacifist, ex-con, singer, lutist, socialist — he had many lives, but he remains best known as the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The movie opens with Rustin losing an argument about marching at the Democratic National Convention in 1960. Rustin’s concept of the purpose of such a march would be to send a message to the party and it’s nominee that unless the Democrats take a stand against segregation, that “our people will not show up for them.” He gets soundly shut down, but it is an echo to the future, where a similar headline ran in the New York Times in January of this year. Don’t worry though, Rustin gets his day. The story picks up three years later shortly before Rustin begins organizing the 1963 march, shifting the movie into high gear with bustling characters, clacking typewriters and ringing phones. The movie has been criticized as flawed, but the scenes depicting the organizational skills required to pull off such a huge feat—250,000 people being transported to and from Washington, DC and fed in between without a whiff of trouble from the protesters is in itself quite remarkable and a joy to watch. This is primarily about Rustin as a political force, rather than his struggles as a mostly closeted gay man. The former has been largely forgotten and the later might explain why that happened.