Global Hope and the University of Hawaii at Hilo LGBTQ+ Center will present a highly praised film about a man Time magazine calls the “unknown hero of the civil rights movement.” ADVERTISING Global Hope and the University of Hawaii at
Global Hope and the University of Hawaii at Hilo LGBTQ+ Center will present a highly praised film about a man Time magazine calls the “unknown hero of the civil rights movement.”
“Brother Outsider — The Life of Bayard Rustin,” the architect of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, will be shown at 7 p.m. Thursday in UCB Room 100 at UH-Hilo.
The screening is free and open to the public.
The 1963 March is remembered for Martin Luther King Jr.’s inspiring “I Have a Dream Speech,” but the man who made the march happen was Rustin. He was the most skilled organizer in the civil rights movement and the march was the catalyst for the federal Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in 1964 and 1965.
A far-seeing and brilliant strategist, Rustin lived as an openly gay man during the homophobic 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. As a pacifist, he was jailed for almost three years for refusing to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Rustin was a disciple of Gandhi and a mentor to King.
The film illuminates Rustin’s public and private lives, chronicling his activism for racial and economic justice, peace and equality for LGTBQ Americans while exploring why and how he has been erased from history. The FBI had a role in this.
Rustin received the nation’s highest civilian honor — a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom — during a White House ceremony in 2013.
“We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers,” Rustin once said.
For more information about the film screening, contact Bunny Smith at 935-0622 or golezardalu@yahoo.com.
