Born: March 17, 1912, West Chester, PA

Education: Attended Wilberforce University, Cheyney State Teachers College, City College of New York

Died: August 24, 1987, New York, NY

Rustin was the foremost organizer in the nonviolent freedom struggle between 1941 and 1965. As a Quaker, he embraced not only the War Resisters League (1936–41) but also racial and ethnic integration and equality.

He pursued civil and human rights and peace. Early on, his work in the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) placed him at the forefront of antiwar activism. An assistant to A. Philip Randolph, he became chief advisor for the March on Washington Movement (1941). Cofounder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE, 1942), he went to California to protest the internment of Japanese Americans. Convicted of draft resistance, he served two and a half years in federal prison. He co-created CORE's Journey of Reconciliation (1947), joining an interracial team to challenge Jim Crow on interstate buses. Through FOR's affiliate, In Friendship, he organized both the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was the major architect of the 1963 March on Washington and voting rights marches in Alabama. Rustin founded the Randolph Institute in 1965. Under his visionary leadership, the institute sponsored initiatives in nonviolence, union organizing, and building multiracial and ethnic voter coalitions. President Obama awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously (2013).