He organized the 1963 March on Washington. He helped arrange the Montgomery, Ala. Bus boycott. He debated Malcolm X, learned non-violence directly from Gandhi’s followers, went to jail for his civil rights protests, and is considered one of the architects of the black civil rights movement.

He was Bayard Rustin. He was gay. And he is all but forgotten during our country’s annual January commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rustin was 17 years older than King, and had been working for the cause since leaving college. Born into a Quaker family in 1912 in a town where the Klu Klux Klan paraded proudly down the street on holidays and where blacks weren’t able to take a seat in white restaurants or theaters, Rustin was soon convinced that non-violence was the answer to winning black civil rights. He traveled the country with the Fellowship of Reconcilliation, calling on “angelic troublemakers” to use their bodies to protest unfair conditions.

Rustin was athletic, polite and handsome. He was also completely unashamed of being gay. He met his first partner, Davis Platt, at a conference at Bryn Mawr College.

In the documentary “Brother Outsider,” showing today on Logo (Logo is the parent company of 365Gay), Platt recalls what Rustin was like: “Such intelligence, such a love of life, such a sense of humor, really a lot of wisdom. And he had absolutely no shame about being gay.”

That comfort with his gayness ended in 1953 in Padadena, Calif., when he was caught by the police in the backseat of a car with two other men. His conviction for “sexual perversion” was to haunt him the rest of his life. It convinced him to tone down his sexuality in public, and was used by foes of the civil rights movement – notably Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) – to try to convince the public that King was working with moral deviants.

Rustin was a long-time advisor to King – the documentary says that it was Rustin who really taught King the practical application of non-violence. Though all was not rosy, usually because of King’s fears that Rustin would subvert the civil rights movement with his homosexuality. Though they were later reconciled, Rustin’s strongest falling out with King, according to the documentary, came when Sen. Adam Clayton Powell threatened that he would accuse King and Rustin of having a sexual affair. King blinked, and friends recall Rustin as feeling personally betrayed.

While King inspired, Rustin’s genius lay in the actual organizing of people and events. Rustin set up phone banks and transportation for the 1963 March on Washington, making the impossible possible. He insured that African-Americans around the country knew about the march, that every group that wanted a bus to Washington got one, and that no buses got lost.

King and Rustin were hoping for a crowd of 100,000 – instead, over 200,000 people from around the country packed the Washington Mall to hear King give his soaring “I Have a Dream” speech.

For the rest of his life, Rustin would continue his activism, working to end nuclear war, advocating on behalf of Soviet Jews and Israel, visiting refugee camps, and working with the gay and lesbian civil rights movement.

In 1977, Rustin met Walter Naegle in Times Square – they would be parters until Rustin’s death of a ruptured appendix in 1987. Perhaps it was this relationship – and the changing times – that spurred him once again to be open about being gay.

Toward the end of his life, in 1986, Rustin said, “Indeed, if you want to know whether today people believe in democracy, if you want to know whether they are true democrats, if you want to know whether they are human rights activists, the question to ask is, ‘What about gay people?’ Because that is now the litmus paper by which this democracy is to be judged.”

Bayard Rustin. An activist for civil rights for all until the end.

You can watch the documentary “Brother Outsider” today on Logo. Check your local listings for details, or see http://www.logoonline.com.