Summary

• Rustin accurately references real history but also includes fictional characters and subplots, resulting in a mix of accuracy and deviation from the historical record.
• The movie highlights Rustin's struggles within the civil rights movement, with his sexual orientation being a major cause for contention among other black leaders.
• Rustin faced opposition not only due to his sexuality but also because of his antagonistic yet pacifist approach to protests, which clashed with the desires of many civil rights leaders. Some leaders were also self-interested and opposed Rustin's initiatives.

The ending of Rustin is a Netflix movie produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, Rustin is directed by George C. Wolfe and features performances from Colman Domingo, Chris Rock, Jeffrey Wright, CCH Pounder, Aml Ameen, and more.

After his success working with Martin Luther King Jr. (Aml Ameen) on the Montgomery Bus boycott, Bayard Rustin (Coleman Domingo) decides to plan the largest protest in the nation's history in Washington D.C. Despite his previous success, Rustin faces an uphill battle working with other civil rights leaders such as Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (Jeffrey Right) and NAA Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins (Chris Rock), partially due to fears of his sexual orientation setting the movement back.

How Accurate is Rustin's Version of History?

Rustin accurately references a lot of real history, but also creates some fictional characters and subplots.

Rustin is based on the true story of Bayard Rustin's behind-the-scenes efforts to organize the 1963 March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The characters in Rustin include many influential black leaders involved in planning the march and numerous real historical events are depicted throughout the movie, and many of the key lines are direct quotes, so Rustin has a high degree of accuracy in many scenes, but there's also a few places where it diverges from the historical record.

In Rustin, the idea for the 1963 march is seemingly spontaneously generated by Rustin, which he then brainstorms with his collaborators before presenting it to A. Philip Randolph (Glynn Turman), who tells him about a similar march he'd organized in 1941 to protest segregation in the armed services. In reality, Randolph had the idea for the 1963 march and recruited Rustin to help him plan it because Rustin had also helped organize the 1941 march with Randolph and a third man, A. J. Muste, and publicly disagreed with its cancelation after President Roosevelt ed the Fair Employment Act.

The movie accurately reflects the discomfort black leaders such as Roy Wilkins had with Rustin playing a prominent role in organizing the march due to his sexual orientation, which is why Randolph was officially credited as the events director and Rustin served as his deputy. The criticism faced by Rustin and the publication of his Pasadena criminal record are all based on actual events, as is the fact that the FBI was monitoring him because of his communist affiliations. Rustin was briefly a member of the communist party, but withdrew his hip when they encouraged the United States to enter WWII because he was a pacifist.

While many of the characters and plots of Rustin are based on real events, some characters are fictionalized, such as Elias Taylor (Johnny Ramey), a minister with a pregnant wife who has an affair with Rustin. When Elias tries to end their affair to preserve his marriage and church, Rustin tells him "you may think you're killing off of yourself, but you're not. You're killing all of yourself." When Elias continues to reject him, Rustin becomes suspicious that the FBI had incriminating evidence on Elias and was extorting him. While it's possible Rustin had similar experiences, Elias Taylor is a fictional character created for the movie.

Why Other Civil Rights Leaders Didn't Cooperate With Rustin?

Rustin's sexuality is regularly cited as a liability, but it's not the only reason they didn't work with him.

While the March on Washington was to protest racial segregation, the plot of Rustin focuses less on the larger national struggle for equality and more on Bayard Rustin's struggles within the civil rights movement with other black leaders who didn't want to work with him or use his ideas. The movie emphasizes Rustin's sexual orientation as a major cause for contention, as many other civil rights leaders were concerned about the optics of letting a homosexual man serve as a prominent figure in the movement. While Rustin's orientation is cited as an objection and weaponized against him throughout the movie, it's not the only reason some civil rights leaders opposed his initiatives.

Rustin's antagonistic yet radically pacifist approach to protests was at odds with the desires of many civil rights leaders. Despite success working with Martin Luther King Jr. on the Montgomery Bus boycott, people like Democratic Congressman William Clayton Powell were upset by Rustin's influence. Powell, in particular, was upset by Rustin's plans to protest the Democratic National Convention without consulting him first, referring to it as "my convention, my party," while Roy Wilkins criticizes Rustin's "attention-grabbing antics" as the "exact opposite" of the approach needed to change national policy.

While the civil rights movement was generally focused on achieving racial equality, Rustin suggests some leaders were also self-interested, such as when Randolph says "Congressman Powell has done so much for Harlem. Almost as much as he's done for himself." This behavior wasn't exclusively targeted at Bayard Rustin, either. During the phone call between Powell and Wilkins at the beginning of the movie, Powell says Martin Luther Jing Jr. needed to "keep down south where he belongs" instead of trying to influence congressional politics.

Why President Kennedy Didn't Invite Rustin to the Oval Office?

Rustin said he was happy to pick up trash instead.

During the planning of the march, Rustin turns on the TV to see a portion of the broadcast of President John F. Kennedy's "Report to the American People on Civil Rights," which outlined much of what would become the Civil Rights Act in 1964. The clip played in Rustin only includes a brief segment of the speech where JFK says "Redress is sought in the streets, in demonstrations, parades, and protests which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives." Rustin is later informed that in a meeting with organizers in the Oval Office Kennedy voiced concern that, if anything went wrong, it could kill the Civil Rights Act.

While he was initially apprehensive about the march disrupting the age of the Civil Rights Act, John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were very involved in the planning to ensure the march wouldn't cause any disruptions.

Despite the initial friction, after the march, Kennedy invited the "Big Ten" to his Oval Office. The Big Ten was comprised of the "Big Six" black leaders of civil rights organizations, plus four white men from other ive groups. The Big Six included Martin Luthr King Jr., James Farmer, John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young, while the four additional men were Walter Reuther, Eugene Carson Blake, Matthew Ahmann, and Joachim Prinz. While Bayard Rustin helped organize the event, Randolph was officially the director, so the invitation didn't extend to Rustin.

What Happened to Rustin After the March?

Rustin dedicated his life to civil rights causes and received a lot of recognition after his death.

After the March on Washington, Bayard Rustin continued to be actively involved in the Civil Rights movement, although he would begin to encourage a shift away from protests and towards more political means. He believed that after the Civil Rights Act codified equality into the law, it became important to work within the system and partner with politicians and other influential leaders to increase economic opportunities for black Americans so they could leverage more economic influence instead of relying on creating social friction to achieve their goals.

Upon his death on August 24, 1987, President Ronald Reagan issued a statement praising Rustin's as "a great leader in the struggle for civil rights" and praised him for his "great physical, intellectual, and, most of all, moral courage." In 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. In 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom pardoned Rustin for his 1953 arrest in Pasadena, which was referenced in Rustin when it was weaponized to delegitimize the March on Washington.