Belated Justice for Bayard Rustin?

In January 1953, a decade before civil rights activist Bayard Rustin became a chief organizer of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington, Los Angeles police booked Rustin on suspicion of "lewd vagrancy." As John D'Emilio recounts in Chapter 9 ("Bayard's Trouble") of Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, which we discussed back in July 2006, hours after Rustin had given a speech in Pasadena, police officers spotted him in a parked car, having sex with one of the other two men in the car. Rustin was sentenced to 60 days in jail and forced to register as a sex offender.

That, of course, made him practically unemployable for years. In a March 1953 letter, Rustin wrote: "I know now that for me sex must be sublimated if I am to live with myself and in this world longer."

An article in today's Washington Post reports that California legislators are urging Governor Gavin Newsom  to "right this wrong" by issuing a posthumous pardon to Rustin. Doing so could help clear the way for the issuance of a postage stamp dedicated to him, a project that has been in the works for years.