Martin Luther King Jr. was the headliner. But the man who orchestrated the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom – the largest civil rights gathering of its time, drawing 250,000 people – was an influential strategist and proponent of nonviolent protest, Bayard Rustin.

Rustin formulated many of the tactics that propelled the U.S. civil rights movement. As an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era, however, he remained behind the scenes and thus largely underappreciated.

On the 55th anniversary of the August 28, 1963, march, the Library screens the acclaimed documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin. Rustin’s partner, Walter Naegle, then joins University of Kansas professor Clarence Lang, a specialist in African-American urban history and social movements, in discussing his legacy. The event is co-presented by the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation, UMB Bank, n.a., Trustee.