Ithaca College

The Out of the Closet and Onto the Screen series at Ithaca College will show the documentary “Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin” on Wednesday, Feb. 12, in observance of Black History Month. The showing is scheduled for 7 p.m. in Textor 103, and it is free and open to the public.

A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. He brought Gandhi’s protest techniques to the American civil rights movement, and helped mold Martin Luther King Jr. into an international symbol of peace and nonviolence. In 2013, President Obama named Rustin one of the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Despite his many achievements, Rustin was threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. “Brother Outsider” uses interviews and traditional documentary techniques, as well as experimental approaches, to tell Rustin’s complex story.

The Out of the Closet and Onto the Screen series is sponsored by the Ithaca College Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Education, Outreach, and Services. For more information, visit www.ithaca.edu/lgbt.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Luca Maurer at lmaurer@ithaca.edu or (607) 274-7394. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.