Welcome to significant others, a podcast that takes a look at the less familiar

side of history. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and in this episode we'll be hearing the story of a collaboration that changed

the course of history, but a collaborator that for many years remained largely hidden

from it.

On a Wednesday morning in February 1956, dozens of citizens of Montgomery, Alabama awoke, put on their best clothes and

made their way to the courthouse to offer themselves up for arrest.

They were processed, fingerprinted, and released on $300 bail each,

while friends and family stood outside and applauded.

The following evening, a little-known 27-year-old minister gave a speech that

made it to a front-page article in the New York Times. The next morning, thousands walked together from the courthouse to the church, singing a song of solidarity.

These events would galvanize a movement, rouse a nation, and anoint a savior. a

movement, rouse a nation, and anoint a savior.

But the speech, the song, and the strategy were all authored by a man who, for many

years, most folks had never heard of.

A man who had already spent decades fighting for justice and equality,

a man who, even as he breathed life into the nascent civil rights movement,

was seen as a threat by many within it.

This time on significant others, meet Bayard Rustin is far from obscure. There's a documentary about him, a movie on Netflix,

and he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

by President Obama in 2013.

He has already been revealed as a sort of backbone to the civil rights movement as we know it.

But his presence, historically speaking, is inconsistent. It's like it's siloed or something.

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