Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin was an American organiser who was arrested more than once, each time for something different. In 1944 he refused military service as a conscientious objector, was convicted under the Selective Service Act, and spent more than two years in federal prison. In 1947, after the Journey of Reconciliation, an early test of bus segregation, he served about 22 days on a North Carolina chain gang. In January 1953 he was arrested in Pasadena for sexual activity in a parked car, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of sex perversion, and served a jail sentence.

A decade later he was the principal organiser of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, working as the deputy to A. Philip Randolph. He was often kept out of the spotlight because he was gay. In 2013 President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously, and in February 2020 California Governor Gavin Newsom pardoned him for the 1953 arrest.