Time Machine: Civil rights leader Bayard Rustin spoke in Iowa City in 1964

Bayard Rustin was the organizer of the successful March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Aug. 28, 1963, considered the seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement and the setting of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech.

Rustin got the job when civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph bypassed objectors who said Rustin should not be in charge because he was gay, had once been a communist and had refused to serve during World War II. Randolph trusted Rustin's extraordinary organizational skills.

At the conclusion of the march, Rustin presented the march's '10 Demands' from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before they were given to President Kennedy.

1. Comprehensive and effective civil rights legislation from the present Congress — without compromise or filibuster — to guarantee all Americans access to all public accommodations, decent housing, adequate and integrated education and the right to vote

2. Withholding of federal funds from all programs in which discrimination exists.

3. Desegregation of all school districts in 1963.

4. Enforcement of the 14th Amendment — reducing Congressional representation of states where citizens are disenfranchised.

5. A new executive order banning discrimination in all housing supported by federal funds.

6. Authority for the Attorney General to institute injunctive suits when any constitutional right is violated.

7. A massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers — black and white — on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages.

8. A national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living. (Government surveys show that anything less than $2.00 an hour fails to do this.)

9. A broadened Fair Labor Standards Act to include all areas of employment which are presently excluded.

10. A federal Fair Employment Practices Act barring discrimination by federal, state and municipal governments, and by employers, contractors, employment agencies and trade unions.

'Support of the March does not necessarily indicate endorsement of every demand listed,' he said. 'Some organizations have not had an opportunity to take an official position on all of the demands advocated here.'

Eight months later, Rustin was the principal speaker at a civil rights rally the weekend of April 24, 1964 in Iowa City.

Rustin's flight landed at the Cedar Rapids airport that Friday. He was met at the airport by Professor Alan Spitzer, a member of the University of Iowa's Committee on Human Rights, which sponsored the event.

Rustin was fresh out of jail after being arrested at a protest at the World's Fair in New York earlier in the week. A near-capacity audience gathered at 8 p.m. in Macbride auditorium to hear him talk about 'America's Crisis in Civil Rights.'

'The civil rights movement is in crisis because American society is in crisis,' he said, 'with 50 million poor people.'

Rustin, 54 at the time and no novice to freedom causes, was a Jamaica native and was raised a Quaker in rural Pennsylvania. He became active in non-violence organizations and refused to serve in World War II.

'America's 25 million Negroes don't have the power to move unless society is prepared to move. What we need now is for the white poor to get out and move,' he said. 'No single social good can be done until the white people join the Negro' in a war on poverty. He said that blacks could not expect preferential treatment from whites who were not treated fairly themselves.

He advocated that the government step in where the private sector failed in putting people to work.

He called President Lyndon Johnson's 'War on Poverty' a fake, saying 'more Negroes are unemployed and their housing conditions are worse than before.'

The fundamentals of civil rights are housing, schools and jobs, he said, not public accommodations.

The rally, led by Jack Lewis, a leader of the student non-violent coordinating committee, continued Saturday morning with a panel discussion that included Cecil Reed of Cedar Rapids, Emil Trott of Iowa City, and Seymour Grey of the university.

As an adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rustin encouraged King to expand his influence to the international stage. The two advocated for peaceful relations with China. King planned to write letters to North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh, to Communist China and to the Soviet Union urging them to negotiate an end to the Vietnam war. That drew an immediate angry reaction from Sens. Thomas Dodd and Strom Thurmond, who thought King and Rustin were stepping out of their bounds.

In 1965, Rustin and Randolph founded the A. Philip Randolph Institute that advocated social, political and economic equality for all American.

Bayard Rustin was arrested more than two dozen times while protesting injustice. He advocated peaceful protest and counseled against black separatism, making him a target of radical blacks during the 1960s and '70s.

He also called black studies programs 'stupid' and the 'easy way out.' He considered the histories of minorities to be part of the whole history of the nation.

Rustin's life changed in 1977 when he met a white man 37 years his junior, Walter Naegle. The two fell in love and began a life together. Rustin knew that he would probably precede Naegle in death, but he wanted to provide for him. Marriage for gays at the time was illegal, so Rustin set the wheels in motion to adopt Naegle.

When Randolph, died in 1979, Rustin sat with President Jimmy Carter and Bishop Henry Murphy at the memorial service at Washington's Metropolitan African Methodist and Episcopal Church. Rustin became president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute following Randolph's death.

After surviving a heart attack in 1971, Rustin died August 23, 1987, in New York, following surgery for a ruptured appendix. He was 77.

Rustin was awarded the Medal of Freedom posthumously on Aug. 8, 2013. Walter Naegle accepted the award from President Barack Obama.