عباري وعبار بريمة محمد أدم.

At the high point of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956 that launched King into the national spotlight, and over the vehement opposition of black ministers who called homosexuals and Rustin unsavory and evil, King invited Rustin to come to Montgomery as an adviser. A year later, King asked Rustin to draft the resolutions and the organizational charter of his fledging Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He demanded that the SCLC board, mostly composed of black ministers, hire Rustin as its coordinator and publicist. The board flatly turned him down, and though it was unstated, Rustin's homosexuality was a major reason.

The issue continued to dog King and his relationship with Rustin. Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell publicly threatened to accuse King of having a homosexual affair with Rustin if he didn't call off planned demonstrations at the 1960 Democratic convention. King didn't buckle to Powell's blackmail threat and went ahead with the demonstrations anyway.

During the next few years, the assault on Rustin's homosexuality, and the pressure on King to dump him, escalated. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover publicly released wiretaps of scurrilous remarks King associates made about Rustin's homosexuality. On the eve of the March on Washington in 1963, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond denounced Rustin on the Senate floor as a sexual pervert, and inserted a copy of his 1953 arrest booking slip in the Congressional Record. President Kennedy and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy also flatly demanded that King get rid of him. King did not publicly break with Rustin. And when he did eventually distance himself politically from Rustin, he gave no public hint that his homosexuality was an issue.

King risked much to work with and defend Rustin during the tumultuous battles of the civil-rights era. He valued him as an ally and a major player in the struggle. He also believed that deeply embodied in the civil-rights fight was a person's right to be whom and what he was. While King may have praised his daughter for having the courage and conviction to march for her beliefs, bigotry is still bigotry, whether it's about race or sexual orientation. He would not have marched by her side.