Randa Abid Fattah

Walter was Bayard's partner until Bayard's death in 1987.

Later in life, Bayard would say, quote, My activism did not spring from being Black.

Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker upbringing and the values instilled in me by my grandparents who reared me.

He was also greatly inspired by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.

I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace.

I know the value of discipline and truth.

Gandhi just took things to the next level for Bayard.

He believed an empire had been torn down and a nation changed with little more than words and peaceful protest.

That was revolutionary for him.

And Gandhi's voice would echo through Bayard's activism for the rest of his life.

It was a viewpoint that Bayard held fast to in all of his work, and especially as he began working on something he'd been dreaming about for a long time.

Bayard and a group of organizers presented his dream of a big march to A. Philip Randolph, a labor rights leader who was then at the center of the civil rights movement.

Randolph called himself a socialist and firmly believed that a decent, well-paying job would lead to social and political freedom, especially for Black people.

For hours, they brainstormed, trying to imagine what this march would be, what its goals were, who would come, and how they would market it to the world.

Walter was there for all the planning.

They developed a two-day proposal.

This is Norman Hill, then the national program director of the Congress of Racial Equality.

There were two main objectives.

In other words, jobs and economic justice were going to be the focus of the event.

Randolph liked it, and it was decided.