Randa Abid Fattah

They would host a march on Washington that summer.

So now all that was left to do was, you know, pull off the most ambitious protest in American history in just a few months.

In the spring of 1963, Bayard assembled a team to begin organizing the march.

People like Rochelle Horowitz, who traveled around the country convincing people that the march should take place.

They got buy-in from a lot of people and set up meetings with heads of the civil rights movement, a.k.a.

the Big Six.

And at the same time, Bayard was making tweaks to the proposal.

He changed the mission statement to include two goals.

Freedom, meaning racial justice.

President John F. Kennedy was working on a civil rights bill, and Bayard figured the big six wouldn't want to take attention away from it.

Especially since Kennedy had already made it clear he opposed the march.

And Bayard made another tweak.

He reduced the event from two days to one, and then presented the revised proposal to the Big Six.

And they were on board, except Roy Wilkins of the NAACP had one condition.

He didn't want Bayard Rustin, a gay former communist, to be the top organizer of the march.

So it was decided that Randolph should chair the march.

This wouldn't be the first time that Bayard was pushed behind the scenes.

The march was announced to the world in early June of 1963.

It was scheduled to take place on August 28, 1963.

And then the organizing sped up.