Randa Abid Fattah

Word began to spread, and they could tell people were interested in coming.

So they were feeling their way through the dark, trying to plan travel, food, lodging, around maybes and what-ifs.

Disagreements came up along the way.

Some were minor.

But other disagreements were more substantial, like the fact that no women were scheduled to speak at the march.

Author Joyce Ladner had grown up in the heart of the Jim Crow South.

At the time, she was busy working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC.

But everyone involved in the march, from the top down, agreed on one thing.

The march had to be nonviolent.

Anything less could spell disaster for the movement.

And Rochelle says activists who had a more militant approach, like Malcolm X, were uninvited.

Bayard knew that the march hinged on perceptions.

Plenty of people were waiting for it to fail.

So the crowd had to remain nonviolent.

And the public face of the march also had to be nonthreatening and wildly inspirational.

It had to be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,

With the march just a few weeks away, things were looking good.

Everything was going according to Bayard's plan.

But J. Edgar Hoover, the notoriously shady director of the FBI at the time, tried to dig up some dirt on people linked to the march.

And a gay, Black socialist, former communist and conscientious objector,