'Rustin' puts a spotlight on a undersung civil rights hero

Bayard Rustin, the civil rights activist and primary architect of the 1963 March on Washington, who often worked tirelessly out of the limelight, takes center stage in the new Netflix drama "Rustin."

TORONTO (AP) — The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, stars Colman Domingo as Rustin, a towering figure who worked for decades alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and whose vision of the March on Washington — site of the "I Have a Dream" speech — led to one of the most indelible moments of American history.

"I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble," Rustin once said.

"Rustin," directed by veteran theater and film director George C. Wolfe, is the first narrative feature from Higher Ground, Barack and Michelle Obama's production company. Led by a powerhouse performance by Domingo that's already being called a likely Academy Award nomination for best actor, "Rustin" aims to celebrate a pivotal but undersung civil rights hero.

"So much of what he did was compassionate and fueled by responsibility — not arrogance but responsibility," says Wolfe. "He had a brain that was organizationally astonishing. What would make him heroic was not fueled by selfishness. And he was funny."

Rustin, who died in 1987, was an openly gay Black man who lived through a time when being either was enough to put him in jail. In 1953, Rustin spent 50 days in jail and was registered as a sex offender — a conviction that was posthumously pardoned in 2020 by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.