LOS ANGELES — The civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, whose legacy had been tarnished by a 1953 conviction under laws that targeted L.G.B.T.Q. State lawmakers who lobbied for the pardon had called those old laws unjust tools of oppression. Mr. Rustin, who died in 1987 at age 75, worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. for decades. He was a planner of the Montgomery bus boycott and the primary architect of the March on Washington in 1963. Mr. Rustin spent 50 days in Los Angeles County jail and was registered as a sex offender after being discovered having sex in a parked car in Pasadena, Calif.

Source: New York Times February 05, 2020 17:46 UTC