Bayard Rustin's ideas matter

What the new Netflix biopic leaves out

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Last week I watched Netflix’s “Rustin,” which I’d hoped would get a ton of attention because I really wanted to write an article about Bayard Rustin. It hasn’t actually gotten much attention; I’m going to do the article anyway.

The film is pretty good, built around a stellar Colman Domingo performance as the titular star. Its only real flaw, qua movie, is that for some reason they cast Chris Rock as NAACP chief Roy Wilkins. Rock is a great comedian and at times a pretty good actor, but the script repeatedly has him at a table, surrounded by a murderer’s row of character actors (Jeffrey Wright as Adam Clayton Powell, Glynn Turman as A. Philip Randolph, Aml Ameen as Martin Luther King, CCH Pounder as Anna Hedgeman), and next to them, it plays like he’s doing a weird sketch.

The screenplay chooses, I think wisely, not to tell the entire story of Rustin’s life.

The movie opens midway through his career, during his temporary exile from the Civil Rights Movement following a power struggle with Powell and Wilkins. It then recounts the story of how Rustin makes his comeback, getting more and more people on board with his vision of a dramatic March on Washington, and then the logistics of pulling the march off. Plenty from Rustin’s earlier life is mentioned or alluded to, but nothing that he did after the March on Washington is depicted. This is, I think, the most coherent way to tell the story, and it highlights the acting talent very well. They also do a good job of integrating Rustin’s sexuality into the story, presenting us with, essentially, a story about intersectionality — Rustin is gay as well as Black, his sexuality is at times an impediment to his work in civil rights, but he eventually convinces many of the key leaders that their struggles are thematically and practically aligned. Along the way, Rustin himself is challenged with regard to women’s role in the movement. The Civil Rights Act triumphs, and the stage is set for the causes of the future.

And the way this story is structured, Rustin’s primary antagonists are the relatively conservative elements in the movement, represented by Powell and Wilkins, who think the march is too ambitious or that his gay identity is too alarming. The upshot is a story that I think contemporary progressives will like a lot, but that sidelines a lot of what I think is most interesting about Rustin.

I hope that people watch and enjoy the movie and then read books like “Time on Two Crosses” (a collection of Rustin’s writings), John D’Emilio’s 2004 biography “Lost Prophet,” or the new NYU press edited volume of essays “Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics.” Per D’Emilio’s title, Rustin really did become an unfashionable figure on the American left whose legacy fell into obscurity, and he’s now being rediscovered largely due to the intersectional themes that the movie focuses on.

But the stuff that made him unfashionable is worth thinking about, because I think he was largely correct.