Walter Naegle is the former partner of the American Civil Rights leader Bayard Rustin and is executive director of the Bayard Rustin Fund, which commemorates Rustin’s life, values, and legacy. Michael G. Long is an associate professor of religious studies and peace and conflict studies at Elizabethtown College and is the author or editor of several books on civil rights, religion, and politics in mid-century America, including I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters; We the Resistance: Documenting a History of Nonviolent Protest in the United States, and, First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson. Jacqueline Houtman is the author of the award-winning children’s book The Reinvention of Edison Thomas. Her science writing for adults and children has appeared in various ublications including World Book Science Year, FASEB’s Breakthroughs in Bioscience series, and the Cleveland Clinic Magazine. Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the March on Washington (City Lights Publishing) is a biography for younger readers about one of the most influential activists of our time. An early advocate for African Americans and for gay rights, Rustin was a major figure in the Civil Rights movement. He was arrested on a bus 13 years before Rosa Parks and he participated in integrated bus rides throughout the South 14 years before the Freedom Riders. He was a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., teaching him the techniques and philosophy of Gandhian nonviolent direct action. He organized the March on Washington in 1963, one of the most impactful mobilizations in American history. Yet despite these contributions, few Americans recognize his name, and he is absent from most history books, in large part because he was gay. This biography traces Rustin’s life, from his childhood and his first arrest in high school for sitting in the “whites only” section of a theater, through a lifetime of nonviolent activism. Michael Cart in a starred review for Booklist, called Troublemaker for Justice “an indispensable addition to the literature of both civil and gay rights.”
