In New York in 1939 he was in a short-lived musical with Paul Robson; he was a regular at the Café Society nightclub in Greenwich Village; and recorded several albums from the 1950s through the 1970s, including a collection of Spirituals.

In 1953 he was arrested having sex with another man in the back seat of a car in Pasadena, and spent 60 days in jail. He was always candid about being gay, and he didn’t care who knew it, which was radical at the time. He stayed in the background of the Civil Rights Movement, mostly because his out-of-the-closet homosexuality rubbed people the wrong way.

Still, in 1963 he shared the cover of Life magazine with A. Philip Randolph as the leaders of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Here’s what he had to say about his sexuality: “It was an absolute necessity for me to declare homosexuality, because if I didn't I was a part of the prejudice. I was aiding and abetting the effort to destroy me.” Bayard Rustin