Members of the LGBTQ+ community have been behind some of the greatest social movements of our time, the civil rights movement included. Finally, one civil rights activist is getting their flowers in an upcoming movie. 

In the first full-length trailer for Rustin, Emmy winner Colman Domingo transforms into Bayard Rustin, right hand man to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the architect behind the 1963 March on Washington – the same march where Dr. King gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. The film plans to show the many sides of the famed organizer, including how he was a pacifist, a quaker, and a proud Black, gay man. 

“I can’t surrender my differences. The world won’t let me,” Rustin shouts.

Many Black queer people feel exactly the same way that Rustin feels. However, Rustin still saw an opportunity for people from all walks of life to have liberation. All that was needed was a united front, one that he created with the March on Washington.

“What they really want to destroy is all of us coming together and demanding this country change,” Rustin says to Dr. King. 

Alongside Domingo’s Rustin are a collection of actors transforming into civil rights leaders. With Aml Ameen (Sense8) as Martin Luther King Jr., comedian Chris Rock as NAACP executive director Roy Wilkin, Jeffrey Wright (The Batman) as politician Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and Audra McDonald (The Gilded Age), CCH Pounder (Avatar: The Way of Water), and Glynn Turman (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) as civil rights leaders Ella Baker, Dr. Anna Hedgeman, and A. Phillip Randolph respectively, Rustin highlights a generation of some of the greatest leaders within his orbit. 

Directed by five-time Tony Award winner George C Wolfe, written by Julian Breece and Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black, and produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground production company, Rustin is taking audiences back in time to give the acclaimed activist his flowers, finally. With a posthumous Medal of Freedom given by former President Obama in 2013, Netflix’s upcoming film shines more light on Rustin’s legacy. 

Check out the trailer below.


Rustin premieres on Netflix on November 17.