Bayard Rustin was an early leader of the modern African American civil rights movement, and one of the most controversial. Rustin was openly gay at a time when being homosexual was illegal in most U.S. states. For that reason, he was often marginalized when it came to the public elements of the civil rights movement, perceived as a liability when he was actually one of the movement’s greatest activists for a solid thirty years. During World War II, Rustin was one of the major organizers, along with A. Philip Randolph and the Reverend A. J. Muste, of a proposed March on Washington calling for an end to discrimination in the military. The march, planned for 1941, never took place because President Roosevelt issued an executive order banning racial discrimination in the defense industries and in the federal government.