By Claire Potter

African-American activists Bayard Rustin and Cheryl Clarke didn’t know each other on August 28, 1963. Rustin was 51 years old, a gay man, a long-time practitioner of non-violent protest, and a chief strategist for the civil rights movement. Cheryl Clarke was 16, a marcher, and an aspiring poet and scholar who would become one of the great lesbian voices of her generation. But these two activists are an example of something we know: of the 250,000 people who marched on the Capitol that day, many thousand were gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered. This proud moment in civil rights activism is also a moment to reflect on how GLBT civil rights strategies have overlapped with, drawn strength from, and patterned themselves on a century and a half of anti-racist struggle in the United States.