Meet Bayard Rustin, often-forgotten civil rights activist, gay rights advocate, union organizer, pacifist and man of compassion for all in trouble

  As I began writing “Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer,” my biography of the 20th-century radical leader and activist, one of my colleagues cautioned me not to “fall in love.”

  This, of course, is good advice for any biographer, and I tried to follow it.

  But it wasn’t easy, because Bayard Rustin was America’s signature radical voice during the 20th century, and yes, I believe those voices includes that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Rustin trained and mentored.

  His vision of nonviolence was breathtakingly broad.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - Frank Johnson and the legend of the Free State of Winston

  Those of us who are Baby Boomers remember the tumultuous times of the 1960s. We lived through the Civil Rights revolution. Those of us who grew up here in the Heart of Dixie witnessed the transpiring of racial integration first hand. Most of the crusades and struggles occurred here in Alabama, especially Montgomery.

  A good many of the landmark Civil Rights court decisions were handed down in the Federal Court in Montgomery. The author and renderer of these epic rulings was Frank M. Johnson, Jr. Johnson, who served as Federal Judge in the Middle District of Alabama for 24 years from 1955 through 1979.