(JEWISH GROUP) Civil rights icon Bayard Rustin, subject of Netflix biopic, was ally to Jews and Israel

Early on in the Netflix biopic “Rustin,” the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom discuss when to schedule the gathering.

“Mondays are challenging for Protestant ministers, and Fridays complicated for our Jewish friends,” says march director Bayard Rustin (played by Colman Domingo). The group settles on Aug. 28 — a Wednesday.

It’s a small but revealing comment by the civil rights icon who, like his friend the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was an ally to American Jews and an outspoken supporter of the State of Israel. The new biopic focuses on the central role Rustin played in planning the historic march and on the challenges he faced as a Black and openly gay man during the 1950s and ’60s. But the film, released in November and produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s company Higher Ground, affords an opportunity to revisit Rustin’s legacy of activism on behalf of Jewish people and causes throughout his adult life.

“He felt very loyal to Jews because they supported the Civil Rights Movement financially and emotionally and by directly participating in it,” said Nancy Kates, the Berkeley-based director of a 2002 documentary about Rustin. “Even as the Black Power movement took off, he continued to be loyal to Jewish colleagues that had worked with him for years.”

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If you have not seen "Rustin" on Netflix, watch it! A great way to celebrate MLK, Jr. Day.