His grandparents were relatively wealthy local caterers who raised Rustin in a large house. Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, to Florence Rustin and Archie Hopkins, but raised by his maternal grandparents, Julia (Davis) and Janifer Rustin, as the ninth of their twelve children growing up he believed his biological mother was his older sister.
In the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes, speaking at events as an activist and supporter of human rights. Rustin was a gay man and, due to criticism over his sexuality, he usually acted as an influential adviser behind the scenes to civil-rights leaders.
At the time of his death in 1987, he was on a humanitarian mission in Haiti. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO's A. "In Friendship" provided material and legal assistance to those being evicted from their tenant farms and households in Clarendon County, Yazoo, and other places. Rustin worked alongside Ella Baker, a co-director of the Crusade for Citizenship, in 1954 and before the Montgomery bus boycott, he helped organize a group, called "In Friendship," amongst Baker, George Lawrence, Stanley Levison of the American Jewish Congress, and some other labor leaders.
Rustin later organized Freedom Rides, and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership and teaching King about nonviolence he later served as an organizer for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement, in 1941, to press for an end to racial discrimination in employment. ər d/ Ma– August 24, 1987) was an African American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights.