Today Cordy Tindell `` C.T . '' Vivian and Bayard Rustin were among 16 people honored with the nation 's highest civilian honor , the Presidential Medal of Freedom . Household names former President Bill Clinton and media icon Oprah Winfrey received the honor , but odds are you probably are n't as familiar with their fellow honorees . Vivian is a civil rights leader who participated in the freedom rides , and Rustin was considered to be one of the masterminds behind the March on Washington . Here are seven things you do n't know about these two unsung civil rights pioneers , but should . Civil Rights movement : No ammo necessary . When the Rev . Martin Luther King Jr. was just getting the Montgomery bus boycotts off the ground he `` had not personally embraced nonviolence '' according to the The Bayard Rustin Documentary Film Project . `` In fact , there were guns inside King 's house and armed guards posted at his doors . Rustin persuaded boycott leaders to adopt complete nonviolence , teaching them Gandhian nonviolent direct protest . '' Violent encounters of the Southern kind . In 1965 , when he was the national director of affiliates for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , or SCLC , C.T . Vivian led a group of people to register to vote in Selma , Alabama . As the county Sheriff Jim Clark blocked the group , Vivian said in his fiery tone , `` We will register to vote because as citizens of the United States we have the right to do it . '' This did not sit well with Clark , who instead of keeping the peace , disrupted it by beating Vivian until blood dripped off his chin in plain view of rolling cameras . Images such as these galvanized support for change . Bayard Rustin and Muhammad Ali have two things in common . Rustin and Ali both were conscientious objectors to war who resisted the draft and were sentenced to federal prison as a result . Rustin ended up serving almost three years for refusing to fight in World War II because of his Quaker beliefs . Ali is also a recipient of the Presidential Medal Of Freedom . C.T . Vivian got you into college . When Vivian created a college readiness program during the civil rights era , he said it was a way to `` take care of the kids that were kicked out of school simply because they protested racism . '' Years later the U.S. Department of Education used his Vision program as a guide to create Upward Bound , which was designed to improve high school and college graduation rates for students in under-served communities . Throw Jim Crow from the train . During the Montgomery bus boycotts , Rustin was the logistical gasoline to King 's inspirational spark that helped bring national attention to the cause . However , what many do n't know is that Rustin had practice protesting segregated transit routes . In 1948 he filed a federal civil suit against the Southern Railway Company for violating his constitutional rights the year before when its employees refused him access to the dining car because of his race . 'It was bigger than the Klan ' In the late 1970s Vivian founded the National Anti-Klan Network , an anti-racism organization that focused on monitoring the Ku Klux Klan . Soon after it was founded , the name and direction changed because `` it was bigger than the Klan , '' said Vivian in a phone interview . `` We called it the Center for Democratic Renewal because the whole culture had to be renewed if it truly was going to be a democratic one . '' Vivian said they viewed the Center For Democratic Renewal as `` the political side '' of what they were doing with the SCLC , which was focused on the country 's morality struggles during the civil rights movement . A minority within a minority . Rustin faced oppression on two fronts : as a black man in the Jim Crow era and as an openly gay man during a time when being `` out '' was effectively illegal . He was even arrested on a public indecency charge . His early activism as a communist was enough to raise the ire of J. Edgar Hoover 's FBI , but it was n't just before the March on Washington that the intelligence chief attempted to slow the movement 's progress by attacking Rustin , the march 's deputy director . Hoover reportedly supplied Rustin 's arrest record to segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond , who used the information to publicly attack Rustin on the Senate floor .
Cordy Tindell `` C.T . '' The first thing I noticed was the way that he had a very strong and distinct voice. Bayard Rustin was one of the masterminds behind the March on Washington . Both were among 16 honored Wednesday with the Medal of Freedom .