Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
The Man Who Taught Nonviolence to Martin Luther King Jr.
About This Episode
More To The Story: Sixteen years ago this month, the radio show State of the Re:Union, created by Al Letson, produced an award-winning episode looking at civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. The episode was called “Who Is This Man?” because while Rustin was not well known, his work supported the likes of Martin Luther King Jr.
Rustin was a man with a number of seemingly incompatible labels: Black, gay, Quaker—identifications that served to earn him as many detractors as admirers. Although he had numerous passions and pursuits, his most transformative act, one that certainly changed the course of American history, was to counsel MLK on the use of nonviolent resistance. Rustin also helped engineer the 1963 March on Washington and frame the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott.
This week on More To The Story, we bring you an important piece for Black History Month, a reflection on Rustin.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
Read: Can He Really Do That? Black History Month in the Age of Trump (Mother Jones)
Listen: Nikole Hannah-Jones: Trump Is Erasing Black History (More To The Story)
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More Episodes
Inside America’s Race to Hide the World’s Money
SummaryThis episode of Reveal investigates the booming domestic trust industry, which has transformed the United States into a primary global destination for hiding assets. The hosts explore how wealthy individuals use trusts—legal mechanisms once reserved for the ultra-wealthy—to avoid taxes, protect assets from creditors, and maintain complete financial privacy. Through the story of entrepreneur Alessandro Chesar, the episode highlights the disparity between the sophisticated tools available to the rich and the financial realities faced by everyday Americans. Reporters Sally Hersch and Leah McGrath Goodman take listeners to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, an unlikely epicenter for this trillion-dollar industry. They reveal how states compete to enact the most lenient, secrecy-favoring laws to attract capital. Experts discuss how these practices, including perpetual trusts and structures that keep beneficiaries in the dark, contribute to extreme wealth inequality and complicate legal efforts to trace hidden funds. The episode paints a picture of a system where legal loopholes are actively cultivated to prevent the redistribution of wealth, ultimately questioning whether these secretive financial practices are fueling a new era of American aristocracy.
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