(CNN) Ten years before the March on Washington in 1963, Bayard Rustin was arrested.

Rustin -- who would later go on to become one of the most prolific organizers of the civil rights movement, including as the mastermind behind the March on Washington -- wasn't booked for his activist work, however. He was arrested over his sexuality.

That January night in 1953, Rustin was having sex with another man in a parked car in Pasadena, California. He was jailed on a "morals charge," and served about two months in jail. The offense landed him on the sex offender list.

The charge cost him jobs , and though Rustin didn't necessarily hide his sexuality, it was used against him. Former Sen. Strom Thurmond, a segregationist, read Rustin's arrest record on the Senate floor and used it to delegitimize the civil rights movement, calling him a "pervert."

If that wasn't enough, the record was reportedly supplied to Thurmond by J. Edgar Hoover, who at the time was the director of the FBI.

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