The pardon of Rustin, who helped organize the historic March on Washington in 1963, marks the beginning of a Newsom initiative aimed at pardoning others who were convicted of crimes in California for being gay.

"In California and across the country, many laws have been used as legal tools of oppression, and to stigmatize and punish LGBTQ people and communities and warn others what harm could await them for living authentically," Newsom said in a statement. "I want to encourage others in similar situations to seek a pardon to right this egregious wrong."

The Newsom administration is pledging to identify and pardon other individuals who were prosecuted for consensual sex with a partner of the same sex — a statute that was wiped off California's books in 1975.

More than two decades earlier, in January 1953, Rustin was arrested in Pasadena after police found him having sex with another man in a car. Rustin spent 50 days in county jail and was forced to register as a sex offender.