During his 60-year career as an activist, organizer and "troublemaker, " Bayard Rustin formulated many of the strategies that propelled the American civil rights movement. His passionate belief in Gandhi' s philosophy of nonviolence drew Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders to him in the 1940's and 50's; his practice of those beliefs drew the attention of the FBI and police. But his open homosexuality forced him to remain in the background, marking him again and again as a "brother outsider." Brother Outsider combines rare archival footage - some of it never before broadcast in the U.S. - with provocative interviews to illuminate the life and work of a forgotten prophet of social change.