The Seat Next to the King

In 1964, a white man walks into a public restroom in a Washington, DC park looking for sex. The next man who enters is a black man.

The Seat Next to the King explores the lives of two men who literally sat next to the most powerful men in America. Bayard Rustin, a friend to Martin Luther King Jr. and the organizer of the March on Washington, and Walter Jenkins, top aide and friend to President Lyndon Johnson, meet in that restroom, although neither knows the other’s identity yet. Each is a symbol of hope and change in 1964, and each is conflicted about his sexuality.

The two men move to a motel on the outskirts of the park, where they begin to confide in each other, a revealing of their lives which evolves into an intimate evening of release.

They won’t see each other again for eighteen years, when they meet by chance – in another restroom – near the end of their lives, during an era when the hope of a better world has vanished.