About 30 people were gathered around the base, spilling from the sidewalk into the street. Most were teenagers skipping school, though there was a scattering of grown-ups and a couple of families with younger children. High up on the platform, two girls in yellowish-gray clothes stood on either side of a boy. He looked a year or two older than Rustin’s daughter, Selva, with a wild thicket of hair and a tough face. He was tugging at the rope as if to test its strength, eyes narrowed, lower lip jutting out in a kind of defiance, while the two girls leaned close and spoke to him in voices so quiet that Rustin, keeping back and half concealed under the red awning of a tavern called the Sodden Spot, couldn’t make them out.