ADVISORY for 2/1 | 100th Anniv. of Bayard Rustin’s Birth | “VOICES OUT LOUD: A CELEBRATION OF BAYARD RUSTIN”
Washington D.C. – On February 1, The Leadership Conference Education Fund and Split This Rock Poetry Festival will present “Voices Out Loud: A Celebration of Bayard Rustin.” The event will begin at 6 p.m. at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, with a pre-event media availability at 5:30 p.m.
This arts-centered event, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of Bayard Rustin’s birth, will celebrate the multi-layered legacy of this unsung hero of the civil rights movement, with spoken word, film, music and images. Rustin was born on March 17, 1912.
The program will illustrate the various aspects of Rustin’s career and personality, and the continued importance of the lessons he taught us. The event will also raise awareness of the current threat to voting rights, one of the most important achievements of the civil rights movement and the foundational right of our citizenship in a democratic society. The program will be followed by a reception.
What: “Voices Out Loud: A Celebration of Bayard Rustin” will feature:
- Walter Naegle, Rustin’s life partner, will speak.
- Chris August, Regie Cabico and Twain Dooley, national known spoken word poets, will perform.
- The Gandhi Brigade Youth Media Collective will produce multimedia art.
- Bennett Singer, Director of ‘Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin’ and the new film, ‘Electoral Dysfunction,’ will show clips from both films.
- Sarah Browning, Executive Director of Split This Rock Poetry Festival, will speak.
- Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the organization once chaired by Bayard Rustin, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, will speak.
When: Wednesday, February 1, 2012
- 5:30 pm—pre-event media availability
- 6:00 pm—Program
- 7:00 pm—Reception
Where: National Museum for Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Ave. NW, Washington, DC
About Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. He brought Gandhi’s protest techniques to the American civil rights movement, and helped mold Martin Luther King, Jr. into an international symbol of peace and nonviolence.
Despite these achievements, Rustin was threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era.
Today, the United States is still struggling with many of the issues Bayard Rustin sought to change during his long, illustrious career. His focus on civil and economic rights and his belief in peace, human rights and the dignity of all people remain as relevant today as they were in the 1950s and 60s.
For more information, please visit www.rustin.org.
About the Sponsoring Organizations
The Leadership Conference Education Fund (www.civilrights.org), an organization once chaired by Bayard Rustin, builds public will for federal policies that promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States. The Education Fund’s campaigns empower and mobilize advocates around the country to push for progressive change in the United States.
Split This Rock Poetry Festival (www.splitthisrock.org) calls on poets of conscience to move to the center of public life to forge a visionary new arts movement for peace and justice. Split This Rock organizes biannual poetry festivals in Washington, DC, which feature readings by some of the most beloved poets of our time, workshops, panel discussions on poetry and social change, youth programming, films, parties, walking tours, and activism—unique opportunities to hone activist skills while assessing and debating the public role of the poet and the poem in our society. Split This Rock’s next festival takes place March 22-25, 2012.
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