Bayard Rustin

About Bayard Rustin

Best known as a key figure in the U.S. civil rights movement as an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington and an instructor of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the theory of nonviolence, Bayard Rustin also issued several recordings. Rustin appeared in the 1939 musical John Henry, which starred Paul Robeson. During World War II, Rustin registered as a conscientious objector and was imprisoned; while in prison, he taught himself to play the lute. After undertaking considerable research on his own, Rustin issued the album Elizabethan Songs & Negro Spirituals in 1952. He made several more albums of traditional African American material; all of his recordings are quite rare. Rustin died in New York on August 24, 1987.

HOMETOWN
West Chester, PA, United States
BORN
March 17, 1912
GENRE
Vocal

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