Denise Sullivan, author of Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows: In Memory of a Movement Hero, hosts a remembrance of the March on Washington sixty-one years ago today, focused on the story of folk/protest singer Len Chandler.

Len Chandler, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were among the performers at the historic March on Washington on August 28, 1963, but Chandler is not always remembered for his contribution that day, or for the work he did in the years before and after the march in the name of voting rights and racial justice.

“You have to take the lead from somewhere and there were only a few performers around who wrote songs, and of them, my favorite was Len Chandler,” wrote Bob Dylan in his memoir, Chronicles.

Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows, Sullivan’s book, is Chandler’s story, from his youth in Akron, Ohio to his life-changing trip to New York where he met Hugh Romney (Wavy Gravy), folksinger Dave Van Ronk and poets Bob Kaufman and Langston Hughes. He also taught himself to write songs on the Greenwich Village scene, alongside Dylan. But unlike Dylan, Chandler’s recording career remained underground, while he stayed politically engaged and active. From protesting the war in Southeast Asia, performing with Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda, and working for the election of Barack Obama, Chandler fought for freedom until the end.

Sadly, Chandler did not live to see the publication of this volume as he died in 2023, on August 28th, the 60th anniversary of the March.

In his memory, author and cultural reporter Denise Sullivan compiled her rare interviews with Chandler to tell his until now untold story, a kind of shadow history of the times and the ways in which Chandler was rebuked and scorned, and kept keeping on. Tonight, we celebrate his life and the work he did in song and on the ground, for the people.