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Everett L. Marshburn Honored with Bayard Rustin Award from Diverse & Resilient

January 31, 2014

Everett Marshburn

Everett L. Marshburn, 2014 Bayard Rustin Leadership Award winner.

Diverse & Resilient is pleased to honor television producer Everett L. Marshburn with the 2014 Bayard Rustin Leadership Award.  Marshburn is the producer of Milwaukee Public Television’s Black Nouveau, an award-winning program that examines issues, culture, history, heritage, and challenges facing and affecting African Americans.

The award will be presented at Diverse & Resilient’s second-annual Reviving the Dream Celebration the evening of March 20, 2014 at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Milwaukee.  The event honors the memory of Bayard Rustin, a leader in civil rights and LGBTQ rights movements, and the chief organizer of the historic 1963 March on Washington.  Rustin was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom last year, on the 50th anniversary of the March.  To honor Rustin’s memory, Diverse & Resilient recognizes leaders in Wisconsin working to improve the lives of LGBTQ people.

Marshburn has been chosen for the honor because of his outstanding work to highlight issues facing the African American community, including LGBTQ acceptance, HIV, employment, and incarceration.  In addition to producing Black Nouveau for seven seasons, Marshburn has also produced a number of documentaries including Freedom Walkers for Milwaukee; Jobs; This Little Light of Mine; Stories from the Homefront: The War in Wisconsin; For Jobs and Freedom; and Other Faces of AIDS.

Having spent his entire professional career in public television, Marshburn has received numerous awards recognizing his excellence in the field. He has won four Emmy Awards; two CINE Golden Eagles; a Silver Baton (Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University) from the Columbia University Journalism School; three awards from the National Black Programming Consortium; and eight awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, three of which were for Black Nouveau.

Walter Naegle, longtime partner of Bayard Rustin, will also join the event as its keynote speaker.  Naegle was Bayard Rustin’s partner during the last ten years of his life, working closely and travelling with him on human rights missions and contributing to some of his later writing.