Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama’s production imprint, Higher Ground, is gearing up to produce a Bayard Rustin biopic for Netflix. The film will be directed by George C. Wolfe. Wolfe recently worked with Netflix for the release of Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Joining Wolfe, Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black.
“Rustin tells the story of charismatic, gay, civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who overcame an onslaught of obstacles, and altered the course of American history by organizing the 1963 march on Washington,” the film’s logline reads, according to Shadow & Act.
Bayard Rustin is one of the most overlooked leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Standing alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rustin was a lead organizer of the Freedom Rides, March On Washington and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Rustin went on to fully integrate all-white unions as the head of the AFL-CIO. He died in 1987, but posthumously earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Barack Obama.
A Bayard Rustin biopic is the latest project to emerge from Higher Ground. Most recently, Michelle Obama launched her children’s cooking show, Waffles + Mochi, on Netflix. The show will debut in March.
