05/27/2026
Remembering Len Chandler
(May 27, 1935-August 28, 2023)
Classically trained singer and songwriter Len Chandler was a key player in the New York folk scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was active in the civil rights movement working with Martin Luther King, Pete Seeger, Dick Gregory, and Jane Fonda. Chandler attended the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. Jim Marshall photographed Len with Bob Dylan. Dylan wrote “One thing about Chandler was that he was fearless. He didn’t suffer fools and no one could get in his way. He was powerfully built…brilliant and full of good will, one of those guys who believed that all of society could be affected by one solitary life.”
The last photograph is Len Chandler with Cordell Reagon in front of Izzy Young’s Folklore Center, MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, NYC, 1963 Greenwich Village. Reagon was active in the civil rights movement and was the founding member of The Freedom Singers of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee).
