Civil rights leader Walter Fauntroy arrested at Dulles International Airport

Walter E. Fauntroy, Washington’s legendary former congressional delegate, was arrested Monday morning at Dulles International Airport and jailed at the Loudoun County Adult Detention Center, after returning home from a four-year sojourn in the Persian Gulf, according to authorities.

Fauntroy, who helped plan the 1963 March on Washington with his friend the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was arrested on an outstanding warrant by Border Patrol officials while he was clearing customs, said Aleksandra Kowalski, a Loudoun County sheriff’s public information officer. Fauntroy was booked at 12:30 p.m. on Monday and posted no bond. He’d just gotten off a long-haul, nonstop flight on Emirates airlines from Dubai to Dulles, said his attorney, Johnny Barnes.

In January 2012, Fauntroy left the United States after a bench warrant was issued for him to appear in Prince George’s County, Md., on a charge that he wrote a bad check for $55,000 to help pay for a 2009 ball he organized for President Obama’s first inauguration.

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