'Sometimes racial prejudice is like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing it because the feel of it is irritating.' - Marian Anderson Today we can see the rise of many famous black women, finally getting credit for their work. Oprah, Beyonce, Simone Biles, Michelle Obama, Gabby Douglas, Serena Williams, all of these women stand for something larger than themselves. But back in the 1920s, this wasn’t so easy to do. Marian Anderson, along with other civil rights leaders of the time, paved the way for the black men and women who followed.
Marian Anderson was a talented black-American singer, but before she was an acclaimed musical artist, she was just a girl with an amazing voice from a small town in Philidelphia. At six years old she became a member of her church’s choir. The other members saw that she had true musical talent. Unfortunately, her family could not afford voice lessons or piano lessons. When her father passed away, Marian was only twelve years old. Yet, throughout these trials, Marian seemed to rise above the statistics. She worked hard and, with the support of her family and church, she pursued her dreams and impacted America in a way we still see today.
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After Marian’s father died, her mother was left, alone, to take care of Marian and her two younger sisters. This was a financially trying time for her family, but their church family pulled together $500 for Marian to take voice lessons. This was a gift that Marian would never forget. Her voice coach, the highly esteemed Giuseppe Boghetti, remembers her first lesson as happening “at the end of a long hard day when I was weary of singing and singers, and when a tall calm girl poured out ‘Deep River' in the twilight and made me cry.” After only two years Boghetti told Marian that she was an amazing musical prodigy and should enter in a contest to sing at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York. She won.
Opportunity after opportunity presented itself to Marian and, at only 21 years old, she performed at Carnegie Hall. After this, she won a Julius Rosenwald scholarship. She set out on a tour through Europe in 1933 and was soon known all over the world. She was then invited by the Roosevelts themselves, to perform at the Lincoln Memorial on the Easter Sunday of 1939. Her performance had an audience of at least 75,000 people. She sang “America” beautifully. She captivated people with her voice. She seemed scared or intimidated before she began to sing, but as soon as she opened her mouth any sign of anxiety disappeared.
This performance was supposed to take place inside of Constitution Hall but, because it was run by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), she was not allowed to. The DAR had a segregational rule, making it unlawful for any black man or woman to perform in the Constitution Hall. Elanor Roosevelt, a long-time member of the DAR, resigned immediately after hearing this news. Elanor Roosevelt wrote a letter to the DAR stating, “I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist ... You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed.” In 1939 the Roosevelts personally invited Marian Anderson to be the first black woman to sing at the White House.
We see, throughout her life, that she stood up, peacefully, for what she believed in. She was known to believe that if she acted civilly and with dignity, then, sooner or later, the world would come around. And it did. Eventually, many years later, the DAR changed their segregational rule, apologized to Marian Anderson, and invited her to come back and sing, which she did. She wasn’t bitter about the DAR’s mistakes in the past, what she saw was progress. “When I sing, I don't want them to see that my face is black. I don't want them to see that my face is white. I want them to see my soul. And that is colorless.” - Marian Anderson.
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