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'Marian Anderson' (February 27, 1897 – April 8,1993),^[1] was an American contralto, perhaps best remembered for her performance on Easter Sunday, 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Contents

Biography

Later life

See also

References

External links

Biography

Anderson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She joined a junior church choir at the age of six, and applied to an all-white music school after her graduation from high school in 1921, but was turned away because she was black. The woman working the admissions counter replied, "We don't take colored" when she tried to apply. Consequently, she continued her singing studies with a private teacher.
She debuted with the New York Philharmonic on August 26, 1925 and scored an immediate success, also with the critics. In 1928, she sang for the first time at Carnegie Hall. Her reputation was further advanced by her tour through Europe in the early 1930s where she did not encounter the racial prejudices she had experienced in America.
The famed conductor Arturo Toscanini told her she had a voice "heard once in a hundred years." In 1935 impresario Sol Hurok took over as her manager and was with her for the rest of her performing career.
In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. The District of Columbia Board of Education declined a request to use the auditorium of a white public high school. As a result of the furor which followed, thousands of DAR members, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned.
The First Lady, with Walter White, then-executive secretary of the NAACP, and Anderson's manager, impresario Sol Hurok, persuaded Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange an open air Marian Anderson concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The concert, commencing with a dignified and stirring rendition of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" attracted a crowd of more 75,000 of all colors and was a sensation with a national radio audience of millions.^[2]

The concert mentioned above was held on Easter Sunday in 1939. Anderson was accompanied by the Finnish accompanist Kosti Vehanen, who introduced Marian to Jean Sibelius in 1933.^[3] Sibelius was overwhelmed with Anderson's performance and asked his wife to bring champagne in place of the traditional coffee. At this moment Sibelius started altering and composing songs for Anderson, who was delighted to have met a musician of Sibelius' magnitude, who felt that she had been able to penetrate the Nordic soul.
In 1939 Sibelius made a new arrangement of the song ''Solitude'' and dedicated it to Anderson. Originally ''The Jewish Girl's Song'' from his 1906 incidental music to ''Belshazzar's Feast'', this later became the “Solitude” section of the orchestral suite derived from the incidental music.^[4][5]
In 1943, Anderson sang at the invitation of the DAR to an integrated audience at Constitution Hall as part of a benefit for the American Red Cross. By contrast, the federal government continued to bar her from using the high school auditorium in the District of Columbia.
On January 7, 1955, Anderson broke the color barrier by becoming the first African-American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera. On that occasion, she sang the part of Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi's ''Un ballo in maschera.''^[6]
In 1958 she was officially designated delegate to the United Nations, a formalization of her role as "goodwill ambassador" of the U.S. she played earlier, and in 1972 she was awarded the UN Peace Prize.

Later life

After an extensive farewell tour, she retired from singing in 1965. However, she continued to appear publicly, narrating Aaron Copland's ''Lincoln Portrait'', including a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Saratoga in 1976, conducted by the composer. Her achievements were recognized and honored with many prizes, including the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978 and a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1991.
In 1993, Anderson died of heart failure at age 96 in Portland, Oregon at the home of her nephew, conductor James DePreist. She is interred at Eden Cemetery, in Collingdale, Pennsylvania, a suburban town outside of Philadelphia.
The 1939 documentary film, '' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
On January 27, 2005, a commemorative U.S. postage stamp honored Marian Anderson as part of the Black Heritage series. Anderson is also pictured on the US$5,000 Series I United States Savings Bond.
Anderson is a recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America.
Anderson symbolized the civil rights movement with dignity and grace; she was the first African-American to be named a permanent member of Metropolitan Opera Company and was a frequent performer at the White House. During the World War II and the Korean War, Marian Anderson participated by entertaining the troops in hospitals and bases. By 1956 she had performed over one thousand times. In 1963 she was one of the original 31 recipients of the newly reinstituted Presidential Medal of Freedom (which is awarded for "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interest of the United States, World Peace or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors"), and in 1965 she christened the nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine, USS ''George Washington Carver''.

See also

★ List of African American firsts

References

1. Marian Anderson always claimed she was born on 17 February 1902, however her birth certificate is reported to give her birth date as 27 February 1897. Marian Anderson Biography (Women in History)
2. Marian Anderson, Voice of the Century Dr. Jacqueline Hansen
3. Muistoja Ainolasta
4. Arrangements for voice and piano
5. Belshazzar's Feast
6. Afrocentric Voices: Marian Anderson Biography Randye Jones

External links

★ Marian Anderson Historical Society

★ Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks

★ Freedman, Russell, ''The Voice that Challenged a Nation'' (Clarion Books, New York, 2004)

★ Sims, Janet L. ''An Annoted Bibliography and Discography'' (Greenwood Press, Connecticut, 1981)

★ Online exhibition University of Pennsylvania Library, largest online collection of images, includes her papers, audio and film archives.

★ www.Marian-Anderson.org Metropolitan Opera, New York

★ Marian Anderson Historical Society

★ Biography of Marian Anderson Kennedy Center, Washington DC

★ Virtual Museum of History biography

★ FemBiography Marian Anderson

★ Voice of America segment on Marian Anderson