Acclaimed opera singer Marian Anderson is perhaps best remembered for her performance on Resurrection Sunday, 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 27, 1897, (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 was the oldest of three daughters born to John and Anna Anderson. Her two sisters, Alice (aka Alyce) and Ethel, also became singers. Ethel Anderson was mother to world renowned orchestra leader James DePreist.
Marian Anderson joined a junior church choir at the age of six. Before long, she was nicknamed “The Baby Contralto.” When she was eight, her father bought a piano from his brother, but they could not afford any lessons so Marian taught herself. She applied to a 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. She continued her singing studies with a private teacher. Four years later she debuted with the New York Philharmonic on August 26, 1925 and scored an immediate success. In 1928, she sang for the first time at Carnegie Hall. She spent 1934 and almost all of 1935 touring Europe with great success. She visited Eastern European capitals and Russia and returned again to Scandina, where "Marian fever" had spread to small towns and villages where she had thousands of fans.
The famed conductor Arturo Toscanini told her she had a voice "heard once in a hundred years." In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Marian Anderson to sing in Constitution Hall which they owned. 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 ensuing furor, thousands of DAR members, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned. The Roosevelts, with Walter White, then-executive secretary of the NAACP, and Anderson's manager, Sol Hurok, then persuaded Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange an open air Marian Anderson concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On April 9, 1939, she performed the historic concert which became a landmark in civil rights history, 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. Several weeks later, Marian gave a private concert at the White House, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt was entertaining King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Britain.
In 1943, Marian performed at Constitution Hall, at a benefit for Chinese relief. She insisted the DAR suspend its segregated seating policy for the concert. The federal government continued to bar her from using the high school auditorium in the nation’s capitol. In July 1943, Marian married Orpheus H. Fisher, a Delaware architect she had known since childhood. The couple purchased a 100 acre farm in Danbury, Connecticut three years earlier in 1940 after an exhaustive search throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Many purchases were attempted but thwarted by property sellers due to racial discrimination. The Danbury property transaction was initially disputed by the seller as well, after he discovered the couple was Black. Through the years Fisher built many outbuildings on the property that became known as Marianna Farm, including an acoustic rehearsal studio he designed for his wife. The compound remained Anderson & Fisher's home for over 50 years. Ms. Anderson symbolized the civil rights movement with dignity and grace: In Europe, she was welcomed into the finest hotels and restaurants, but in the U.S., she was shifted to third- or fourth-class accommodations. In the South, she often stayed with friends. Simple tasks as arranging for laundry, taking a train, or eating at a restaurant were often difficult. She would take meals in her room and traveled in drawing rooms on night trains. Early on, she insisted on “vertical” seating in segregated cities; meaning black audience members would be allotted seats in all parts of the auditorium. Many times, it was the first time blacks would sit in the orchestra section. By 1950, she would refuse to sing where the audience was segregated.
QUOTE:
[On prejudice]: Sometimes, it's like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating.
-- Marian Anderson
On January 7, 1955, Marian Anderson became the first Black American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera. 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. She sang at the inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower in 1957, as well as President John F. Kennedy’s in 1961. In 1963, she sang at the March on Washington for Job and Freedom. On April 19, 1965, Resurrection Sunday, Marian gave her final concert at Carnegie Hall, following a year-long farewell tour.
However, she continued to appear publicly, narrating Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, including a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1976. Her achievements were recognized and honored with many prizes, including the Springarn Medal in 1939, given annually to a Black American who “shall have made the highest achievement during the preceding year or years in any honorable field of endeavor.” In 1941, she received the Bok award, given annually to an outstanding Philadelphia citizen. She used the $10,000 prize money to found the Marian Anderson Scholarships; the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978 and a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1991. In 2001, the 1939 documentary film, Marian Anderson: the Lincoln Memorial Concert was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". 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. 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 U.S. $5,000 Series I United States Savings Bond. She is a recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America. In 1980, the U.S. Treasury Department coined a half-ounce gold commemorative medal with her likeness. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan presented her with the National Medal of Arts.
She was the first Black person 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. Marian Anderson died in 1993 at the age of 96 in Portland, Oregon at the home of her nephew, conductor James DePreist.
The Marian Anderson Award is given to an artist who exhibits leadership in a humanitarian area. The award was first given in 1998. Recipients include: Harry Belafonte, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, Quincy Jones, Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, and Sidney Poitier.
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