Marian Anderson was born on February 27, 1897 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her parents were African American Christians. All the Anderson family went to the Union Baptist Church in South Philadelphia. She first sang in public when she was six years old. Anderson went to Stanton Grammar School. Her family could not afford to send her to high school. They did not have enough money to pay for music lessons either. Until she was sixteen Anderson taught herself to play the piano and violin. The pastor of Anderson's church and other leaders of the black community raised money for Anderson to go to high school and have music lessons. After high school, Marian applied to an all-white music school, the Philadelphia Music Academy. She was rejected for being black. In 1925, when she was 23 years old, Anderson won a singing competition.
In 1930 Anderson performed in Europe for the first time at Wigmore Hall in London. She liked Europe because people were less racist to her there than in the United States. 1935 Anderson did a concert at the White House. There she met Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Franklin Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt and Anderson were friends for the rest of Roosevelt's life.
In 1938 Anderson did a 70-concert tour in the United States. In 1939 the Daughters of the American Revolution would not let Anderson perform in the DAR Constitution Hall to an audience of blacks and whites. The District of Columbia Board of Education also said that Anderson could not perform at a white high school Charles Edward Russell gave a meeting about this the next day. At the meeting the Marian Anderson Citizens Committee was formed. The group planned a protest at the next board of education meeting. President Roosevelt and Walter White got the Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange an open air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On Easter Sunday 1939 Anderson performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to a crowd of 75,000 people that contained both blacks and whites. She started the concert by singing "America". She also sung “My Country, ’Tis of Thee”. The concert has been described as having started the civil rights movement for equality between African Americans and white Americans. A documentary film was made of the concert. In 2001 the film was added to the by the Library of Congress.
In 1943 Anderson was given the $10,000 Bok Prize by the city of Philadelphia. She sung at the Constitution Hall.
On January 7, 1955, she became the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House. In 1956 she performed there again. In 1957 Anderson's autobiography, "My Lord, What a Morning", was published. That year Anderson also toured India as an ambassador for the United States.
In 1964 Anderson started her last tour. The tour began in the Constitution Hall. Anderson gave her last concert of the tour and her career in 1965 at Carnegie Hall.
In 1991 Anderson was given the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement. She died of congestive heart failure on April 8, 1993 in Portland, Oregon at her nephew's home. She was 96 years old. She was buried in Eden Cemetery in Philadelphia. In 2009 there was a tribute concert for Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
Anderson started living at a farm in 1940. In July 1943, Marian married Orpheus H. Fisher in Connecticut.
Charles Edward Russell
Charles Edward Russell (September 25, 1860 – April 23, 1941) was an American journalist and politician. He started the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People with people including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald Grimké, Henry Moskowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, William English Walling (the last son of a former slave-holding family), and Florence Kelley in 1909. For the rest of his life Russell worked on the board of directors. Russell also wrote 27 books. In 1928 he won a Pulitzer Prize for "The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas".
Charles Edward Russell was born in Davenport, Iowa on September 25, 1860. His father was a newspaper editor at the "Davenport Gazette". Russell went to St. Johnsbury Academy for high school.
Russell worked as a "muckraker". A muckraker was a journalist who reported about how capitalism was bad. In 1902, Russell's first book, "Such Stuff as Dreams", was published. Russell joined the Socialist Party of America in 1908. He was a member until 1917. Russell was the Socialist candidate for Governor of New York in 1910 and 1912. He was a candidate for U.S. Senator from New York in 1914. Russell's memoir "These Shifting Scenes" was published in 1915. Russell acted in the 1917 movie "The Fall of the Romanoffs". In 1928 Russell won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography "The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas". In 1933 Russell's second memoir "Bare Hands and Stone Walls" was published. Russell was an editorial writer for social democratic magazine The New Leader.
Russell had one child, John Russell. Charles Edward Russell died on 23rd April 1941.
Dana Perino
Dana Marie Perino (born May 9, 1972) is an American journalist. She was the White House Press Secretary under President George W. Bush, from September 2007 to January 2009. She is currently a political commentator working for Fox News. She works for the program "The Five".
Perino was born in Evanston, Wyoming. She was raised in Denver, Colorado.
Megyn Kelly
Megyn Marie Kelly (born November 18, 1970; previously called Megyn Kendall) is an American reporter on Fox News and NBC. She hosted "The Kelly File". She previously hosted "America Live" on Fox News and "Megyn Kelly Today" on NBC. She also hosts the channel's New Year's Eve Special Live every December 31.
On October 26, 2018, NBC News announced the cancellation of "Megyn Kelly Today" in the wake of defending blackface as Halloween costumes.
Kelly was born in Syracuse, New York.
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley (May 8, 1753 – December 5, 1784) was a poet. She was the first African-American person to have a book published. She was born in West Africa. However it is not known which country she was born in. It was Senegal or The Gambia. She took work as a slave in the United States when she was about seven years old on a slave ship called The Phillis. Her master and his wife taught her how to read and write. Wheatley wrote her first published poem when she was 13. She wrote over 100 poems in her life and at least 30 had lost.Although she was an African slave, Phillis Wheatley was one of the best-known poets in America. In 1770 Wheatley wrote a poetic tribute to the evangelist George Whitefield. A lot of people said good things about the poem. In 1773 a collection of 39 poems Wheatley had written, "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley..." It was the first writings by an African American woman to publish in public. The book made her famous in England and the American colonies. There was a poem in the book about slave trader brought people from Africa to America. Other than this Wheatley did not write much poetry about slavery. Wheatley's mistress Mrs. Wheatley died on October 18, 1773. At this point Wheatley did not have to do household chores anymore. Yet, it was not until 1778 that she had set free when her master, John Wheatley, died. That year she married John Peters. Peters was a free black grocer. They had two children. Both of them died when they were babies. Her husband got put in prison in 1784 for debt. After this Wheatley became very poor. Wheatley died of illness in 1784 in Boston. She was 31 years old.