page_title: Marian Anderson
section_title: 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert
hierarchical_section_title: Marian Anderson / Early career / 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert
caption_attribution_description: American contralto Marian Anderson performs in front of 75,000 spectators in Potomac Park. Finnish accompanist Kosti Vehanen is on the piano.
context_page_description: Marian Anderson was an American contralto, who performed a wide range of music, from classical music to spirituals. She performed with renowned orchestras in major concert and recital venues throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965.
  Anderson was an important figure in the struggle for African-American artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. The incident placed Anderson into the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday 9 April 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the capital. She sang before an integrated crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions.
  Anderson was the first African-American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on 7 January 1955.
context_section_description: In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) denied permission to Anderson for a concert on April 9th at Constitution Hall under a "white performers-only" policy in effect at the time. In addition to the policy on performers, Washington, D.C., was a segregated city, and black patrons were upset that they would have to sit at the back of Constitution Hall. Furthermore, Constitution Hall did not have the segregated public bathrooms required by DC law at the time for such events. Other DC venues were not an option; the District of Columbia Board of Education declined a request to use the auditorium of a white public high school.
  Charles Edward Russell, a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and chair of the DC citywide Inter-Racial Committee, convened a meeting on the following day that formed the Marian Anderson Citizens Committee (MACC) composed of several dozen organizations, church leaders and individual activists in the city, including the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the Washington Industrial Council-CIO, American Federation of Labor, and the National Negro Congress. MACC elected Charles Hamilton Houston as its chairman and on February 20, the group picketed the board of education, collected signatures on petitions, and planned a mass protest at the next board of education meeting.
  As a result of the ensuing furor, thousands of DAR members, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned from the organization. In her letter to the DAR, Roosevelt wrote, "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." Author Zora Neale Hurston criticized Eleanor Roosevelt's public silence about the similar decision by the District of Columbia Board of Education.
  As the controversy grew, the American press overwhelmingly backed Anderson’s right to sing. The Philadelphia Tribune wrote, "A group of tottering old ladies, who don't know the difference between patriotism and putridism, have compelled the gracious First Lady to apologize for their national rudeness." The Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote, "In these days of racial intolerance so crudely expressed in the Third Reich, an action such as the D.A.R.’s ban. . . seems all the more deplorable."
  At Eleanor Roosevelt's behest, President Roosevelt and 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 concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The concert was performed on Easter Sunday, April 9, and Anderson was accompanied, as usual, by Vehanen. They began the performance with a dignified and stirring rendition of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." The event attracted a crowd of more than 75,000 in addition to a national radio audience of millions.
  Two months later, in conjunction with the 30th NAACP conference in Richmond, Virginia, Eleanor Roosevelt gave a speech on national radio (NBC and CBS) and presented Anderson with the 1939 Spingarn Medal for distinguished achievement. In 2001, a subsequent documentary film of the event has been selected for the National Film Registry, and NBC radio coverage of the event has been selected for the National Recording Registry.
caption: Anderson in her 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial
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