Marian Anderson 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 was the first African American operatic and concert singer to break through barriers of racism and achieve recognition for making it to the top of her profession.   

There is some question as to the year of Marian Anderson’s birth.  Some records indicate that she was born on February 17, 1902, but her birth certificate, released after her death, indicated that she was born on February 27, 1897, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Her father was a coal and ice salesman and her mother, a former teacher, took in laundry to supplement their income.  Her mother was a religious woman, and encouraged Marian to be active at their church, the Union Baptist church. At the age of six, Marian joined the junior choir.  Her talent was soon recognized by church members and officials:  she possessed a remarkable voice with a range that qualified her to be classified as a contralto--she could sing parts from tenor to soprano.  The Union Baptist church held a benefit concert to raise money for Marian to have singing lessons (the flyers had a picture of her and read, “Come and hear the baby contralto, ten years old”).   

Marian’s father died in 1910, and Marian and her mother both had to go to work at menial jobs to get by.  This resulted in a delay in Marian’s high school education, which began at William Penn High School.  In 1918, she enrolled at South Philadelphia High School for Girls as a sophomore;  she graduated from that institution in 1921.  During high school, Anderson  sang with the African American Philadelphia Choral Society.  After graduating, Anderson applied to a Philadelphia music school, where she was treated rudely by the admission clerk before her application was summarily denied.  Anderson was shocked by the racist comments of the clerk--“...It was as if a cold, horrifying hand had been laid on me;  I turned and walked out.”   Instead, she found private lessons with two female professional singers for a few years before becoming the student of world-famous tenor Giuseppe Boghetti in 1920.  She performed in various public concerts during these years of refining her skills.  Boghetti helped Anderson expand her repertoire to include more classical music, and he encouraged her to enter contests.  One of the contests she won resulted in her appearance as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Lewisohn Stadium in 1925.  Her performance was met with critical acclaim. 

Anderson’s Carnegie Hall debut was in 1929, and this success was followed by concert tour in Europe, where she was tremendously popular.  In addition to classical pieces, Anderson’s audiences were thrilled with her renditions of traditional African American spirituals.  Anderson encountered fewer obstacles in Europe than here, because in Europe there was no such thing as segregation.  She continued to perform extensively in Europe for several years.  

She returned to the U.S. for a recital in 1935, and took on a new business manager, Sol Hurok.  She became one of  the top box office draws in this country.  She was very popular here by 1939, when Hurok and Howard University officials tried to plan a concert for her in Washington, D.C.  The normal venue for such an event would have been Constitution Hall, which was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). 

However, the DAR refused to allow Anderson to book the hall because she was Black. A public outcry against the DAR ensued, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and other prominent women resigned from the organization. Instead, Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes invited Anderson to appear in a free public concert that was held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. A crowd of 75,000 people (the most that had ever assembled there) showed up to witness her moving performance, which was broadcast on the radio all over the country.

Later the same year, Marian Anderson was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP, presented to her by Eleanor Roosevelt. Four years later, the DAR invited her to sing at a benefit concert for China Relief at Constitution Hall, and Anderson accepted.

In 1955, Anderson became the first African American to join New York City's Metropolitan Opera Company. She wrote an autobiography, entitled My Lord, What a Morning, in 1956. She spent the rest of her working life as a renowned musician and public figure, who consistently supported African American advancement in this country. In 1958 she was named a delegate to the United Nations, and went on to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Congressional Gold Medal, the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, a U.N. Peace Prize, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Marian Anderson was a remarkable and talented woman who inspired world famous African American singers like Leontine Price and Jessye Norman. Marian Anderson died in Portland, Oregon in 1993. []

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Susan Robinson

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