Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial

On Easter Sunday, 1939, Marian Anderson performed from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson, an African-American, had earlier been denied the opportunity to perform at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall. The Roosevelt Administration quickly offered this alternative venue. At the time, Anderson was one of America's leading classical singers, a contralto, at the height of her powers.

The following description of the events is taken from an April 2000 Commentary magazine review, by Terry Teachout, of a biography by Allan Keiler: Marian Anderson: A Singer's Journey. Teachout's review is called "The Soul of Marian Anderson." Keiler is a professor of music at Brandeis:

"...At no time was Anderson anything but a reluctant political activist. Likewise, as Allen Keiler makes clear, the events leading up to her legendary performance at the Lincoln Memorial were in no way her doing.

As a result of the Great Depression, the U.S. concert circuit has contracted. The fact that most southern recital halls were off-limits either to Anderson or to black audiences was thus financially disadvantageous as well as morally outrageous. (In 1938, the only Southern state in which Anderson performed was Texas.) Hurok [Anderson's manager - Ben] was understandably eager to find a way to open up the south to one of his most profitable clients, and Washington D.C., seemed to him the most likely place to start.

Though Anderson had already sung in Washington under the auspices of the all-black Howard university, Hurok wanted to book her into a larger house before an unsegregated audience. The logical venue was the 4,000-seat Constitution Hall, the city's largest indoor concert space, but the owners, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), enforced a "white artists only" clause in all management contracts, and when Howard University requested an exception for Anderson, the hall's manager refused.

The NAACP then stepped in, launching a publicity campaign intended to embarrass the DAR into allowing Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall. But the group stood firm, even after Eleanor Roosevelt publicly resigned as a result of its prosegregation stance. following an abortive attempt to arrange a recital in the auditorium of an all-white local high school, Hurok had the idea of presenting an outdoor concert; Walter White, the NAACP's executive secretary, suggested that it take place at the Lincoln Memorial, and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes promptly authorized an Easter Sunday performance.

All the players in this drama had agendas of their own. Hurok knew that such a concert would be of incalculable publicity value. Ickes hoped that blacks, who then voted Republican en bloc, could be induced by such symbolic gestures to support the Roosevelt administration. Anderson, who was on tour, disingenuosly claimed that she knew nothing of the controversy until Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR, but in fact she was fully aware of what her manager had in mind, and by all accounts was terrified by it."

Anderson sang before an immediate audience of 75,000, and to millions more through a radio broadcast.

This 1942 Works Progress Administration (WPA) mural in the U.S. Department of the Interior building in Washington, by Mitchell Jamieson, shows the audience at the Marian Anderson concert. For more information, go here: "Interior Building WPA Murals: An Incident in Contemporary American Life".

The Lincoln Memorial was only 17 years old when Anderson sang there. The Park Service web site on the Memorial notes that:

"One of the interesting things about monuments and memorials is that they often say more about the generation that built them as they do about the person or period they were originally intended to commemorate. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the Lincoln Memorial. The Lincoln Memorial really says much more about this nation in the wake of the Civil War. The generation that designed the Lincoln Memorial essentially constructed a highly idealized, colossal white-marble memorial to American Democracy. The period between 1865-1909 was a period marked as a time of incredible technological advances, rapid industrial growth, and imperialistic expansionism; of enflamed patriotism during and after the Spanish-American War; and a continuance of Jim Crow laws, the exploitation of the working class, and Tammany Hall-style politics. Perhaps it should come as little surprise that the predominately white, classically minded and university educated, upper-middle class generation of architects and engineers that built the Lincoln Memorial would stress the theme of National Unity over that of Social Justice. Completed in the wake of the First World War, the Lincoln Memorial was seen by it's designers chiefly as a victorious symbol of American Democracy over the dark forces threatening the world at the beginning of the twentieth century, whether they be in the form of saber-rattling autocratic monarchs or fledgling bolshevism. It would be left to future generations of Americans to restore balance to the twin themes of National Unity and Social Justice. It seems fair to suggest that another thing that makes the Lincoln Memorial unique is its power to continue to evolve as a symbol."

In 1922, the dedication ceremonies were apparently segregated. The Park Service site notes:

"If the 1922 Memorial Day dedication ceremonies for the Lincoln Memorial had vividly demonstrated anything, it was the fact that the country still had a long way to go towards achieving true national unity. The last minute inclusion of Dr. Robert Moton [of the Tuskegee Institute - Ben] had clearly demonstrated the reluctance of the Lincoln Memorial commission to see the new memorial as anything other than a memorial devoted to the theme of National Unity. The fact that, on the day of the dedication itself, Dr. Moton addressed a large portion of his audience sitting confined to a "Colored Only" seating area was proof positive to anyone with unprejudiced eyes that the nation was united only in name. For those who dared doubt the existence of such a divide, it would be undeniably confirmed three years later when the Ku Klux Klan marched up the National Mall. White supremacists parading through the streets of the nation's capital tended to belie any true sense of national unity."

The Park Service web site argues that the Anderson Concert transformed the meaning of the memorial:

"...According to historian Scott A. Sandage, "In one bold stroke, the Easter concert swept away the shrine's official dedication to the 'savior of the union' and made it a stronghold of racial justice." In other words, the first big step had been taken in remedying the balance between the themes of National Unity and Social Justice..."

The Park Service site is here: "Lincoln Memorial".

The Internet has a rich selection of Marian Anderson resources. The University of Pennsylvannia's comprehensive professional biography, with text, photos, and video and audio clips: Marian Anderson: A Life in Song. The History Channel has a five minute recording of Harold Ickes and Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial: Harold Ickes and Marian Anderson. Randye L. Jones' short musical biography is here: "Marian Anderson (1897-1993)". "Charlayne Hunter-Gault explores the life of an artist with her nephew and a fellow singer on the 100th anniversary of her birthday" in this transcript of a 1997 National Public Radio interview: "A Voice of Hope". The Kennedy Center has several attractive and informative web pages in connection with a play about Anderson, "My Lord What a Morning". This page is biographical: "Marian Anderson: The Woman", and this one has a musical biography: "Marian Anderson: Her Music"

The other web resource I've used is the Teachout article which can be obtained from the Commentary magazine electronic archive: "Commentary Digital Archive". Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial, and a subsequent concert in which she became the first African-American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York were important events in the U.S. civil rights movement. But Anderson sang in these places because of her professional achievements. According to Teachout, Kieler's book was written to draw attention to those achievements.