Marian Anderson sings on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
At the height of the Civil Rights Movement in 1963 these famous words were spoken from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.But Martin Luther King Jr.
was not the first to raise his voice from those steps with a message of hope for Americas future.That distinction belongs to the world-famous contralto Marian Anderson whose performance at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9 1939 made a compelling case for the transformative power of music and in a place typically associated with the power of words.Marian Anderson was an international superstar in the 1930sa singer possessed of what Arturo Toscanini called a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years.But if race had been no impediment to her career abroad there were still places in the United States where a black woman was simply not welcome no matter how famous.
What surprised Anderson and many other Americans was to discover in 1939 that one such place was a venue called Constitution Hall owned and operated by the Daughters of the American Revolution in the capital of a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.When the D.A.R.refused to allow Marian Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall because of her skin color the organization lost one of its most influential members First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
Roosevelt and many other women quit the D.A.R.in protest of its discriminatory action which soon became a cause clbre.The invitation to perform on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial came directly from the Secretary of the Interior Harold L.Ickes who proclaimed in his introduction of Marian Anderson on that Easter Sunday that Genius draws no color line.
There was nothing overtly political in the selection of songs Anderson performed that day before a gathered crowd of 75000 and a live radio audience of millions.But the message inherent in an African American woman singing My Country Tis of Thee while standing before the shrine of Americas Great Emancipator was crystal clear.Abraham Lincolns famous wordsWith malice toward none with charity for alllet us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nations woundsare carved in massive letters on the exterior wall of the Lincoln Memorial.This was the theme that Anderson advanced with the power of her incredible voice as she stood in front of those words on this day in 1939.
It was a performance now recognized as an important prelude to the Civil Rights Movement to come.
