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Marian Anderson |
Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897 – April 8, 1993)1 was an American contralto, perhaps best remembered for her performance on Easter Sunday, 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
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Anderson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of John Rucker Anderson and the former Anna Delilah Rucker. Two sisters followed young Marian, Alice (later spelled Alyce) (1899-1965) and Ethel (1902-1990) who also became singers. Ethel Anderson was mother to James DePreist. Marian Anderson joined a junior church choir at the age of six, and applied to an all-white music school after her graduation from high school in 1921, but was turned away because she was black. The woman working the admissions counter replied, "We don't take colored" when she tried to apply. She debuted with the New York Philharmonic on August 26, 1925 and scored an immediate success, also with the critics. In 1928, she sang for the first time at Carnegie Hall. Her reputation was further advanced by her tour through Europe in the early 1930s where she did not encounter the racial prejudices she had experienced in America.
The famed conductor Arturo Toscanini told her she had a voice "heard once in a hundred years."Once he heard her sing, he knew instantly that with a rich voice like hers, there was no way that she could fail. In 1934,2 impresario Sol Hurok offered her a better contract than she had previously had with Arthur Judson. Hurok became her manager for the rest of her performing career.
In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. The District of Columbia Board of Education declined a request to use the auditorium of a white public high school. As a result of the ensuing furor, thousands of DAR members, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned.3
The Roosevelts, with Walter White, then-executive secretary of the NAACP, and Anderson's manager, impresario Sol Hurok, then persuaded Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange an open air Marian Anderson concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.3 The concert, commencing with a dignified and stirring rendition of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" attracted a crowd of more 75,000 of all colors and was a sensation with a national radio audience of millions.4
The concert mentioned above was held on Easter Sunday in 1939. Anderson was accompanied by the Finnish accompanist Kosti Vehanen, who introduced Marian to Jean Sibelius in 1933.5 Sibelius was overwhelmed with Anderson's performance and asked his wife to bring champagne in place of the traditional coffee. At this moment Sibelius started altering and composing songs for Anderson, who was delighted to have met a musician of his magnitude, who felt that she had been able to penetrate the Nordic soul.
In 1939 Sibelius made a new arrangement of the song Solitude and dedicated it to Anderson. Originally The Jewish Girl's Song from his 1906 incidental music to Belshazzar's Feast, it later became the “Solitude” section of the orchestral suite derived from the incidental music.67
In 1943, Anderson sang at the invitation of the DAR to an integrated audience at Constitution Hall as part of a benefit for the American Red Cross. By contrast, the federal government continued to bar her from using the high school auditorium in the District of Columbia. This same year Anderson married architect Orpheus Fisher. The couple purchased a 100-acre (0.40 km2) farm in Danbury, Connecticut, three years earlier in 1940 after an exhaustive search throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Many purchases were attempted but thwarted by property sellers due to racial discrimination. The Danbury property transaction was initially disputed by the seller as well, after he discovered the couple were African Americans. Through the years Fisher built many outbuildings on the property that became known as Marianna Farm, including an acoustic rehearsal studio he designed for his wife. The compound remained Anderson & Fisher's home for over 50 years. Fisher died in 1986 and Anderson remained in residence at Marianna Farm until 1992, one year before her death. Although the bucolic property was sold to developers, various preservationists as well as the City of Danbury fought to protect Anderson's studio. Their efforts proved successful and the Danbury Museum and Historical Society relocated the structure, restored it and opened it to the public in 2004.
On January 7, 1955, Anderson broke the color barrier by becoming the first African-American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera. On that occasion, she sang the part of Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera.8
In 1957, she toured India and the Far East as a goodwill ambassador through the U.S. State Department and the American National Theater and Academy. She traveled 35,000 miles (56,000 km) in 12 weeks, giving 24 concerts. After that, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed her as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. She sang at his inauguration, as well as John F. Kennedy's in 1961. In 1958 she was officially designated delegate to the United Nations, a formalization of her role as "goodwill ambassador" of the U.S. she played earlier,
In 1962, she toured Australia. In 1963, she sang at the March on Washington for Job and Freedom. In 1972 she was awarded the UN Peace Prize.
After an extensive farewell tour, she retired from singing in 1965. However, she continued to appear publicly, narrating Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, including a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Saratoga in 1976, conducted by the composer. Her achievements were recognized and honored with many prizes, including the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978 and a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1991.
In honor of Anderson's vast influence on American music and the Philadelphia performing arts community, on October 20, 1973 she was awarded the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit9. Beginning in 1964, this award "established to bring a declaration of appreciation to an individual each year that has made a significant contribution to the world of music and helped to create a climate in which our talents may find valid expression."
In 1993, Anderson died of heart failure at age 96 in Portland, Oregon at the home of her nephew, conductor James DePreist. She is interred at Eden Cemetery, in Collingdale, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia.
In 2001, the 1939 documentary film, Marian Anderson: the Lincoln Memorial Concert was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
On January 27, 2005, a commemorative U.S. postage stamp honored Marian Anderson as part of the Black Heritage series. Anderson is also pictured on the US$5,000 Series I United States Savings Bond.
Anderson is a recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America.
Anderson symbolized the civil rights movement with dignity and grace; she was the first African-American to be named a permanent member of Metropolitan Opera Company and was a frequent performer at the White House. During World War II and the Korean War, Marian Anderson participated by entertaining the troops in hospitals and bases. By 1956 she had performed over one thousand times.
In 1963 she was one of the original 31 recipients of the newly reinstituted Presidential Medal of Freedom (which is awarded for "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interest of the United States, World Peace or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors"), and in 1965 she christened the nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine, USS George Washington Carver.
The Marian Anderson Award is given to an artist who exhibits leadership in a humanitarian area. The award was first given in 1998. 10
Awardees by year:11
Anderson's 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial forms a centrepoint of Richard Powers's novel The Time of Our Singing.
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