APRIL 1939
TIMEPIECE This month in history
By the time she turned 42 years old in February 1939, the African American contralto Marian Anderson was in her vocal prime and an acclaimed recitalist on both the US and European circuits. Yet her rise to prominence had been blighted by the racist attitudes that she regularly encountered, particularly in her native country. In an era when segregation was widespread in America, hotels accepting reservations from Black people could be hard to find and many restaurants served only white diners.
So when Constitution Hall in Washington, DC refused to host a concert by Anderson scheduled for 9 April that year – the venue had a whites-only policy for artists – the singer would not have found it in the least surprising. A growing number of Americans, however, viewed such exclusions as repulsive. Among them was Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of president Franklin D, and her indignation at Anderson’s debarment prompted immediate action.
‘I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist,’ the First Lady wrote to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), a patriotic group which owned the hall. ‘You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organisation has failed.’ Roosevelt resigned her membership of DAR on 26 February, and set about mobilising support for Anderson’s concert to be mounted in another location.
Her government connections helped. Before long, secretary of the interior Harold Ickes was charged with making the new concert happen, and an outdoor setting at the Lincoln Memorial on Washington’s National Mall was chosen. The setting was, as Ickes highlighted in a speech preceding Anderson’s 9 April appearance, acutely symbolic. ‘Today we stand reverently and humbly at the base of this memorial to the Great Emancipator,’ he said, ‘while glorious tribute is rendered to his memory by a daughter of the race from which he struck the chains of slavery.’
Anderson herself was trepidatious about the concert. She had never performed outdoors before, the weather was cold and violence by protestors was a possibility. In the event, she need not have worried. When she stepped up to a nest of microphones to
