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Freedman, Russell. The voice that challenged a nation: Marian Anderson and the struggle for equal rights. Clarion Books. 2004.

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Marian Anderson is born, February 27th, 1897

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Marian Anderson is born, February 27th, 1897

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The birth of a voice the nation has never heard before, Marian Anderson. Born on February 27th, 1897, Marian had 2 younger sisters by the name of Alyse and Ethel. I know this because according to the text "The Voice that Challenged a Nation", page 6, Russell states "Marian lived with her parents, John and Anna Anderson, and with 2 younger sisters, in South Philadelphia, where she was born on February 27th, 1897."

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Marian Anderson starts her music career, 1912

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Marian Anderson starts her music career, 1912

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Ever since she figured out how talented her voice was her friend "Roland Hayes" told her to take singing courses, unfortunately she was declined because she was colored. Once her neighbor Mary Saunders Patterson heard of this she insisted on teaching Anderson free of charge due to funding from baptist churches.

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Georgia State Industrial College Concert, December 1917

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Georgia State Industrial College Concert, December 1917

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One of her first concerts, we know this because in the story "The Voice that Challenged a Nation, Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights" the author Russell Freedman states on page 15 "In 1917, right before Christmas, she was invited to take part in a concert at the Georgia State Industrial College."

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The impact of her six week opera course in Chicago had an impact for decades, because of how impressed the city was through her rendition of a spiritual folk song titled "Crucifixon".

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Marian Anderson’s singing recalls America’s racial unrest

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“Crucifixion” recalled the racial unrest Marian Anderson saw during her time in Chicago.

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Marian participates in a sponsorship competition, August 26th 1925

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Marian participates in a sponsorship competition, August 26th 1925

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In the midst of all the criticism Giuseppe Boghetti, Marian's demanding voice coach, enters Marian in a sponsored competition, in the Lewisohn Stadium, and she will be singing "O mio Fernando" from Gaeteno Donizetti.

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Marian wins the sponsorship! August 26th, 1925

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Marian wins the sponsorship! August 26th, 1925

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Her musical talent absolutely wrecked the competition, skipping the finals and taking the win. I found this out because in the story "The voice that Challenged a Nation, Marian Anderson and the struggle for equal rights", on page 27, Boghetti received a phone call and then he stood up and exclaimed "We have won! There will be no finalists."

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Marian has virtually performed for every major European city, 1930-1935

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Marian has virtually performed for every major European city, 1930-1935

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In the early 1930s, Marian Anderson would go on to earn much more fame and money for her family. I believe this because in the story "The Voice that Challenged a Nation, Marian Anderson and the struggle for equal rights" by Russell Freedman on page 39, he states "She sang in virtually every major European city-in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels, in Geneva, Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. She continues to tour in Italy, appearing in Turin, Milan, Venice, and even Rome."

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How her trips in the early 1930s impacted us today

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How her trips in the early 1930s impacted us today

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Art by Carla Scemama. Source photo: Library of Congress

In 1930, Marian Anderson journeyed across the Atlantic to Europe for opportunities to study and tour beyond the limited offerings of Jim Crow America. Far from her home in Philadelphia, she found success surpassing any she had experienced in the U.S. Her popularity in Scandinavia was so great, for example, that fans were said to have "Marian fever." But Anderson was unable to escape racist hostilities abroad.

In 1935, near the end of an extensive tour that included performances in England, France, Sweden and Russia, the cardinal archbishop of Salzburg, Sigismund Waitz, came to meet Anderson backstage after a concert in Vienna. He proposed that she perform a charity concert at the Salzburg Cathedral as part of the calendar of the renowned Salzburg Festival. The annual music and artistic program, held against the Baroque backdrop of Mozart's hometown, draws the world's most distinguished and talented artists for multiple days of opera, drama and musical performances.

Marian Anderson, 1940. Photographer: Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress

Growing Nazi sentiment in Austria made this invitation a fraught, and even dangerous prospect. When the African American baritone Aubrey Pankey performed in Salzburg just a couple of years earlier, he was chased from the city by a Nazi mob. So when Anderson petitioned to sing there at Cardinal Waitz's behest, the Salzburg Festival authorities banned her performance. The singer found herself at the center of a scandal she did not want, with international media outlets covering the Salzburg concert prohibition. Under pressure to explain their refusal to host Anderson, the Salzburg organizers claimed Anderson's request to sing had simply come too late. "Baron Puthon, president of the Salzburg Festival committee, said it was not possible for his organization to have Miss Anderson's concert scheduled within the Festival program because it had been prepared months ago," reported The New York Times. "He said the concert had not been barred and that he knew no reason for Miss Anderson's complaint."

In fact, she had made no known complaint. Anderson had an uneasy relationship with politics throughout her career; she was an artist, not an activist, and it was on the merits of her art that she asked to be judged. Anderson made no comment to the press regarding the festival's refusal to include her on its program. Rather, she graciously embraced the festival organizers' attempt to stem public scandal: She could sing in a Salzburg venue, but not as part of the official performance calendar.

Marian Anderson, January 14, 1940. Photographer: Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress

On the festival's first night, she gave the permitted, unendorsed concert at the Mozarteum. Though the recital started small, during the intermission, word of Anderson's talent spread-her remarkable vocal range extended from tenor to mezzo-soprano-and by the concert's second half her audience had grown noticeably larger. In a review the next day, even a local critic allowed that "the Negro singer" had given a remarkable performance. Still, the Salzburger Volkblatt reporter could not help but exoticize Anderson: "the lady is, in so far as a white person is entitled to a judgment of taste, a charming lively figure," he wrote. "In a long, white, low-necked silk dress, on her neck a giant, pale-red flower, she looks as if she has for far too long bathed in the sun of Africa."

Anderson made her greatest impression in the Alps in a second, private recital organized by a well-to-do American patron of the arts. Hundreds attended this concert several days later. Religious leaders, diplomats, distinguished government officials and many of the festival's headlining performers gathered in the ballroom of the Hôtel de l'Europe, both to make a public show against the fascist fervor engulfing Europe and simply to hear her sing.

She opened the concert with two popular arias, one British and the other Italian, followed by well-known compositions by four Germans-Handel, Schubert, Brahms and Mahler-before moving on to two songs by Sibelius, a Scandinavian composer with whom she had worked closely. Then she concluded, as she often did in appearances before predominately white audiences, with a selection of African American spirituals.

Sometimes a song is just a song, but, as Marian Anderson recognized throughout her career, sometimes it is much more than that. By placing spirituals created by enslaved African Americans alongside the so-called high art of Europe, Anderson insisted on the equal merits of both. She shifted the terms of connoisseurship and engagement around her performance in a subversive rebuke to the powers who, on the basis of her skin tone, had tried to deny her the opportunity to perform.

The recital was spellbinding. "Her superb voice commanded the closest attention of that audience from the first note," one attendee recalled later, adding that "[a]t the end of the spiritual there was no applause at all-a silence instinctive, natural and intense, so that you were afraid to breathe. What Anderson had done was something outside the limits of classical or romantic music."

Congratulatory audience members visited Anderson after the concert, among them the world-renowned Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. "What I heard today," the revered maestro declared in his native Italian, "one is privileged to hear only once in a hundred years." His praise would come to define the rest of her career. After her agent spun it to the press, Anderson would henceforth be known as "the voice of a century."

Four years later, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Marian Anderson gave a concert that stood as a bold claim for the ideal of American racial equality. In answer to the Daughters of the American Revolution who would not permit her to perform at their Constitution Hall, the concert hallowed the memorial as a site of victory in the Black freedom struggle. That Easter Sunday performance vaulted her to a kind of patron sainthood for Black excellence overcoming white supremacy.

Marian Anderson, facing the Washington Monument, sings to an audience seated in front of the Lincoln Memorial, at a memorial service for Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, April 20, 1952. Library of Congress

In an interview years later, Anderson compared the feeling she had at the Lincoln Memorial concert to this more intimate moment in 1935. "The only thing that came near to it was the time when Toscanini came backstage in Salzburg," she said of stepping out to meet a crowd of 75,000 in her homeland. "My heart was throbbing to the point that I could scarcely hear anything. And there was an excitement that made one, well, you just couldn't, one couldn't say anything."

What Anderson could not say she channeled into music. It was a message that, through her legendary vocal performances, resonated with striking clarity: the triumph of Black humanity over those who would deny it.

About Women in American History

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How Marian Anderson Became the Voice of the Century | American Experience | PBS

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In 1930, Marian Anderson journeyed across the Atlantic to Europe for opportunities to study and tour beyond the limited offerings of Jim Crow America. Far from her home in Philadelphia, she found success surpassing any she had experienced in the U.S. Her popularity in Scandinavia was so great, for example, that fans were said to have "Marian fever."

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DAR bans all colored artists including Anderson, 1936

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DAR bans all colored artists including Anderson, 1936

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In 1936, the DAR completely banned all colored artists from performing. Howard University, the college Anderson went to, wants to protest it and in response they mass criticize, and the treasurer of Howard University V.D Johnson ran an editorial titled "We Must Hear Marian Anderson Sing"

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Marian receives her honorary doctorates, June 1938

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Marian receives her honorary doctorates, June 1938

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It was only a matter of time before she would get a doctorates for her music career, but an honorary doctorates is even better. During this time period Marian has been singing for 26 years! She got her honorary doctorates from Howard University and the congratulations of those who attended the ceremony, sometime in June 1938.

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President Roosevelt and his wife plan to have Marian sing at Lincoln Memorial, 1939

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President Roosevelt and his wife plan to have Marian sing at Lincoln Memorial, 1939

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In response to being banned by the DAR, president Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt planned a huge concert at the Lincoln memorial on April 9th, 1939. I know because the story "The Voice that Challenged a Nation, Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights", the author says "Ickes announced that the Lincoln Memorial would be the site of a concert by Marian Anderson on Easter Sunday, April 9th, 1939."

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The biggest concert Marian will ever sing at is starting, 75,000 people were there in person, waiting for her to sing. After meeting the Interior secretary Harold L. Ickes, she begins to sing. I know because according to the text "The Voice that Challenged a Nation, Marian Anderson and the struggle for equal rights" the author Freedman says "In the back were the Tidal Basin and Washington Monument. Underneath was the grass. To the side were the beautiful trees, the ceiling was the sky, and in front of her were those wonderful stairs going up to the Lincoln Memorial. And stood there Anderson... The highlights of that day were the first words she sang. Closing her eyes, she began to sing."

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History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust

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Marian Anderson Performs at the Lincoln Memorial

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Rejected by segregationist Daughters of the American Revolution, Marian Anderson performs before an audience of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial.

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Marian's impact on her fame from the Lincoln Memorial

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Marian's impact on her fame from the Lincoln Memorial

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Marian gets awarded the NAACP's Springarn Medal, July 2nd, 1939

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Marian gets awarded the NAACP's Springarn Medal, July 2nd, 1939

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After performing her Lincoln Memorial concert, it made history in the struggle for equal rights and for musical artists. About 3 months later on July 2nd, 1939, Eleanor Roosevelt presents Marian Anderson with the Springarn medal. I know because in the book "The Voice that Challenged a Nation, Marian Anderson and the struggle for equal rights", the author Russell Freedman captioned "First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt presents Marian Anderson with the NAACP Springarn Medal, July 2nd, 1939" underneath the picture shown on page 70.

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Kosti Vehanen, Marian's old accompanist retired to his home in Finland. He got replaced for someone by the name of Franz Rupp, a Jewish pianist who fled from Germany during WW2. He would maintain to be her pianist for 25 years!

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Marian gets married to Orpheus Fisher, 1943

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Marian gets married to Orpheus Fisher, 1943

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Asides from accomplishing huge milestones in her career, she also accomplished something in her personal life. Marian Anderson wanted to get married only well in her 40s, so alas, she gets married to Orpheus Fisher sometime in 1943.

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Marian caused the "white artist only" rule to be revoked, 1952

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Marian caused the "white artist only" rule to be revoked, 1952

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Marian Anderson broke a massive barrier that really caused problems for certain individuals. Marian finally caused the DAR to revoke the rule that said "white artists only" to perform music in the Constitution Hall, the biggest Opera house in the U.S at the time. I found this out by page 82, in the story "The Voice that Challenged a Nation, Marian Anderson and the struggle for equal rights", where the author states "Times were changing, and Marian Anderson was helping them change. In 1952 the "white artists only" clause was removed from the Constitution Hall contracts."

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Marian sings on the steps of Lincoln Memorial again

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Marian sings on the steps of Lincoln Memorial again

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Marian Anderson is now back at the Lincoln Memorial steps. She's singing at memorial services for her old friend in arms of Harold Ickes. This is the second time she's performed at the Lincoln Memorial, not as popular as the one in 1939 however.

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Anderson got to go on a 10 week tour in India and the far east as a goodwill ambassador by the U.S State Department. And being accompanied by a CBS television crew that filmed the tour. In this tour she got to visit a total of 12 countries. I know because the book "The Voice that Challenged a Nation, Marian Anderson and the struggle for equal rights", the author stated "In 1957 the U.S State Department sent her as a goodwill ambassador on a 10 week tour of India and the far east" (77-78).

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Marian participates in the Civil Rights March on Washington, 1963

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Marian participates in the Civil Rights March on Washington, 1963

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After her tour, she then sang at the Lincoln Memorial for the third time. This time she is singing for the historic "Civil Rights March". This is the second major historical civil rights movement she's participated in.

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Marian was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1963

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Marian was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1963

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Even over 20 years later after her Lincoln Memorial she's still getting awards. In 1963, Marian Anderson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

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Marian accepts the first Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, 1984

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Marian accepts the first Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, 1984

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Even while retired Marian Anderson is still getting huge medals or awards. At the age of 87 she accepted the first Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award. And the craziest part is during this phase of Marian's life she's in a wheelchair, she needed help to get out of the wheelchair to even appraise the award.

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On April 8th, 1993, Marian Anderson would pass away at the age of 96. One day short of the 54th anniversary of the Easter concert at the Lincoln Memorial. I know because in the story "The Voice that Challenged a Nation, Marian Anderson and the struggle for equal rights" freedman stated "She died on April 8th, 1993, at the age of 96, one day short of the Easter concert at the Lincoln Memorial's 54th anniversary" (88).