Sun Apr 12, 2009 at 03:30:12 PM PDT
Seventy years ago on Easter Sunday – April 9, 1939 – 75,000 citizens gathered to hear legendary contralto Marian Anderson give a free concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after being barred from performing at Washington’s largest and most venerable venue, Constitution Hall, by its owners, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) because she was a "singer of color."
When First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt learned of this affront, not only did she resign her membership from the DAR, but she was so outraged she worked in tandem with Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to convince FDR to invite Marian Anderson to perform on the Mall at the Lincoln Memorial. To date, the crowd was the largest ever assembled at the Memorial, and the live broadcast of her performance reached an enraptured listening audience of millions.
So strongly were the First Lady’s sentiments about racial equality, that in July 1939 she presented the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP to Marian Anderson for her lessons of dignity and strength in representing a people long oppressed in their own land.
With Lincoln gazing on in the background, Sec. Ickes, who had said of Ms. Anderson that "Genius, like justice, is blind.... Genius draws no color line," introduced her to the 75,000 - an audience including senators, Cabinet members and Supreme Court Justices - by simply observing: "In this great auditorium under the sky, all of us are free."
Ms. Anderson’s concert selections were a mixture of classical pieces and African-American Spirituals. She punctuated the sentiment of solidarity in that we are a nation of many, but share common goals during her rendition of "My Country, ‘Tis of Thee" when she changed the lyrics from "Of thee I sing" to "Of thee we sing."
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/12/719320/-PHOTOS:-Marian-Andersons-Lincoln-Memorial-Concert70th-Anniversary
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