Welcome Black History Month! Celebrated each February in the United States and Canada, and each October in Ireland and the United Kingdom, it began as a way of remembering important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. What’s a diaspora? It’s a term meaning “to scatter about” and is referenced when people are scattered from their homeland to places around the globe. People may identify with a specific location but reside elsewhere. Many people fit the term. Examples include Jews, Mexicans, Indians, and this month, Blacks.
January’s Martin Luther King week celebrations are the perfect springboard to Black History Month. I’m often moved by a person or aspect of history I knew nothing about. This year it was Marian Anderson.
Born in Philadelphia in 1897, she is heralded as one of America’s greatest operatic contraltos. Encouraged by her aunt, she began singing solos and duets in church at age 6. Singing flawlessly at churches, schools and community events, she advanced, though applications to prominent music schools were rebuffed with “We don’t take colored.”
In 1925, Anderson got her first big break winning a singing competition sponsored by the New York Philharmonic, followed by a performance in concert with the orchestra, winning praise by audience and critics alike. Concerts followed in Carnegie Hall, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall and others, but racial prejudice followed her, limiting advancement.
The philanthropic Rosenwald Fund encouraged application for a fellowship, which she won and headed to Europe to study in Berlin. She excelled, performing with prominence throughout Europe. In Salzburg, conductor Arturo Toscanini told her she had a voice “heard once in a hundred years.”
She was offered a contract to return to the United States, however, she was still subject to Jim Crow laws and was often turned away by hotels and restaurants. In 1939, in Washington, D.C., she was barred by the Daughters of the American Revolution from singing an April 9 Easter concert at the DAR Constitution Hall. A fury of protests resulted.
Eleanor Roosevelt took up the cause and was instrumental in organizing an April 9 concert to the nation in front of the Lincoln Memorial, free to the public and broadcast on national radio to millions.
The result? 75,000 people showed up from across the country: dignitaries, celebrities, members of the Supreme Court, Congress, multiple national organizations, and tens of thousands of people from all walks of life. It was the largest gathering on the Mall in the nation’s history.
That day in 1939 demonstrated and ushered in awareness of a powerful concept: non-violent protest by the multitudes. Among other notables, 10-yearold Martin Luther King was listening. Non-violent protests to end segregation began to gather strength.
In 1951, NAACP reached to Anderson with a boycott of her concerts if she didn’t use her fame to fight segregation. She joined the civil rights movement and in 1955 broke the color barrier at the New York Metropolitan Opera. She worked as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and as a goodwill ambassador for the United States Department of State.
She sang at the Eisenhower and Kennedy inaugurations and received countless awards, breaking the color barrier for many. In 1963, she again performed at the Lincoln Memorial as part of the program for the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I Have Dream” speech.
She continued to use her voice in song and in statement to champion civil rights. Anderson died in 1993 at age 96.
Treat yourself and Google Marian Anderson. On either Wikipedia or YouTube you’ll find the link to her 1939 rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” from the Lincoln Memorial. I dare you not to be moved.
Lynn Kellogg is former CEO of Region IV Area Agency on Aging in Southwest Michigan. Questions on age or independence services? Call the Info-Line for Aging & Disability at 800-654-2810 or visit areaagencyonaging.org. The Generations column appears each weekend in The Herald-Palladium.