Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Allen C. Browne
Taken: February 16, 2015
Caption: Marian Anderson
Additional Description: This portrait of Marian Anderson by Betsy Graves Reyneau hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

“Arturo Toscanini said that Marian Anderson had a voice that came along ‘once in a hundred years.’ When one of Anderson's teachers first heard her sing, the magnitude of her talent moved him to tears. Because she was black, however, her initial prospects as a concert singer in this country were sharply limited, and her early professional triumphs took place mostly in Europe. The magnitude of her musical gifts ultimately won her recognition in the United States as well. Despite that acclaim, in 1939 the Daughters of the American Revolution banned her from performing at Constitution Hall. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt ultimately intervened and facilitated Anderson's Easter Sunday outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial—an event witnessed by 75,000 and broadcast to a radio audience of millions. The affair generated great sympathy tor Anderson and became a defining moment in America's civil rights movement.” — National Portrait Gallery
Submitted: October 1, 2015, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.
Database Locator Identification Number: p331668
File Size: 1.182 Megabytes

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