If God had come from Philadelphia, she would have sounded like Marian Anderson. Contralto is the lowest female classical voice, and Anderson’s was powerful, refined, expressive, and had that rare quality of communicating instant charisma.
Born in 1897, she trained in Philadelphia and managed to forge a top-tier career as a recital artist in Europe and the United States from the 1920s to the 1960s despite the prejudice of the times. In 1939, she was refused a recital appearance in a Washington, D.C., hall because of her race, and her performance at the outdoor concert held instead became a key moment in the civil rights movement.
Recalling her historic Easter 1939 outdoor concert after the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her appearance in Constitution Hall because of her race: The crowd stretched in a great semicircle from the Lincoln Memorial around the reflecting pool on to the shaft of the Washington Monument. I had a feeling that a great wave of good will poured out from these people, almost engulfing me. And when I stood up to sing our National Anthem I felt for a moment as though I were choking. For a desperate second I thought that the words, as well as I know them, would not come. I sang, I don’t know how.
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