\u201cSometimes racial prejudice is like a hair across your cheek. You can\u2019t see it, you can\u2019t find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing it because the feel of it is irritating.\u201d-<\/em> Marian Anderson was one of the world\u2019s greatest contralto singers. She toured the planet as a musical ambassador, the toast of monarchs, musical heavyweights, and citizens of every race, while in her own country, she remained a second class citizen. But did you know that before the critical incident that guaranteed her immortality, she visited \u201cJim Crow\u201d Wheeling as a guest of the Blue Triangle branch of the Y.W.C.A. and Madison School?<\/p>\n Before we get to that, let\u2019s go back to the future.<\/p>\n On a brisk Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, a celebrated African American Contralto vocalist named Marian Anderson stepped up to a bank of microphones just down the steps from the marble feet of Abraham Lincoln at the \u201cGreat Emancipator\u2019s\u201d monument in Washington, D.C. \u2013 then a segregated city.<\/p>\n She was visibly nervous due to the large crowd. \u201cThe murmur of the vast assemblage quickened my pulse beat,\u201d she would later write.<\/p>\n But as her Finnish piano accompanist, Kosti Vehanen, began to play, Ms. Anderson closed her eyes and powerfully sang the first words of \u201cMy Country Tis of Thee\u201d to an audience of 75.000 people and millions more on radio (including 10 year old Martin Luther King, Jr.).<\/p>\n In the third line of the familiar song, she changed \u201cI\u201d to \u201cwe,\u201d a small decision that amplified her beliefs in a large way.<\/p>\n Already a world-renowned singer, Anderson had performed at Carnegie Hall in New York, and Orchestra Hall in Chicago. She\u2019d visited Scandinavia where she met Vehanen and began a lifelong friendship with the composer Julius Christian Sibelius who wrote and rewrote songs for her. She sang at London\u2019s Wigmore Hall and elsewhere in Europe, receiving wide acclaim while avoiding the ugly racism she encountered in her own country. When she\u2019d returned home, she\u2019d been hosted by Albert Einstein after she\u2019d been refused a room at a New Jersey hotel.<\/p>\n In fact, Anderson was only singing at the Lincoln Memorial because the Daughters of the American Revolution, citing a \u201cwhite-performers only\u201d policy, had denied an effort to have her perform at Constitution Hall. This caused First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and thousands of others to resign from the D.A.R. \u201cI am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist,\u201d Roosevelt wrote. \u201cYou have set an example which seems to me unfortunate, and I feel obliged to send in to you my resignation. You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed.\u201d Roosevelt also announced her views in her nationally syndicated newspaper column, thrusting the D.A.R. controversy into the national limelight.<\/p>\n Even as the NAACP and labor unions like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (in her autobiography, Ms. Anderson wrote about her many excursions in \u201cBerth 13,\u201d the train car designated for African Americans) and other groups pushed back, the D.C. Board of Education refused to allow Anderson to perform in the city at a white public high school.<\/p>\n Asked to comment on the controversy, Ms. Anderson replied: \u201cI\u2019m shocked to be barred from the capital of my own country after having appeared in almost every other capital of the world.\u201d That may have been a scripted response for the press. In her 1956 autobiography, Ms. Anderson wrote about the denial of the Hall: \u201cI was saddened, but as it is my belief that right will win I assumed that a way would be found. I had no inkling the thing would become a cause c\u00e9l\u00e9bre<\/em>\u2026I was saddened and ashamed. I was sorry for the people who had precipitated the affair. I felt their behavior stemmed from a lack of understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, the Roosevelts and Walter White of the NAACP encouraged Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange the Easter concert at the Lincoln Memorial. In his introduction, Ickes said, \u201cIn this great auditorium under the sky, all of us are free. Genius, like justice, is blind. Genius draws no color lines.\u201d<\/p>\n Philadelphia born Marian Anderson, the granddaughter of a slave, went on to perform beautifully for 25 minutes to a mixed race audience in the Nation\u2019s Capital during the height of the era of \u201cJim Crow\u201d segregation. \u201cI could not run away from this situation,\u201d Anderson would later write. \u201cIf I had anything to offer, I would have to do so now.\u201d<\/p>\n See newsreel footage<\/a> of the event.<\/p>\n See a clip of the PBS documentary Voice of Freedom, The Lincoln Memorial Concert<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Once again appearing in a town where she would not have been welcome in white-owned hotels, restaurants, or stores, Ms. Anderson performed with aplomb.<\/p>\n Proclaimed by the Intelligencer<\/em> as \u201cthe most outstanding colored singer in the country, and many critics say in the world,\u201d she had just completed her triumphant tour of Europe, including Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and London. \u201cShe possesses a contralto voice of rare, velvet quality of a remarkable range. Every song which she sang demonstrated more thoroughly the unusual powers which are hers and the splendid training she has had in America and Europe. Her program was the sort to stir her audience to an almost un-American fervor of approval, Gallic in its voiced expression of pleasure.\u201d She sang eloquently in French, German, and Italian as appropriate, performing works by Handel, Donizetti, Mozart, Schubert, and Liszt. \u201cShe loves the old songs of her race,\u201d the Intelligencer<\/em> reported, \u201cand there was a dramatic pride and appreciation of the talent of her people\u2026\u201d as she sang a number of Negro spirituals.<\/p>\n For its part the Wheeling Register<\/em> praised Ms. Anderson\u2019s \u201cserene dignity,\u201d which matched \u201cthe simple naturalness of her singing manner, and she is gifted with a voice of rich, throaty timbre, impressive in its enormous range.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Anderson returned to Wheeling 27 years later in February 1959 as a guest of the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, performing two sold-out shows (reportedly \u201cthe first complete sell-out for any concert in Wheeling\u2019s musical history\u201d-Register<\/em>, 02-14-59) at the Virginia Theatre.<\/p>\n The Register<\/em> mistakenly billed it as \u201cher first Wheeling appearance.\u201d<\/p>\n Never bitter or angry about how she was treated in 1939, though she had every right to be, Anderson performed, at the invitation of the D.A.R., at Constitution Hall in 1943 to benefit the Red Cross during the Second World War. \u201cI forgave the DAR many years ago,\u201d she explained. \u201cYou lose a lot of time hating people.\u201d<\/p>\n Sixteen years later in 1955, Anderson became the first African-American to sing with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She would go on to perform many more concerts, serve her country as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, sing as a musical ambassador for the State Department in twelve Asian cities (1957), sing at JFK\u2019s inauguration, sing at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, support the Civil Rights Movement, and earn numerous prestigious awards including Presidential Medal of Freedom (1963), National Women\u2019s Hall of Fame (1973), United Nations Peace Prize (1977), Congressional Gold Medal (1977), Kennedy Center Honors (1978), and a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement (1991).<\/p>\n But, most importantly, Marian Anderson inspired and continues to inspire millions to face obstacles and injustice with grace, courage, humility, and a dignified persistence.<\/p>\n Her early Wheeling appearance reminds us that Jim Crow segregation did not make exceptions for talent or fame.<\/p>\n
\nMarian Anderson<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n
\nTo Thee We<\/em> Sing \u2013 1939<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/MarianAndersonLincolnMemorial.png\")
<\/a><\/a><\/a>
\nWheeling \u2013 1932<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n<\/a><\/a>Remarkably, the Wheeling Blue Triangle (segregated) branch of the Y.W.C.A. was able to bring Marian Anderson to town seven years prior to her world famous Lincoln Memorial performance. Ms. Anderson \u2014 who had been barred from white music schools, honing her craft by singing at churches and Y.W.C.A. branches as a child before studying under Giuseppe Boghetti \u2013 visited Madison School\u2019s auditorium for a January 1932 concert. It was part of the Zou Hastings Frazier Memorial series, and Anderson was accompanied by pianist William King. The Frazier series was a Y.W.C.A. girls\u2019 scholarship fund set up by New Yorker Fred Frazier in memory of his wife, \u201can esteemed Wheeling woman\u201d life member of the Y.W.C.A., and former organist and singer at Fourth Street Methodist Church (Register<\/em>, 06-12-20 and 10-11-27).<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>Constitution Hall -1943<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a>
\n