The Sound of Freedom Articles

Three score and 10 years ago, a concert emancipated a dream

By Saul Austerlitz
April 26, 2009; Boston Globe

"The crowd condenses. It's standing room only, flowing the length of the reflecting pool and down West Potomac Park. The floor of this church is grass. The columns of this nave are budding trees. The vault above, an Easter sky." The date is April 9, 1939, the setting is the Lincoln Memorial, and the assembled audience is gathered prayerfully to hear Marian Anderson sing. Delia Dailey, proud scion of a "Talented Tenth" family, is about to meet the love of her life, physicist and German Jewish émigré David Strom. Black and white, African and European, intersect and commingle, and the dream of a race-blind, mulatto future is, if only for a brief hour, attained.

Delia and David...

Concert pays tribute to Marian Anderson

By Natasha T. Metzler, Associated Press Writer
April 13, 2009; AP

 

More than 2,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for a concert honoring the 70th anniversary of Marian Anderson's historic performance there in 1939.

Because of the color of her skin, Anderson was denied the opportunity to perform at nearby Constitution Hall and local high school. So, instead, the opera singer sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in April 1939 to a 75,000-person crowd of blacks and whites standing together.

In the Sunday afternoon sunshine, African-American opera star Denyce Graves performed three of the same songs Anderson sang 70 years ago: "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)," "O, Mio Fernando" and "Ave Maria."

Wearing one of Anderson's old dresses, Graves...

Marian Anderson's Big Moment: A Look Back

Weekend Edition Sunday
April 12, 2009; NPR

 

Seventy years ago, a concert took place on Easter at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. At least 75,000 people attended the performance, which was heard across the country on NBC Radio. The performer was opera singer Marian Anderson.

The location for the concert was not chosen for its audience capacity. Anderson had tried to book Constitution Hall, but the Daughters of the American Revolution, which owned the hall, refused to let her perform there because she was black.

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt interceded and arranged for the alternate venue.

In his new book The Sound of Freedom, Raymond Arsenault argues that standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that Easter, Anderson set in motion events that would change the country.

"It was...

Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 4/06/2009

April 6, 2009; Publisher's Weekly

Commemorating the 70th anniversary of African-American contralto Marian Anderson’s culture-shifting 1939 Easter Sunday performance at the Lincoln Memorial, the story of this underappreciated Civil Rights milestone resonates even louder in the wake of President Obama's election. Civil rights historian Arsenault (Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice) paints a detailed portrait of America's struggle for racial equality through one of the 20th century's most celebrated singers (of any color). Despite a 40-year career as a world-class entertainer, performing around the globe, Arsenault suffered innumerable racist indignities in her homeland, culminating in the controversial declaration by the Daughters of the American Revolution that barred her from performing in Washington, D.C.’s...

Voice of the Century
Celebrating Marian Anderson

By Alex Ross
April 9, 2009; New Yorker

On Easter Sunday, 1939, the contralto Marian Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The Daughters of the American Revolution had refused to let her appear at Constitution Hall, Washington’s largest concert venue, because of the color of her skin. In response, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the D.A.R., and President Roosevelt gave permission for a concert on the Mall. Seventy-five thousand people gathered to watch Anderson perform. Harold Ickes, the...

Peter Ginna at Bloomsbury Press bought world rights for The Sound of Freedom by historian Ray Arsenault  (Freedom Riders), about internationally acclaimed contralto Marion Anderson's 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial, given after she had been denied the right to sing at Constitution Hall because of her race.  Sold by Wendy Strothman of The Strothman Agency for publication in 2008.