This Historic Marian Anderson Performance Made Her an Icon of the Civil Rights Movement Favorite
Marian Anderson, the legendary African American contralto, sang at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday in 1939 after she was refused a performance at Washington’s Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution because she was black. Over 75,000 people attended the performance, which was broadcast live on the radio and arranged in part by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt with the support of her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, who introduced the broadcast.
It was a bold protest against racial intolerance, performed before a diverse crowd. In that moment, Anderson — despite being a fiercely private person — transformed into a symbol for the nascent civil rights movement, even inspiring a 10-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr., who listened on the radio.