Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 9, 1993 TAG: 9304090194
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MUSIC GREAT MARIAN ANDERSON DIES
Marian Anderson, 96, the renowned singer who touched the conscience of the nation with a 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial after having been refused permission to sing at Constitution Hall, died Thursday in Portland, Ore., a month after suffering a stroke.She died at the home of a nephew, Oregon Symphony Music Director James DePreist, with whom she had lived since last year.
Her voice was described by conductor Arturo Toscanini as one that is heard "once in a hundred years," but her singing transcended the music community.
Anderson's Lincoln Memorial concert was a milestone in American civil-rights history and made her an early symbol of the crusade for racial justice.
Her Lincoln Memorial concert was 54 years ago Friday on an Easter Sunday. It was a tour de force that stirred and sensitized the national psyche to the reality of racial discrimination, even as it symbolized bedrock American values. It drew an enthusiastic crowd of 75,000 blacks and whites in a segregated Washington.
Newspapers across the nation condemned the Daughters of the American Revolution for denying Constitution Hall to Anderson, who already had established herself as one of the world's great singers. Jascha Heifetz, the famed violinist, announced he would be "ashamed to play there," and Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest. The publicity made Anderson's name a household word.
Beginning her musical career in the children's choir of an impoverished black Baptist church in Philadelphia, Anderson went on to sing in the world's finest concert halls and in the royal courts of Europe. She was decorated by the kings of Sweden and Denmark.
During the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, she became the first black person to sing at the White House, and in 1955 she was the first black person to sing a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Anderson's repertoire ranged from operatic arias to folk songs, spirituals and sacred music.
Her talents helped open doors for other black artists, including Mattiwilda Dobbs, Robert McFerrin, George Shirley and Leontyne Price, much as the athletic skills of Jackie Robinson cleared the way for black baseball players to participate in major-league baseball.
As a child in Atlanta, Dobbs heard Anderson sing in a concert at Spelman College during the 1930s. "I had no idea then that I would ever have a voice, much less become a singer. She inspired me as a child, and I have had her as a role model since," she said Thursday.
Anderson considered herself primarily a singer, and she was never comfortable with her role as a civil-rights symbol. She rarely spoke out on civil-rights issues.