SINGER UNITED STATESA voice like yours is heard only once in a hundred years.
—ARTURO TOSCANINI, CONDUCTOR, COMPLIMENTING MARIAN
Voice coach Giuseppe Boghetti barely looked up when the teenage girl walked in. He frowned and continued scribbling notes onto his sheet music.
“You know,” he barked, “I’m seeing you just as a favor to your principal.”
Marian could feel her body trembling. Could she really bring herself to sing for this man? Mr. Boghetti was one of the most well-respected voice coaches in the country. Why should he listen to her?
“I don’t want any new students. I have too many already.” Her heart sank more, but he waved his hand at her to begin singing.
To calm her nerves, she closed her eyes and tried to forget where she was and who she was singing for. As she sang her favorite spiritual, “Deep River,” Marian’s rich, powerful voice poured out over the room, “Deep river, my home is over Jordan. . . . ”
Marian never had problems projecting her voice. As a girl, her mother told her to imagine the black people who were only given seats way in the balconies. She always made sure those back seats could hear her voice too.
She finished and opened her eyes. The room was silent. Mr. Boghetti had his eyes closed too, and seemed to be frozen, holding his breath. Oh no, he hated it! Marian thought in a panic.
After an eternity, the gruff teacher opened his eyes and looked at Marian for a long time. “I will make room for you right away,” he said.
She clamped her hands over her mouth so she wouldn’t scream from happiness.
“I will need only two years with you. After that you will be able to go anywhere and sing for anybody.”
Marian was overjoyed—but now she had a different worry. She wondered if the money her church had raised for her music lessons would be enough. Mr. Boghetti’s fees would not be cheap. But when she asked him about it, he surprised her again. He said he would waive his regular fees; he would teach Marian for free. She couldn’t believe her luck! Finally, her dreams were coming true. Maybe she really would be a famous concert singer.
Marian was born in 1897 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father worked hard delivering ice and coal, and he made enough money so her mother could stay home and take care of the children. Marian grew up in a happy family, surrounded by lots of love. From a very early age, she loved music, but her parents couldn’t afford to buy instruments or lessons. So Marian made her own music. At age three she began to sing.
By the time she was six, she was the star of her church choir. Her voice was deep and rich; she was what musicians call a contralto, the lowest female voice, but she could sing higher notes and lower notes as well. In fact, when her choir learned a song, Marian taught herself all the parts, high and low, so if a singer missed a performance, Marian could fill in for her.
Her family’s life became much more difficult when Marian turned twelve and her father died in a work accident. Her mother had to clean people’s houses to support the family, and though she never complained, she worked nonstop to keep her children fed and clothed. Marian desperately wanted to help. Although she dreamed of being a singer, she began training for more practical work; she learned to type so she could become a secretary and help support the family when she finished high school.
Her voice, however, was so amazing that throughout high school people hired her to sing at church gatherings, parties, and club meetings, paying her five dollars for each performance. This was a lot of money to Marian; she began to think that maybe she wouldn’t have to become a secretary after all. But she knew that to be a professional singer, she would need professional training.
She decided to apply for lessons at a local music school, but they turned her away with a harsh rejection: “We don’t take colored.” Marian was crushed. She knew racism existed, but she had grown up in a neighborhood where whites and blacks respected each other. This was the first time Marian experienced racism personally, and she was horrified. She was ready to give up her singing dreams right then and there. “The way that woman spoke, it bit into my soul,” she told her mother. “You must have faith,” was the answer her mother gave back. “There will be another way for you to learn what you need to know.”
And there was another way. Marian’s church believed in her dreams, so when the members heard about her troubles, they raised money for private lessons. That’s how she came to audition for Giuseppe Boghetti. That year she graduated from high school and began to sing professionally all over Pennsylvania at churches, colleges, and small theaters. Her fee went up to one hundred dollars per show! It was the happiest day in Marian’s life when she told her mother, “I can take care of you now. You don’t have to work anymore.”
When Marian first sailed to Europe, she was the only black person on board. For the entire two-week voyage, Marian had to stay alone, separate from the rest of the white passengers.
Even when Marian came to Washington to sing at the Lincoln Memorial, she wasn’t allowed into any hotels and had to stay in a private home.
In 1925 Marian got her big break. She entered a singing contest with three hundred competitors; first prize was a concert in New York City with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Marian surprised many, including herself, when she won. Her performance with the famous orchestra was a success, and Marian had every reason to believe her career was underway and that invitations to sing in America’s best concert halls would pour in.
She was mistaken. Although the Civil War had freed the slaves almost sixty years before, America was still a very segregated and racist place. Jim Crow laws (named for an obedient black character in a minstrel show) barred blacks from sitting in the same seats as whites on buses or trains, from eating in the same restaurants, and even from performing on the same stages. Signs all over America read “Whites Only.” Marian wasn’t invited to sing in America’s best concert halls because she was black, and even when she could sing in those halls, many white ticket buyers didn’t believe a black woman could have any talent.
With her career in America at a standstill, Marian decided her only option was Europe. She left in 1930 and toured there for the next five years. Although she was still unknown in America, she was accepted as a great singer in Europe and even sang for the kings and queens of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England. Marian was very happy abroad, not just with her success, but because the weight of racism was lifted from her shoulders: she could sit in any seat, stay at any hotel, eat at any restaurant, perform anywhere she wanted, and earn a living as a singer. Europeans didn’t care about her skin color, just her voice. But she missed her family and home. She dreamed of returning to America and making it a better place to live and perform.
One night at a Paris concert hall, Marian was performing, and sitting in the audience was Sol Hurok, manager of some of the world’s greatest stars (he helped launch Anna Pavlova’s career, among others). After the show, he asked Marian if he could represent her on her return to America. It was another dream come true. Fellow show biz experts warned Hurok that America still wasn’t ready. “You won’t be able to give her away,” they predicted. Not much had changed in five years.
But with Sol’s help, Marian made a triumphant return to America in 1935 with a concert in New York’s famous Town Hall. The audience gave her a standing ovation, and the critics raved, “Marian Anderson has returned to her native land one of the great singers of our time.” She was home.
In 1939, after singing in most European capitals, Marian tried to arrange a concert in Washington, DC. The theater, Constitution Hall, was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), a group of women whose families had, years ago, fought for America’s freedom from England. Ironically, these women, descendants of men who fought for freedom, refused to let Marian sing on their stage. It was for “white artists only.” First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, herself a DAR member, resigned from the group in protest. The event sparked one of the first great civil rights debates of the twentieth century: Americans of both colors argued openly about the rights of blacks and waited to see what would happen.
What happened was a quiet revolution. Marian was invited instead to sing a free concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial. It was a symbolic location for the event, at the foot of a statue of the man who drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves. The concert drew an unbelievable seventy-five thousand fans (and millions more on radio). Marian was so astonished by the show of support that afterward she remembered nothing of her time on stage. The audience, however, would never forget it.
Orpheus Fisher first asked Marian to marry him just after high school. She said no because she knew it would interfere with her career. Over the next 20 years, while Marian worked on achieving her dreams, Fisher waited for her. Marian finally said yes, and they married in 1943.
She opened with “America,” and one observer recalled blacks and whites in the audience singing along with Marian, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of li-ber-ty, of thee I sing.” He said later, “She put such great emphasis upon ‘liberty.’ The DAR’s refusal to allow her to sing was a breach of that liberty. . . . There were tears in my eyes. I think there were tears in the eyes of almost everybody in that huge crowd.”13 When she finished with “ . . . let freedom ring,” America was listening. One journalist applauded Marian’s courage: “That concert . . . struck at the very depths of racism in America.” Years before Martin Luther King Jr. would stand in the same spot and deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech, Marian Anderson pricked the nation’s conscience with her own dreams of equality.
She continued breaking through the color barrier for the rest of her career. She performed at the White House and at presidential inaugurations; she sang in Russia, Israel, and Japan; and during World War II, she finally appeared at Constitution Hall. In 1955 she achieved yet another of her goals: she became the first black person to perform at the world-famous Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Again, the audience members showed their support for Marian’s efforts in changing America. They gave her a standing ovation even before she began singing her part.
Her every childhood dream realized, Marian kept on singing. In 1957 the State Department sent her on a twelve-nation tour as a goodwill ambassador for America. A year later they made her position official and appointed Marian as a delegate to the United Nations. Marian didn’t retire from singing until she was almost seventy years old, giving a farewell tour of the United States in 1964–65. During her career, she was honored with countless awards, including the 1939 Spingarn Medal, given to the black American who achieved the most, and the 1963 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award a president can give a citizen during peacetime.
Many people believe that because of Marian’s pure voice and tremendous range, she was the world’s greatest contralto. But her impact was not limited to her voice. Her obituary summed up Marian’s lasting memory: “[She] maintained a quiet dignity while transcending the racial and cultural barriers imposed on her artistry.” She showed Americans—black and white—what blacks could do if given the chance. Her success opened music to all the black artists who followed her—Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and even Mariah Carey—and made it one of the first fields in which black Americans could achieve greatness and be recognized for their talents. Her courage and insistence on the right of every American to pursue her dreams also paved the way for future civil rights heroes like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. and the great racial change of the mid-twentieth century.