Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial: Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, & Racial Discrimination

0:00 Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of bridge from the past art across U. S history. I’m your host, Mary, and this series is all about using images as a starting point to think about important topics in American history. Today we’re continuing with our summer series on the meaning of the Lincoln memorial. In 1939, Mary Anderson,

0:21 a world famous singer, gave a concert on the steps of the Lincoln memorial. How did this concert alter the meaning of the Lincoln memorial? And what does it mean to you today? Let’s jump in and see. Here is our image again. We’re thinking about monuments, memory, and how Marian Anderson’s concert may or

0:42 may not have changed the meaning of the Lincoln memorial. So here is our image. So I can see pretty front and center here the giant statue of Abraham Lincoln. So this is the centerpiece of the Lincoln memorial. In our previous video, we learned that the memorial was dedicated in 1922. And this giant statue of Lincoln by the sculptor Daniel Chester French is

1:05 sort of the focal point of the central hall. And you can see how big it is because there’s a person down here looking up at Lincoln. And this person, I’m just going to go ahead and tell you, this is Marian Anderson. So I said that she gave a concert, but she doesn’t appear to be doing anything right now. She’s just sort of looking up at Lincoln.

1:27 And she’s wearing a long dress. It looks like she is holding a bouquet of flowers, but there’s no crowd, there’s no microphone. She’s not seeing at all. So I’m not really sure. When was this picture taken? What was the purpose of the picture? Why did she sing this concert? I have a lot of questions, but as with any primary source,

1:47 I need a little bit more context before I can really jump into my analysis. So the first thing we need to know is that Marian Anderson was one of the great voices of the 20th century. She was a contra alto, which means that she could hit really no notes, low notes, excuse me. But she also had a really extensive range, so she could sing very high notes as well.

2:07 One famous conductor said of her that a voice like hers comes along once in a hundred years. And she had, you know, she’s world famous. She had studied and performed at venues all across the world. And in 1939, Howard University in Washington, DC. Wanted to host her for a concert in the city of Washington, DC.

2:30 So they approached the daughters of the American revolution, or DAR, about using Constitution Hall. They purposely wanted Constitution Hall because they wanted it. They knew that Marian Anderson would bring a really big crowd, and that was sort of the largest venue they could find at the time. However, this is 1939, and we are in the era of segregation and Jim Crow.

2:53 DAR had a clause in the contract that banned African American performers from using Constitution Hall. So they said that Mary Anderson could not perform in their venue. Now, this is not the first time that this had happened. They had said no to other African American performers. But this story became national news for a couple of reasons.

3:14 One, Marian Anderson is big league. She’s very famous signer. She’s got an amazing voice. She epitomizes grace and dignity and artistry, and the first lady of the country at the time, Eleanor Roosevelt, publicly resigned her membership in DAR because they had banned Marian Anderson.

3:34 So Anderson has been banned from performing in Constitution Hall, but they still want to have this concert. So Walter White, who’s the executive secretary of the NAACP, which is an organization that works for equality and justice for African Americans since the beginning of the 20th century, decides, we have to have a plan B. So he approaches the Secretary

3:55 of the Interior, Harold Ickis, and they arrange for Anderson to give a free concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939. So this is really where our story begins. Anderson is going to give this concert on Easter Sunday on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. So here is Marian Anderson, and she’s actually shaking hands with Harold Ickes.

4:20 So this is the Department of the Secretary of the Interior. So he had a large hand in setting up this concert. And you can see Anderson, right? She’s smiling. She looks very beautiful, very glamorous. Again, this is a world famous singer. She’s performed all over the world. She’s in this fabulous coat. And she’s going to give this concert, 25 minute concert to 75,000 people.

4:45 Free public concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Ickes is the man who actually leads Anderson out onto the steps for her performance. And in his introduction, he says, in this great auditorium under the sky, all of us are free. Genius like justice is blind. Genius draws no color lines. So here we have Anderson actually singing.

5:07 You can see she has all of her mics. Her eyes were closed. Later in her autobiography, she writes about how she was really nervous. This is a huge crowd, and it was just her and a piano. And she just sings. And she begins her concert by singing My Country Tis of Thee, which, if you think about it, so incredibly powerful, like the message of that song,

5:30 that this woman, this artist, is singing this song because she was denied using, you know, a really nice venue in Washington, DC. And here’s a great shot of the crowd, right? 75,000 people on the steps around the reflecting pool. You can see the Washington Monument in the background. They’ve all come to hear Anderson’s performance.

5:51 So she closed her performance with three Negro spirituals, which is something that we have talked about on other episodes of Bridge from the Past. It wasn’t a terribly long concert, but it was incredibly powerful, incredibly meaningful. And now I’m back to my original image. So this was actually taken after the performance.

6:12 So Anderson has sung her songs and the crowds have dispersed, and she just has a minute alone, looking up at Abraham Lincoln, and you can’t really see it in this picture, but the engraving behind Lincoln that emphasized unity and saving the union is over his head. And what might Anderson have been thinking? What did this moral mean to her?

6:34 What do you think it meant that she just helped his concert in this context surrounding the concert. And she said later again in her autobiography, the essential point about wanting to appear in the hall Constitution Hall was that I felt I had that right as an artist. I could see that my significance as an individual was small.

6:55 In this affair. I had become, whether I liked it or not, a symbol representing my people. So she’s denied one venue, but performs this magnificent concert in front of an enormous crowd on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. So now I’m back to my original question. Has the meaning of the Lincoln Memorial changed over time?

7:18 What does this memorial mean to you? Memorials are for us. They’re for people in the present day to think about important topics, important questions in our country. So it’s your turn to think about what this might mean. That’s all the time we have today on Bridge from the Past. Be sure to subscribe to our channel, like this video. If you learned something, we have lots of resources to help you

7:40 through the school year, to help you with all things history and civics. I’ll be back soon with another episode to think about the meaning of the Lincoln Memorial. Until then, everybody take care.