Q: Tell me about the Marian Anderson concert, its importance, and Mrs. Roosevelt's role in it.
A: I'm not too sure that America realized what that concert symbolized, because it struck at the very depths of racism in America. No one had asked Marian Anderson to integrate anything. The Howard University's music department usually sponsored someone of renown every year, and in 1939 they had chosen Marian Anderson, who had been hailed by none other by Arturo Toscanini as being one voice in a million.
And so they could no longer go to the small high school auditorium, and they asked Washington DC's
school board to let them have the Central High auditorium, which was white, because it was bigger.
They were rejected. A petition was drawn up, and they finally decided to let them have the high
school, but one time only. "We're not going to do this again." Now, this was a public
high school, refusing to let one of the great voices of our time sing.
So someone thought of the idea of: Why not go to the DAR, its Constitution Hall, which would certainly be ample? The Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR, said no, because of her color. Mrs. Roosevelt was a member of the DAR. She became a columnist, I think with Scripps-Howard. And she wrote a column titled My Day. She denounced this act and said that she was resigning from the DAR. And then she and the great lawyer Charles Houston, and of course Walter White and some others met, and they decided something even more grandiose. They got together with Harold Ickes. I think he was one of the great advisors to President Franklin Roosevelt. And of course Chapman was one of the other advisors. And they decided to have a big expression of what America should be like at the Lincoln monument. And the idea was accepted. Franklin Roosevelt, because of requests from Mrs. Roosevelt and from Chapman, decided to go for broke. Upwards of 75,000 stood there on an Easter Sunday morning and cheered as this great woman sang. Now, everybody knew that Mrs. Roosevelt was behind this. Now, she didn't do it alone, but she was behind it. And that helped set her off.
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