Marian Anderson was one of the most celebrated concert singers of the twentieth century, a contralto who built an international career in Europe before American halls would fully open to her. When the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from Constitution Hall in 1939, her open-air concert at the Lincoln Memorial before some 75,000 people became a landmark of the civil rights movement — and in 1955 she became the first Black soloist to sing with the Metropolitan Opera.
At a Glance
- Born
- 27 February 1897, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Died
- 8 April 1993, Portland, Oregon
- Known for
- Easter Sunday concert at the Lincoln Memorial (9 April 1939); Metropolitan Opera debut in Un ballo in maschera (1955); My Lord, What a Morning (1956)
- Fields
- Music · Civil Rights
- Era
- Letters, Arts & Sciences
Early Life
Anderson was born on 27 February 1897 in Philadelphia, the eldest of three daughters of John Berkley Anderson and Annie Anderson. She began singing in the junior choir of Union Baptist Church at about age six, and the congregation came to regard her as its own prodigy.
Her father died in 1909 after an injury, and the family moved in with her grandparents. Money was scarce, and members of her church and community raised funds to pay for voice lessons. By her own account, she was turned away from a Philadelphia music school because of her race — a rebuff she recalled decades later in her autobiography. She went on to study privately, most importantly with the voice teacher Giuseppe Boghetti, who worked with her for years and prepared her for the competitions that launched her career.
Through her late teens and early twenties she performed at Black churches, colleges, and civic gatherings, often with the pianist William “Billy” King as her accompanist and manager. In 1923 she recorded spirituals for the Victor Talking Machine Company, making her one of the first Black concert artists to record for a major label.
Life and Work
In 1925 Boghetti entered her in a New York Philharmonic competition sponsored by the National Music League. Chosen from roughly 300 contestants, she appeared as soloist with the orchestra at Lewisohn Stadium in New York on 26 August 1925, and on 30 December 1928 she gave a recital at Carnegie Hall. American engagements nonetheless remained limited by segregation, and in the late 1920s and 1930s she built her reputation in Europe, touring Scandinavia with the Finnish pianist Kosti Vehanen and singing across the continent. After she sang at the Salzburg festival in 1935, the conductor Arturo Toscanini reportedly told her that such a voice was heard only once in a hundred years. She returned to the United States a major attraction, and in February 1936 she sang at the White House for President Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
In early 1939 Howard University sought to present Anderson in Washington, D.C., at Constitution Hall, the city’s largest auditorium. The hall’s owner, the Daughters of the American Revolution, enforced a policy barring Black performers and refused. When organizers turned to the auditorium of the white Central High School, the District’s school board also said no. The refusals became a national controversy. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her DAR membership in protest, and a Marian Anderson Citizens Committee organized pressure across the city.
With the NAACP’s Walter White and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, arrangements were made for an open-air concert on federal ground. On Easter Sunday, 9 April 1939, Ickes introduced Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and she opened with “America” (“My Country, ’Tis of Thee”) before an integrated crowd estimated at 75,000, while millions more heard the concert by radio. Her seven-song program, carried nationwide by NBC Radio, included Donizetti’s aria “O mio Fernando,” Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” and the spirituals “Gospel Train” and “My Soul Is Anchored in the Lord.” That July the NAACP awarded her the Spingarn Medal, presented by Eleanor Roosevelt.
On 23 July 1943 she married Orpheus “King” Fisher, whom she had known since her youth, and the couple made their home at Marianna Farm in Danbury, Connecticut. On 7 January 1955 Anderson sang the role of the fortune-teller Ulrica in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the first Black soloist to appear with the company. The debut came late in her career, but it opened the door for the Black singers who followed her onto the Met’s stage. The next year she published her autobiography, My Lord, What a Morning (1956).
In 1957 the State Department sent her on a goodwill tour of Asia, and in 1958 President Dwight D. Eisenhower named her a delegate to the United Nations. She sang the national anthem at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on 20 January 1961 and performed at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963. Later that year she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Legacy
Anderson died on 8 April 1993 in Portland, Oregon, at the age of 96. Her later honors included the Congressional Gold Medal (1977), the National Medal of Arts (1986), and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1991).
The 1939 concert has become one of the defining images of the civil rights era. It showed that federal property and national symbols could be claimed for a public rebuke of segregation, and the Lincoln Memorial later drew the 1963 March on Washington, where she sang again. Anderson herself spoke of the events with restraint and preferred to let her singing make the argument, a stance some contemporaries criticized as too cautious and others saw as a deliberate strategy of dignity. Historians now treat the concert, together with the Met debut sixteen years later, as a turning point in which a single artist’s career exposed the costs of segregation to a national audience.
When Anderson was barred from Constitution Hall, her 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial turned a national symbol into a public rebuke of segregation. Open the classroom lesson →
Key Dates
- 27 February 1897 Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
- c. 1903 Begins singing in the junior choir of Union Baptist Church.
- 26 August 1925 Appears as soloist with the New York Philharmonic at Lewisohn Stadium after winning a competition.
- 1935 Sings at the Salzburg festival during a triumphant European career.
- 9 April 1939 Sings at the Lincoln Memorial after the DAR bars her from Constitution Hall.
- July 1939 Receives the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal.
- 7 January 1955 Debuts at the Metropolitan Opera as Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera.
- 1958 Appointed a delegate to the United Nations.
- 28 August 1963 Sings at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
- 8 April 1993 Dies in Portland, Oregon.
Sources and Further Reading
- Marian Anderson, My Lord, What a Morning (New York: Viking Press, 1956).
- Raymond Arsenault, The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009).
- Allan Keiler, Marian Anderson: A Singer’s Journey (New York: Scribner, 2000).
- National Archives, “Marian Anderson’s 1939 Easter Concert,” Pieces of History (2022). Link
- PBS American Masters, “Marian Anderson Biography and Timeline.” Link
- National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, NSDAR Archives: Marian Anderson Documents (January–April 1939). Link
Related on Black-History.com
Cite this page
- MLA
- “Marian Anderson.” Black-History.com, 30 Sept. 2026, https://black-history.com/people/marian-anderson/.
- APA
- Black-History.com Editors. (2026, September 30). Marian Anderson. Black-History.com. https://black-history.com/people/marian-anderson/
- Chicago
- Black-History.com Editors. “Marian Anderson.” Black-History.com. September 30, 2026. https://black-history.com/people/marian-anderson/.
By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.