The Song That Shook the Steps of Stone

On Easter Sunday, 1939, Marian Anderson stood before the Lincoln Memorial and opened her mouth to sing. She had been barred from Constitution Hall because of the color of her skin. The Daughters of the American Revolution refused her a stage. But Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organization in protest, and a new stage was arranged — not indoors, but outdoors, on the marble steps of a monument to freedom, before seventy-five thousand people.

Anderson chose to open with My Country, 'Tis of Thee. Her rich contralto voice rolled across the National Mall, and something shifted in the air. She did not sing in anger. She did not sing in bitterness. She sang with the quiet, devastating courage of a woman who had placed her dignity in the hands of the Almighty and trusted Him to hold it.

Anderson once said, "As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might."

Scripture tells us that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the trembling voice that sings anyway — not because the opposition has disappeared, but because the One who called you to sing is greater than any door that closes against you.