The Stage She Never Expected

In 1939, contralto Marian Anderson was already celebrated as one of the greatest singers in the world. Conductor Arturo Toscanini had declared hers "a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years." But when her manager tried to book Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., the Daughters of the American Revolution refused — because she was Black.

The rejection could have silenced her. Instead, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest, and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes arranged for Anderson to sing somewhere far grander: the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, 1939.

Seventy-five thousand people gathered on the National Mall. Millions more listened by radio. And Marian Anderson opened her mouth and sang My Country, 'Tis of Thee into the spring air — voice unwavering, spirit unbroken, eyes lifted toward something beyond the crowd.

On the very morning the church celebrates resurrection, this woman stood and refused to be buried by another's verdict about her worth.