When future generations look back on American culture in this century, Marian Anderson seems sure to tower as a symbol of artistic heroism in the face of overwhelming odds.
Long before Kathleen Battle or Grace Bumbry or even William Warfield proved that black musicians could conquer pinnacles that once had been reserved exclusively for whites, Anderson was smashing the color barrier.
No black had ever sung at the Metropolitan Opera before her, nor on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C. After Anderson braved the racial insults and impediments that were hurled her way, new generations of black artists were able to reach the forefront of the performing arts in the United States.
Today, as America celebrates Black History Month, Anderson is heartened when reminded that she changed the course of the arts in America.
”I must say that I am gratified that many of us have had the opportunity to go before wonderful audiences,” says Anderson, who celebrates her 87th birthday on Friday and will be honored in a free concert at 4 p.m. today at the South Shore Cultural Center (phone 753-0640).
”And we are fortunate that these audiences have been most responsive and rewarding in their acceptance.”
Yet Anderson, who still lives on the New England farm that has been her home for most of her adult life, declines to mention that the audiences were not always so responsive. In January, 1939, when the Philadelphia-born contralto was just beginning to win attention, she was dealt a stunning blow from the Daughters of the American Revolution, who refused to allow her to perform in Constitution Hall when they discovered she was black.
The incident caused a national uproar, prompting then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to quit the D. A. R. and Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes to offer Anderson the opportunity to sing instead at the Lincoln Memorial, on Easter Sunday, April 9. 50 years after that moment, Anderson recalls her emotions as if it had happened yesterday.
”The masses of people who turned out for that performance seemed simply overwhelming to me,” recalls Anderson of a crowd estimated at 75,000. ”It was just beyond one`s comprehension. Yet in all honesty, I would say that I was not totally aware of the magnitude of the event. It was too big to comprehend.”
”When I first knew about what the D. A. R. had done,” Anderson has said, ”it was terribly upsetting. Music to me means so much, such beautiful things, and it seemed impossible that you could find people who would curb you, stop you, from doing a thing which is beautiful. I wasn`t trying to sway anybody into any movements or anything of that sort, you know.
”So (the performance at the Lincoln Memorial) was a tremendous thing, and my heart beat like mad-it`s never beat like that before-loud and strong and as though it wanted to say something. I don`t like the word `protesting,` but my reaction was: `What have I done that should bring this onto my heart?` I was not trying to cut anybody down. I just wanted to sing and to share.”
And to the good fortune of Anderson-as well as anyone who cherishes the concepts of equality and fairness-the performance had quite a different outcome than the D. A. R. might have expected. It made the organization an instant symbol of injustice in the arts-and elsewhere in society-and made Anderson the hero who overcame it.
The event was not the first or last hurdle for a singer who possessed ”a voice one hears once in a hundred years,” as Arturo Toscanini once said. In fact, Anderson had just about every imaginable hurdle cast in front of her from the day she was born.
Her father, who died when she was 9, had eked out a living selling ice and coal, while her mother earned pennies by taking in laundry and toiling as a domestic.
When Anderson showed an early fascination with a battered old violin on sale at a local pawn shop, the family found enough money to buy it for her. Lessons, however, were too expensive, so Anderson taught herself how to play the fiddle-incorrectly, at that, for she played dozens of tunes on only one string.
She also sang every chance at school, and by her mid-teens, her voice already showing the deep burnish of a contralto that would win fans around the world, a local music teacher offered to coach Anderson for free.
Her most essential training, however, probably came from the Baptist churches in South Philadelphia, where she had been singing since childhood. There, she absorbed the great traditions of gospel and spiritual song, and it might be argued that those intensely emotional art forms helped buoy Anderson in her later triumphs. For, unlike any singer before her, Anderson always made a point of bringing spirituals into the concert hall.
At first, neither that habit nor Anderson`s very presence in the white bastions of culture endeared her to the public or press. The reviews of her first concert in Town Hall (1922) were so lacerating that she withdrew from singing for a year. When she scraped up her courage again, she won prizes nearly every time she sang, taking first place in a competition in
Philadelphia (1923) and another with the New York Philharmonic (1925).
But in those days, talent and prizes weren`t enough to launch a promising black artist, so Anderson, like hundreds before and after her, went to Europe to study and perform. She became an instant sensation, with European audiences electrified by the presence of a great black singer offering the songs of black America, as well as traditional classical repertory.
”I think the spirituals were-and still are-a glimpse into the religious beliefs of many people,” says Anderson, in explaining why a simple folk art helped catapult her to prominence in the classical concert hall. ”These people expressed themselves wholeheartedly of the trials and tribulations through which they had passed. This came across in the music, and this is what audiences responded to.”
When Anderson returned to the United States in the `30s, neither the D. A. R. nor anyone else was going to stop her. No less an impresario than Sol Hurok took up the cause, and another wall of racial inequity began to crumble. But ask Anderson if ever, through the long ordeals of her career, she felt like giving up, and she responds simply and eloquently.
”No, I never did,” says Anderson. ”I didn`t want to.”
Despite all that Anderson achieved, many of the triumphs were bittersweet. It was not until 1955, when the singer was 53, that she was invited to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, as Ulrica in Verdi`s ”Un ballo in maschera.” By then, her career was in its final years, and her voice probably was not at its peak.
”I`ve never found the right words to explain what I felt,” Anderson has said. ”It was so joyful-I only wished that it had come earlier in life, when I might have been able to bring more to it.”
Yet today Anderson sees the brighter side of that experience, calling her ground-breaking performance at the Met ”a wonderful experience I wouldn`t have missed.”
As for the fate of other black artists, most notably black composers, whose works rarely turn up in the concert hall even today, Anderson only will allow that ”one hopes things are improving,” implying that the last barriers have yet to be downed.
In the end, though, Anderson is well aware of all that has changed since the early years of this century and the critical role she played in those changes. If there is one moment that epitomizes, for her, the joys of her career, it`s the night she sang at the Inaugural Ball of President John F. Kennedy. The performance summed up an incredible journey from poverty to the pinnacle of recognition.
”It was an indescribable honor,” says Anderson, who acknowledges that the accomplishment was all the more poignant because ”our family was always poor-though never lacking in love and support. My mother always encouraged me to do anything I wanted.” And that, no doubt, was the power that enabled her to vanquish obstacles.
As she once said in an interview, ”Certainly, I have my feelings about conditions that affect my people. But it is not right for me to try to mimic somebody who writes or who speaks. That is their forte.
”I think first of music and of being there where music is, and of music being where I am. What I had was singing, and if my career has been of some consequence, then that`s my contribution.”
