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Marian Anderson
Contralto singer & first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera
The voice Toscanini said came once in a hundred years — barred from a concert hall by segregation, she sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and made a nation listen.
The rise
Born in Philadelphia, Anderson showed extraordinary vocal talent as a child and was supported by her church community. After racial barriers limited her career in the US, she toured Europe in the 1930s to critical acclaim. When the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from Constitution Hall in 1939, Eleanor Roosevelt arranged a historic open-air concert at the Lincoln Memorial that drew 75,000 people.