Today. April 9, is the 75th anniversary of one of the great event in American civil rights history – Marian Anderson”s concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
The often-told story is this: in 1939, the Daughters of The American Revolution refused to allow Anderson to sing in their concert hall _ Constitution Hall _ in Washington DC because Anderson was a black woman and Washington DC was a segregated city. The city’s Board of Education denied her permission to sing in their auditorium
People became outraged that Anderson one of the country’s great classical singers – couldn’t perform in the nation’s capitol.
The final result was that Anderson – who moved to Danbury in 1940 – sang in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, , with 75,000 people listening. She opened the concert with “America” and its opening line “My country ’tis of thee/ sweet land of liberty…”