Marian Anderson

by Charles Henry Alston

Marian Anderson
World Famous Contralto

With the ten thousand dollar Bok Award, which she won in 1941, she established the “Marian Anderson Fund to Aid Aspiring Young Artists.

Of her Lincoln Memorial concert, Interior Secretary Ickes declared:

“Future generations will regard Easter Sunday, 1939, as a significant date in the fight to achieve a real democracy in this country.”

When he heard Marian sing, the great conductor Arturo Toscanini, exclaimed “A voice like yours is heard only once, in a hundred years!”

She opened a series of allied benefits by singing for United China Relief to a negro and white audience which over-flowed constitution Hall — Jan. 7 1943.

Marian Anderson, World Famous Contralto, by Charles Henry Alston, in the Charles Henry Alston Papers #4931, Southern Hisorical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.