70 Easter Sundays ago, the great contralto Marian Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 75,000 people were in attendance, including senators and Supreme Court justices. The Roosevelts had arranged the open-air concert after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Anderson to sing at the Constitution Hall due to the color of her skin. Alex Ross, in his article “Voice of the Century” which appears in the April 13th edition of The New Yorker, quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. (who was ten when Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial) as saying about the event: “She sang as never before, with tears in her eyes. When the words of ‘America’ and ‘Nobody Knows de Trouble I Seen’ rang out over that great gathering, there was a hush on the sea of uplifted faces, black and white, and a new baptism of liberty, equality, and fraternity. That was a touching tribute, but Miss Anderson may not as yet spend the night in any good hotel in America.” 70 Easter Sundays ago marked not only the greatest moment in Anderson’s career, but also marked one of the defining moments in our country’s social history — where a beautiful voice united a crowd of all kinds of color to show the absurdity of racism.
Currently listening to: Beirut – The Flying Club Cup
Recently watched: John Cassavetes’ Shadows; Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon; Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket; Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding; Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder; Andrew Wagner’s Starting Out in the Evening; George Sluizer’s The Vanishing; Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley; Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar; Erik Skjoldbjærg’s Insomnia
