Biography
Marian Anderson was born in Philadelphia on February 27,1897. Anderson lived with her parents and two younger sisters. She started her singing career with her church choir where she earned the title "The Baby Contralto".
Anderson loved to sing but when she didn't recieve a good turn out at her concert in New York's Town Hall, she wanted to quit her career as a singer. But she stuck with it, and she started singing seventy performances per year.
She targeted mostly black audiences when she first started, but after a couple years, she refused to sing in segregated halls. This was a big step for Marian Anderson because she avoided racism whenever she could.
The biggest racist moment for Marian Anderson was in 1939 when she couldn't get into Constitution Hall for a performance because she was black. Eleanor Roosevelt came to Anderson's aid and set up a performance for her to sing at the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson sang for a huge audience of 75,000 people.
Marian Anderson sang for hospital patients during the war, army camps, gave private performances in the White House, and and sang at inaugurations. She got the performance of her life when she got to be the first black singer to sing with the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1955. Her last performance was at Carnegie Hall in 1965 and then she gave a final tour. In 1972, she was awarded with the UN Peace Prize.
Anderson died in 1993, on the eighth of April.
