Top 10 Protest Symbols
A Concert on the Mall
Marian Anderson had a three-octave range and a voice that conductor Arturo Toscanini reportedly said was "such as one hears once in 100 years." Yet in the 1920s U.S. — where African Americans were as unwelcome in famous concert halls as they were at the front of buses — she was an unlikely star. Her remarkable voice propelled her past barriers: in 1936 she became the first African American to sing at the White House, and she regularly sold out her shows. Anderson's most lasting legacy, however, came out of a concert she didn't give: in 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution denied her request to perform in their Constitution Hall in Washington. Amid a public outcry during which First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the D.A.R. in protest, the Federal Government gave Anderson permission to sing at the Lincoln Memorial instead. That Easter Sunday, 75,000 Americans gathered in person and millions more tuned in to the radio to hear Anderson perform. Her first song was "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." She became a civil-rights icon overnight.