Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America

Raymond Arsenault

4/5 ( ratings)

Award-winning civil rights historian Ray Arsenault describes the dramatic story behind Marian Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial—an early milestone in civil rights history—on the seventieth anniversary of her performance.

On Easter Sunday 1939, the brilliant vocalist Marian Anderson sang before a throng of seventy-five thousand at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington—an electrifying moment and an underappreciated milestone in civil rights history. Though she was at the peak of a dazzling career, Anderson had been barred from performing at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall because she was black. When Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR over the incident and took up Anderson's cause, however, it became a national issue. Like a female Jackie Robinson—but several years before his breakthrough—Anderson rose to a pressure-filled and politically charged occasion with dignity and courage, and struck a vital blow for civil rights.

In the 1963 March on Washington, Martin Luther King would follow, literally, in Anderson's footsteps. T his tightly focused, richly textured narrative by acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault captures the struggle for racial equality in 1930s America, the quiet heroism of Marian Anderson, and a moment that inspired blacks and whites alike.

Language: English

Pages: 320

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Bloomsbury Press

Release: March 31, 2009

ISBN: 1596915781

ISBN 13: 9781596915787

The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America

Raymond Arsenault

4/5 ( ratings)

Award-winning civil rights historian Ray Arsenault describes the dramatic story behind Marian Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial—an early milestone in civil rights history—on the seventieth anniversary of her performance.

On Easter Sunday 1939, the brilliant vocalist Marian Anderson sang before a throng of seventy-five thousand at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington—an electrifying moment and an underappreciated milestone in civil rights history. Though she was at the peak of a dazzling career, Anderson had been barred from performing at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall because she was black. When Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR over the incident and took up Anderson's cause, however, it became a national issue. Like a female Jackie Robinson—but several years before his breakthrough—Anderson rose to a pressure-filled and politically charged occasion with dignity and courage, and struck a vital blow for civil rights.

In the 1963 March on Washington, Martin Luther King would follow, literally, in Anderson's footsteps. T his tightly focused, richly textured narrative by acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault captures the struggle for racial equality in 1930s America, the quiet heroism of Marian Anderson, and a moment that inspired blacks and whites alike.

Language: English

Pages: 320

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Bloomsbury Press

Release: March 31, 2009

ISBN: 1596915781

ISBN 13: 9781596915787

More books from Raymond Arsenault

The Scent of Scandal: Greed, Betrayal, and the World's Most Beautiful Orchid

3.7/5 ( ratings)

In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma

4.3/5 ( ratings)

Arthur Ashe: A Life

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Freedom Riders:1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice

4.2/5 ( ratings)

St. Petersburg And The Florida Dream, 1888-1950

4.2/5 ( ratings)

The Changing South of Gene Patterson: Journalism and Civil Rights, 1960-1968

4.5/5 ( ratings)

The Wild Ass of the Ozarks: Jeff Davis and the Social Bases of Southern Politics

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South

3.5/5 ( ratings)

Dixie Redux: Essays in Honor of Sheldon Hackney

The Everglades: An Environmental History

Paradise Lost?: The Environmental History of Florida (Florida History and Culture)

The Tropic of Cracker (Florida History and Culture)

John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community (Black Lives)

Tempestuous Seas

Balancing Evils Judiciously: The Proslavery Writings of Zephaniah Kingsley (Florida History and Culture)

Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice

Beyond the Music: Marian Anderson, Her Complete RCA Victor Recordings

Dixie Redux: Essays in Honor of Sheldon Hackney

The Long Civil War: New Explorations of America's Enduring Conflict

Rate this book!

Write a review?