Her bravura performance 54 years ago marked one of the turning points in America's struggle for racial equality. Barred by the Daughters of the American Revolution from performing in Constitution Hall, Anderson, then 42, found an ally in Eleanor Roosevelt. After resigning from the DAR herself, the First Lady persuaded Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to invite Anderson to sing at Lincoln's monument.
From her childhood in Philadelphia, where her mother took in laundry and her father peddled ice, Anderson was judged not by her talents, but by her skin color. Turned away by a local music school, she perfected her craft with the help of voice teachers, only to be excluded from concert stages as well as hotels and restaurants. In 1955 she became the first black to sing with New York's Metropolitan Opera. Yet for much of her career, she suffered Jim crow insults. When officials presented her the key to Atlantic City, no hotel in town would give her a room. Throughout, she faced the bigots with dignity. "You lose a lot of time hating people," she said.
After her 1965 retirement, the childless Anderson lived in Danbury, Conn., with husband Orpheus Fisher, an architect who died in 1985. By the time of her death, one of her bittersweet dreams had come true: "Other Negroes," she had predicted, "will have the career I dreamed of."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
