12. PERSUASION – The Persuasion of Marian Anderson
When news got out that Marian was denied the Constitution Hall stage, public officials, religious leaders, and citizens from across the world protested. The most significant protester was the First Lady herself, Eleanor Roosevelt. Publicly, she announced her dis- gust with how Marian had been treated. Privately, she persuaded her husband to allow the concert to take place at the most fitting site of all: the Lincoln Memorial — the monument that honored the man who, in the words of a black leader of the day, “vindicated the honor of a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the propo- sition that all men are created equal.” The concert would take place on April 9, 1939, Easter Sunday, at the base of the Lincoln Memorial in the shadow of the Washington Monument. On the morning of the performance, Marian stood at the back of the stage and looked over the crowd. Her breath was taken away. “My heart leaped wildly, and I could not talk,” she would write later. Before her were seventy-five thousand waiting to hear her powerful voice; a gathering of black and white, young and old, rich and poor that stretched as far as the eye could see. Millions more were listening on their radios at home.
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