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The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights

Author	Russell Freedman
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Biography
Published	2004
Publisher	Clarion Books
Media type	Print
Pages	128 pp
ISBN	978-0547480343

The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights is a 2004 children's nonfiction book by author Russell Freedman. It received both a Sibert Medal and a Newbery Honor Book award in 2005. The book tells the story of Marian Anderson, an African-American singer who during her journey to establishing a singing career inadvertently became an activist for equal rights.

Plot

From an early age, Marian Anderson displayed a natural talent for singing. As a child, she sang in church and in other local events where she would earn up to fifty cents. Throughout high school, Marian continued singing and eventually began taking vocal lessons. She was invited to sing at an event in Georgia where, for the first time, she was introduced to the segregation associated with the Jim Crow laws. After high school she continued touring, encountering Jim Crow laws along the way.

Her appearances were well-received and praised, with occasional negative reviews. In 1924 she appeared at New York City’s Town Hall where many seats remained empty. Newspaper articles described her singing that night as faulty and under-developed. Deeply affected by this, Marian refused to sing for months. After her hiatus, her vocal coach, Giuseppe Boghetti, entered her in a contest where Marian won, beating about 300 other contestants.

Marian Anderson traveled overseas to England where she gained a newfound fanbase and found herself in a segregation-free environment. When she returned home, she replaced her pianist - a good friend of Marian’s - and began working with a Finnish accompanist, Kosti Vehanen - a critical move for Marian’s career, to work professionally with a white man in the United States. In 1936 Marian was invited to perform at the White House by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In her newspaper column the next day, Eleanor Roosevelt recalled the event and praised Anderson’s voice and singing career.

Marian Anderson was continually prohibited from singing at Constitution Hall because of a “whites only” policy. She was driven to continue trying, not to make a statement about her race, but because she felt she had the right as an artist to perform there. To send a message against the inequality between whites and blacks, a concert at the Lincoln Memorial was arranged for Marian to perform in. She performed in front of a crowd of 75,000 in one of the most important and influential performances of her life.

Marian continued to advocate for equal rights and performing in well-known venues. She sang in Washington in the very same event where Martin Luther King, Jr. presented his famous "I Have A Dream" speech.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt became a vehement supporter of Marian Anderson and equal rights, which eventually turned into a lifelong friendship with the singer. Marian Anderson died on April 8, 1993, a day before the anniversary of her concert at Lincoln Memorial. She was 96 years old.

Critical Reception

The book has received mostly positive reviews. It has been praised for Freedman's description of Anderson's trajectory through text and various black and white images. Roger Sutton of Horn Book Magazine gives credit to Freedman for depicting Anderson's "accomplishments of an individual as both an actor in and an emblem of her time." School Library Journal declares the book to be "an important volume for all students of music, biography, and history."

Awards

It received both a Newbery Honor Book award and a Sibert Medal in 2005.

See also

• List of children's non-fiction writers