In February, which is officially “Black History Month,” it is timely to recall the significant role played by Rye resident Caroline O’Day in advancing race relations in America. It occurred in 1939, during O’Day’s third term in Congress.
Plans were being made for the renowned Marian Anderson to give a concert at Howard University in Washington, D.C. It was then decided that Anderson’s reputation and popularity warranted a larger venue.
An attempt was made to hold the concert at Constitution Hall, which was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution organization. However, the DAR refused the request, because of its “white artists only” policy. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a long-time member of the DAR, immediately resigned from the organization and published her protest of the DAR decision.
Arrangements were quickly developed by a committee to hold an outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial, and organizers sought out sponsors to demonstrate wide public support. Leading this effort as chair of the committee was O’Day, a close friend of President and Mrs. Roosevelt and a noted champion of civil rights.
O’Day’s congressional office became the center for planning the concert. Telegrams were sent to a wide variety of influential people, who were leaders in politics, government, and the arts, but the primary goal was to avoid having the concert appear to be a partisan event. The aim was to have it be a celebration of democracy for all Americans.
Through the work of O’Day and others, the concert enlisted over 130 sponsors, including Walter White, then Secretary of the NAACP, as well as representatives of Howard University. The list of sponsors included such noted performers as Geraldine Farrar, Katharine Hepburn, and Leopold Stokowski, as well as members of Congress, the Supreme Court Justices, and the Cabinet.
The concert arrangements at the Lincoln Memorial were made possible because the Department of the Interior, headed by Secretary Harold Ickes, had responsibility for the monuments in Washington. Walter White and Sol Hurok, Anderson’s artistic manager, also played important roles in the planning.
It was cool but clear on that Easter day in 1939 when Anderson, escorted by O’Day, stepped forward to the microphones set up for the attendees and a radio audience. The stage was filled with more than 200 dignitaries, and stretching from the Lincoln Memorial as far as Anderson could see, was an integrated crowd of more than 75,000 people.
Anderson later admitted that the experience filled her with emotion, but her training allowed her to begin her planned vocal performance seamlessly with “America,” followed by an operatic aria, Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” and three spirituals. As an encore, she sang “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”
There are numerous online written and video accounts of the concert that are well worth visiting, including an NPR program called “Denied a Stage, She Sang for a Nation.” For elementary school readers there is the Caldecott Award-winning children’s book, “When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson, the Voice of a Century,” written by Pam Muñoz Ryan and illustrated by Brian Selznick.
For more information about the life and accomplishments of Caroline O’Day, see my article: “Caroline O’Day, The Gentlewoman from New York,” which can be found online at (https://www.jstor.org/stable/23187327).
