- Headline
-
Mrs. Roosevelt Quits D.A.R., Is Indication, Because Of Ban On Negro Contralto's Concert
- Publication Date
- Tuesday, February 28, 1939
- Historical Event
-
Marian Anderson Performs at the Lincoln Memorial
This database includes 936 articles about this event - Article Type
- Newspaper
- Location
- Page Section and Number
- 1
- Author/Byline
- INS
- Image Text
- Washington, February 27—(INS)—Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt today indicated she has resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution in protest against its refusal to allow a concert by the Negro contralto, Marian Anderson, in Constitution Hall. The D. A. R. owns the hall.
The First Lady told her press conference she had quit "a national organization," lest her continued membership be regarded as approval of an action by it which brought wide discussion in the press.
Asked if the organization was the D. A. R., she said the question should be addressed to its officers. She said she felt the announcement of her resignation should come from the organization concerned, rather than from her.
Mrs. Henry W. Robert, D. A. R. President-General, was on the way here from a series of Pacific Coast state D. A. R. meetings and was unavailable for comment. Other officers declined to discuss the reported resignation.
The First Lady recalled pointedly, however, that she publicly had protested yesterday a decision of the District of Columbia Board of Education in banning a concert by Miss Anderson in the Central High School auditorium.
The singer's sponsors had sought use of the auditorium after Constitution Hall was denied her. Mrs. Roosevelt's telegram, read at a meeting of 1,500 protesters in Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church, declared:
"I regret extremely that Washington is to be deprived of hearing Marian Anderson, a great artist."
The protest, observers noted, was so worded as to apply to the action of the D.A. R. as well as the Board of Education.
The First Lady told newswomen she had joined the D. A. R. at the organization's request upon first coming to Washington in 1933 and on condition that the group certify her lineal descent from a soldier in the American Revolution. This, she said, the D. A. R. had done.
—
San Francisco, February 27—(AP)—Marian Anderson, Negro contralto, said today "it would be very interesting" if Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt had quit the Daugnters of the American Revolution because that organization snubbed the singer.
"But I cannot comment in any way," Miss Anderson said. - History Unfolded Contributor
- Amy P.
- Location of Research
- Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Learn More about this Historical Event: Marian Anderson Performs at the Lincoln Memorial
- Marian Anderson and the Easter Sunday Concert, April 9, 1939 (National Archives and Records Administration, Rediscovering Black History)
- File copy of letter from Eleanor Roosevelt to president general of the DAR. (National Archives and Records Administration)
- Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Anderson (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library)
- February 26, 1939 - Eleanor Roosevelt Resigns from the Daughters of the American Revolution (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library)
- Marian Anderson Performs on the National Mall (National Geographic Society)
Bibliography
Arsenault, Raymond. The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert that Awakened America. Bloomsbury Press, 2009.
Black, Allida. “Championing a Champion: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Marian Anderson ‘Freedom Concert’.”Presidential Studies Quarterly (Fall 1990), 719–736.
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