Flip to Marian Anderson (lower left) sings on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to more than 75,000, April 9, 1939.Close Window
Credit: Forms part of the Visual Materials from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records, Library of Congress
In July, 1939, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt presented Marian Anderson the Spingarn Medal, awarded each year by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for outstanding achievement by an African American. In the decades that followed, Anderson would cement her reputation as one of nation's great operatic singers. Conductor Arturo Toscanini would call hers "the voice that comes once in a hundred years."
