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Elaine Amir
Executive Director
Johns Hopkins
Montgomery County
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A Meeting of the Minds
Positive energy. Good vibes. Whatever you call it, it’s a sensation you get when you are in the midst of people who feel good about something.
On Sunday, April 12, on the National Mall, I felt the vibes. There was hope in the air. The occasion was a concert that made us look back in time to honor the celebrated opera singer, Marian Anderson. In April 1939, Anderson was scheduled to perform at Constitution Hall, but her concert was canceled. The Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.), an organization formed to encourage patriotism, had refused to allow Anderson to sing in the hall because of her skin color. In response, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the D.A.R. and arranged for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial – 75,000 people attended, and the concert became a historical milestone for civil rights advocates.
This past Easter Sunday, 70 years after the famous Lincoln Memorial concert, several thousand people gathered to hear Denyce Graves, internationally renowned opera star and Washington native, perform the songs that Marian Anderson delivered at her historic concert. The sun was shining and the crowd was jubilant, singing “America the Beautiful” along with Graves.
And when former Secretary of State Colin Powell read in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,” there were smiles all around.
Then the audience grew quiet as 200 individuals stood at their seats and waited to be called up for the induction ceremony. They were to become American citizens. At the podium, the master of ceremonies began to call out their countries of origin—Afghanistan, Angola, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belorus, China, Ghana, Guinea… Indonesia, Kazakhstan… It was thrilling. It was America. And it was an America to be proud of that day.
And how did members of the D.A.R., an organization of women who can trace their lineage back to American Revolutionary times, feel about the concert? Actually, they were sponsors of the event. |
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