Marian Anderson Quotes

Everyone has a gift for something, even if it is the gift of being a good friend.

As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.

When you stop having dreams and ideals--well, you might as well stop altogether.

Prayer begins where human capacity ends.

Sometimes you're overwhelmed when a thing comes, and you do not realize the magnitude of the affair at that moment. When you get away from it, you wonder, did it really happen to you.

Sometimes racial prejudice is like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing it because the feel of it is irritating.

A person has to be busy to be alive.

There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the make the first move - and he, in turn, waits for you.

When Marian Anderson, the black contralto, came to Princeton for a concert in 1937, the Nassau Inn refused her a room. So Einstein invited her to stay at his house on Mercer Street, in what was a deeply personal as well as a publicly symbolic gesture. Two

We were singing for Dr. Du Bois' spirit, for the invaluable contributions he made, for his shining intellect and his courage. To many of us he was the first American Negro intellectual. We knew about Jack Johnson and Jesse Owens and Joe Louis. We were proud of Louis Armstrong and Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes. We memorized the verses of James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Countee Cullen, but they were athletes, musicians and poets, and White folks thought all those talents came naturally to Negroes. So, while we survived because of those contributors and their contributions, the powerful White world didn't stand in awe of them. Sadly, we also tended to take those brilliances for granted. But W.E.B. Du Bois and of course Paul Robeson were different, held on a higher or at least on a different plateau than the others.

None of us is responsible for the complexion of his skin. This fact of nature offers no clue to the character or quality of the person underneath.

Einstein also became a supporter of racial tolerance. When Marian Anderson, the black contralto, came to Princeton for a concert in 1937, the Nassau Inn refused her a room. So Einstein invited her to stay at his house on Mercer Street, in what was a deeply personal as well as a publicly symbolic gesture. Two years later, when she was barred from performing in Washington’s Constitution Hall, she gave what became a historic free concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Whenever she returned to Princeton, she stayed with Einstein, her last visit coming just two months before he died.63 One

Sometimes, it's like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't feel it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating. (regarding prejudice and discrimination)

This process taught us to test and challenge the prevailing wisdom about the paucity of African American artifacts. What we discovered was a paucity of effort and creativity rather than a scarcity of collections. I hope that our efforts will spur other institutions to embrace community-driven collecting and commit the resources to look inside the basements and garages for material that was once deemed less important to the interpretive agenda of museums. Not every cultural organization will discover items from Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, or Marian Anderson, but every museum that makes the effort will find discover items from Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, or Marian Anderson, but every museum, but every museum that makes the effort will find objects that document the lives, the work, the resiliency, and the dreams of their community.

I named you Fauna because I loved Robinson Jeffers’ poem about Flora and Fauna. I asked that they keep that name. I wanted only two things, I didn’t think they’d let me have what I wanted, but one was that you be named Fauna, and the other was that you at least have on your birth certificate that your father was Negro. Because in my little world I believed that black people were made of far superior stuff than the whites I knew. All the great men that I knew, all the great girls that I knew were black: Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Josh White,

We helped plow the fields, build the dams, write the poems and sing the music of America. Are not all Americans proud, of Doree Miller, of Frederick Douglass, of Paul Robeson, of Joe Louis, of Marian Anderson

on opera singer Marian Anderson and her fight against racial segregation. “I often get terribly discouraged,” Marlon wrote, “when I think that with all the extensive techniques we have at hand to communicate with each other, so remarkably little is accomplished.” He feared the problem was not with the technology, but rather, the fact “that the only thing most of us want to communicate is hatred and distruction [sic].” Murrow’s program gave him hope, Marlon said. “God knows it’s hard enough to communicate with one’s self, much less anybody else,” but at least Murrow was making an effort. The broadcaster responded by asking Marlon to guest-host his show while he was away. Scheduling conflicts meant that Marlon couldn’t accept his offer, but he hoped

There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the first move - and he, in turn, waits for you.

It might have sounded peculiar, but it was in seemingly mundane moments like those—when she told a white man something so basic about herself that made his eyes boggle out of his head—that she felt closest to all Black people who were Black long before she was: all the enslaved Black men and women who impressed white people with their reading abilities; all of the Black men and women who became doctors and lawyers and other things people said they couldn't. Garrett Morgan, Marian Anderson, Diahann Carroll. Barack Obama. Her parents. Anyone who had impressed a white person simply by existing. Which, given the number of times Black people had been lynched and raped and beaten down over the last four hundred years, should have been every Black person.