Marian Anderson

Marian Anderson married Orpheus H. Fisher on 17 July 1943 at Bethel in Connecticut. Orpheus was an architect and Marian was her second wife. Her husband had initially proposed her when they were both teenagers.

Marian Anderson had a stepson named James Fisher by this marriage. James was her husband’s son from his earlier marriage to Ida Gould.

The couple had bought a sprawling 100-acre property at Danbury in Connecticut after they searched extensively in places like New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. The property was Marian’s home for about five decades.

Marian Anderson was born on 27 February 1897, in Philadelphia, to John Berkley Anderson and Annie Delilah Rucker.

Marian was the oldest of three daughters and was only 6 years old when she joined the choir as a member at a church called Union Baptist Church. She was given a nickname “Baby Contralto”.

Marian’s father was an ice and coal dealer and was supportive of his daughter’s interests in music. Her father bought her a piano when Marian was just 8-year-old. Since the family did not have enough means to send her for music lessons, the immensely talented Marian taught music herself.

Marian lost her father when she was barely 12 years old and her mother had to raise the children single-handedly. However, this personal tragedy did not stop Marian from pursuing her musical ambitions. She was still deeply attached to her church as well as its choir where she rehearsed different parts such as bass, tenor, alto, soprano in the presence of her family till the time she perfected them.

Anderson’s family could not afford high school education for her nor could they pay for her music lessonS. However, her passion for singing helped her stay active in the musical activities in churches where she joined the adult choir. Her involvement with the Camp Fire Girls and Baptists’ Young People’s Union opened some musical opportunities.

With help from Reverend Wesley Parks, pastor of her church and directors of the People’s Chorus, she was able to attend singing lessons from Mary Saunders Patterson. Eventually, she succeeded in graduating from the South Philadelphia high School in 1921. Sadly, her application in the Philadelphia Music Academy (now University of the Arts), all-white school, was turned down for reasons of ‘we don’t take colored’.

Braving all obstacles with grit, Anderson sought higher career opportunities by seeking studies with Agnes Reifsnyder and Giuseppe Boghetti in her native city. All through the time she got support from the Philadelphia Black Community.

She got her first break in 1925, after she earned the first prize for singing amazingly in a competition that was sponsored by the New York Philharmonic (NYP). This opened new avenues in her career.

Her achievements in the competition gave her the chance to perform in a grand concert arranged with the orchestra on August 26, 1925. The performance was highly appreciated by the music critics and the audience.

Marian Anderson holds the record of being the first African-American to have sung at the metropolitan Opera House in New York, both in the years 1955 and in 1956.

She amazed the world by singing at the presidential inaugurations of John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In 1957, she made extensive concert tour of the far east of the US State Department and India. Her European singing tour in the 1920s was the most popular of her times.