Mary’s voice would often be described as angelic. By the time she was six, her church choir knew she had an amazing gift, and nicknamed her "Baby Contralto."
Her family lived on the wrong side of the tracks and though her father worked hard, they barely managed to survive. That did not prevent him from buying Mary a second-hand piano. Unfortunately, there was no money left for piano lessons and the young prodigy had to learn to play on her own.
Everyone who heard her sing knew the child was gifted. She could already sing all four choral parts: soprano, alto, tenor and bass.
Her father died when she was just 12 and left the family penniless. It was then that her church choir pooled what little they had and managed to collect $500 to pay a gifted vocal teacher to work with the gifted child.
The choir’s commitment to Marian Anderson quickly paid off for her. She won a New York Philharmonic singing competition. She performed to rave reviews at Carnegie Hall. She soon became well-known in both the U.S. and Europe. Celebrated Italian conductor, Auturo Toscanini described her singing saying, “A voice like hers comes along only once in a century.”
In 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her per-form at Constitution Hall in Washington D.C., First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the group and helped organize an Easter concert at the Lincoln Memorial. More than 75,000 gathered to hear her sing, and millions more listened by radio.
