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The RecordThey made it impossible to look away

Marian Anderson

1897–1993United States

Barred from Constitution Hall because she was Black, she sang instead on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939 to seventy-five thousand people. The citation below is from the week after.

They made it impossible to look away

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Bessie Smith1894–1937Josephine Baker1906–1975Langston Hughes1902–1967Zora Neale Hurston1891–1960Paul Robeson1898–1976Duke Ellington1899–1974