Friday, April 11, 2025 – IT TOOK DECADES TO INTEGRATE ALL ASPECTS OF THE DAR

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Marian Anderson & DAR Diversity History

NEW YORK ALMANACK


Friday, April 11, 2025


 ISSUE #1422

Marian Anderson & DAR Diversity History

April 10, 2025 by Editorial Staff

World-renowned Black opera singer Marian Anderson (1897 – 1993) got her first big break after winning a 1925 singing competition sponsored by the New York Philharmonic.  She performed at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan in 1955, becoming the first Black artist to do so. Throughout her career, Anderson performed all over the world while also lending her talent to the struggle against racial injustice. The granddaughter of Black people once enslaved in Virginia, she sang at the March on Washington in 1963 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom that same year.

Back in April 1939 however, Anderson was denied access to auditoriums in Washington, DC, and instead performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Anderson, a contralto, had been invited to sing at the nation’s capital as part of a concert series hosted by Howard University. Because she was already well known at the time, having spent years touring in Europe and the U.S., the university tried to book the Daughters of the American Revolution’s (DAR) Constitution Hall, the city’s largest indoor auditorium for her performance.

The facility had opened in 1929, but in 1932 the DAR had adopted a rule excluding African American musicians from performing there in response to complaints by some members against “mixed seating.” They refused to let Anderson perform in the space.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who was first lady at the time and a DAR member, resigned from the organization in protest. They still refused to allow Anderson to perform.

In her letter to the DAR, Roosevelt wrote, “I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist… You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed.”

Anderson then asked to use one of the local white public school’s auditoriums, but the D.C. Board of Education denied her request as well.

Because no other indoor venues in the city could or would accommodate Anderson’s performance, her manager Sol Hurok and Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP, with the support of Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, arranged with then Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to allow her to perform on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

(No African-American has ever been appointed Secretary of the Interior; Gale Norton, the first women to serve in that role was appointed by by President George W. Bush and served form 2001 to 2006).

Anderson performed at the Memorial on Easter Sunday, April 9, dressed in a winter coat against the cold temperatures and standing on a makeshift stage.

A crowd of over 75,000 people attended the event, and its believed that millions more listened over the radio. Anderson opened her performance with “America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee),” written in 1831.

(Watch a newsreel report about the event and hear Anderson sing.)

After Anderson’s Lincoln Memorial concert, she subsequently sang at Constitution Hall on a number of occasions, starting with a concert to aid World War Two relief in January 1943 attended by Eleanor Roosevelt.

The DAR officially changed its “white performers only” policy in 1952, but the fight to integrate the DAR didn’t end there however.

The organization, along with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Sons of the American Revolution, were all formed as all-white organizations in the late 19th century.

Almost 100 years later, in 1977, Karen Batchelor Farmer (now Karen Batchelor) from Detroit, was admitted to a chapter in Michigan as the first known DAR African American member.

In 1984 however, Lena Santos Ferguson was denied membership in the Washington DC DAR chapter because she was black.

Ferguson’s father Oviedo Santos was born in Cape Verde and came to the United States as a young boy. He worked on the docks at the Erie Lackawanna Railroad Station in Hoboken, NJ, and ran a coal barge in New York Harbor. The Santos’ had eight children and raised more than 40 foster children.

Lena Furgeson’s mother’s parents were Alphonso Gay, a white Maine sea captain who sailed coastal schooners, and Rosa King Gay, a black woman of Indigenous heritage. Alphonso Gay lost his life at the Battle of Cold Spring Harbor, Virginia during the Civil War.

His ancestors served during the Revolutionary War (and also helped settle towns in Massachusetts and Maine as early as 1630), thus making Furgeson eligible for membership.

Sarah M. King, the President General of the DAR at the time, told The Washington Post that DAR’s chapters have autonomy in determining members, saying “Being black is not the only reason why some people have not been accepted into chapters. There are other reasons: divorce, spite, neighbors’ dislike. I would say being black is very far down the line… There are a lot of people who are troublemakers. You wouldn’t want them in there because they could cause some problems.”

King later qualified her comments, saying that Ferguson should have been admitted, and that her application had been handled “inappropriately”.

When Furgeson was finally admitted to membership in 1984, the DAR changed its bylaws to bar discrimination “on the basis of race or creed.” In addition, King announced a resolution to recognize “the heroic contributions of black patriots in the American Revolution.”

Since that time, the DAR has supported a project to identify African Americans, Native Americans, and individuals of mixed race who were patriots during the American Revolution.

In 2018, Reisha Raney became the first black woman elected to serve as a DAR state officer in Maryland. In 2019, Wilhelmena Rhodes Kelly became the first African American elected to the DAR National Board of Management when she was installed as New York State Regent.

In June 2023, at the 132nd DAR Continental Congress, the organization voted to add an amendment to their bylaws that states the chapters “may not discriminate against an eligible applicant based on race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.”

Colonel Teagan Livingston, a transgender woman and retired United States Air Force officer, joined the Daughters of the American Revolution in New Jersey in 2022.

Today, according to their website, “the Daughters of the American Revolution proudly practices a non-discrimination policy and encourages and celebrates diversity in our organization.”

In a statement posted to a webpage devoted to the barring of Anderson the DAR states “The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution deeply regrets that it did not give Marian Anderson the opportunity to perform her 1939 Easter concert in Constitution Hall, but today we join all Americans in grateful recognition that her historic performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial was a pivotal point in the struggle for racial equality.”

DAR members participate in a variety of veteran and citizenship-oriented projects, including more than 200,000 volunteer hours annually to veterans in U.S. Veterans Administration hospitals and non-VA facilities; offering support to America’s service personnel in current conflicts abroad through care packages, phone cards and other needed items; sponsoring programs promoting the Constitution; participating in naturalization ceremonies; and marking and caring for veterans graves.

If you are a woman and think you’re related to someone who served in or supported the American Revolution, visit the DAR website to learn more about membership.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

The hall between  Island Houses 555 an 575 Main Street
is now decorated in large reproduction photographs
of the Island. In a project between the RIHS and Island House
a group of historic photos now decorate the hallway.

CREDITS

Illustrations, from above: A kodachrome photograph of Marian Anderson taken January 14, 1940 by Carl Van Vechten, cropped (Yale University Library); Anderson performing at the Lincoln Memorial, April 9, 1939 (National Archives); and DAR Constitution Hall (courtesy DAR).

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

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