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Voice of America

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In “The Sound of Freedom,” Raymond Arsenault, the John Hope Franklin professor of Southern history at the University of South Florida, recounts a less familiar, yet still defining moment that unfolded at the Lincoln Memorial. On Easter Sunday, 1939, the African-American contralto Marian Anderson, the granddaughter of former slaves, performed at the memorial as 75,000 people gathered on the Mall and millions of others tuned in by radio. The concert, Arsenault argues, made Anderson “an icon” and signified “a milestone in the history of American democracy.”
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Here is more on Marian Anderson's Lincoln Memorial Concert

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