Opening Ceremony for DOI Diversity Days
October 6, 2009
This is a Podcast from the U.S. Department of the the Interior.
The 2009 DOI Diversity Days observance began Tuesday October 6th with an opening ceremony that featured music from Ivy Anderson Hylton, a relative of Marian Anderson, a singer that in 1939 was denied the stage at the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Constitution Hall because of discrimination. Then Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes responded by arranging a free open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for Easter Sunday. On April 9, 1939 Marian sang before 75,000 people and millions of radio listeners and later she performed for the Roosevelts and other VIPs at an evening concert in the very same auditorium at the Department of the Interior where Ms. Anderson-Hylton sang Tuesday. She was accompanied by the same Steinway grand piano that was used in 1939 which was given its own historical designation in honor of Ickes and Anderson in 2004. Here is soprano Ivy Anderson Hylton singing a traditional spiritual “Walk with me.”
- Music
This has been a podcast from the U.S. Department of the Interior, I’m Ron Tull, Washington.