Raymond Arsenault's THE SOUND OF FREEDOM reviewed in the Boston Globe

Three score and 10 years ago, a concert emancipated a dream

By Saul Austerlitz
April 26, 2009; Boston Globe

"The crowd condenses. It's standing room only, flowing the length of the reflecting pool and down West Potomac Park. The floor of this church is grass. The columns of this nave are budding trees. The vault above, an Easter sky." The date is April 9, 1939, the setting is the Lincoln Memorial, and the assembled audience is gathered prayerfully to hear Marian Anderson sing. Delia Dailey, proud scion of a "Talented Tenth" family, is about to meet the love of her life, physicist and German Jewish émigré David Strom. Black and white, African and European, intersect and commingle, and the dream of a race-blind, mulatto future is, if only for a brief hour, attained.

Delia and David are only figments of the imagination of novelist Richard Powers in his masterful 2003 work, "The Time of Our Singing," but his choice of Anderson's concert as heady symbol of racial integration is deliberate, and in its own way perfect. The story of how Anderson ended up on the steps of the memorial, performing before a crowd of tens of thousands that included her most prominent champion, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, is a tangle of the miraculous and the enervating and is well told, if overly padded, by Raymond Arsenault in "The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America."

It all began with little thought for posterity. Anderson - acclaimed by conductor Arturo Toscanini as "a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years" - was planning an American tour, after a triumphant European season. Washington, D.C., an important concert stop both for its status as the nation's capital and because of its large African-American community, was the largest city in the country without a municipal auditorium. In fact, the only venue of any size was Constitution Hall, owned and run by the Daughters of the American Revolution, a conservative women's organization.

The DAR flatly refused to book the black artist to play their whites-only hall. "No date will ever be available for Marian Anderson in Constitution Hall," her manager Sol Hurok was informed. The hideous irony of a group devoted to the ideals of the American Revolution turning an African-American performer away from a venue named after the document that guarantees freedom and equality to all was not lost on anyone. "I don't know what Constitution Hall will be used for that night," the Washington Post acidly observed. "Probably for a lecture on how everybody is free and equal in the United States."

For the full review, click here.

Raymond Arsenault's THE SOUND OF FREEDOM featured in The New Republic

April 26, 2009; The New Republic

The Civil Rights Struggle Was Not So Long

I am not doctor tout va bienovich. But a review in Sunday's Globe of The Sounds of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America by Raymond Arsenault makes a tonic historical point. I know that many of our young readers (and some of our middle-aged readers, too) don't know who Marian Anderson was. She was an ear-riveting gospel singer and truly amazing operatic soprano (permitted on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera only near the beginning of her decline) who in 1939 was denied the rental of Constitution Hall which was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Oh, yes, before I forget, Anderson was a Negro when "negro" was an advance on colored.

The D.A.R. was not, as we always knew, committed to the ultimate principles of our revolution but to the narrow and confining habits of racial disdain. In any case, Franklin D. Roosevelt heard about this travesty--or perhaps it was Eleanor--and offered Anderson's impresario, Sol Hurok, the Lincoln Memorial as a venue for the singer's concert.

It is seventy years now since Marian Anderson sang to a mixed crowd on the Washington Mall. Close to that anniversary, the American people marked the first hundred days of Barack Obama's presidency which, of course, was inaugurated on that very mall. History crawls slowly, and its achievements never come fast enough. But, on reflection and even accounting for the bravery and pain experienced in the civil rights struggle, the journey to the end, which is also the journey to the beginning, was not so long.

Moying Li's SNOW FALLING IN SPRING reviewed in Inkweaver

Posted by NathanKP
April 2, 2009

“Snow Falling in Spring,” is a historical biography by Moying Li, about her life growing up during the tumultuous Chinese Cultural Revolution. Moying Li begins her book with a description of her innocent childhood before the Cultural Revolution, playing in the courtyard of her family home with her friends and the family pets. Then she describes the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and its first manifestation in her childhood world: a large furnace for producing iron and steel. This furnace was erected in the courtyard where she liked to play.

During the Cultural Revolution the Chinese government announced that China could catch up to Western countries in one Great Leap Forward, if every citizen worked hard to increase the output of goods, food, etc. The Chinese eagerly embraced this bold plan. Moying Li describes how her initial apprehension about the steel furnace turned into wholehearted approval. She even went to the kitchen to pull out pots and pans to melt in the furnace. Despite the energy and enthusiasm put into the furnace project, though, the result is failure:

In the courtyard, Da Jiu and our neighbors sat on the woodpile, their heads bowed like those of defeated soldiers. The fire in the furnace had died, leaving a lingering smell of burned wood.

“What happened, Da Jiu?”

“The iron and steel we made was not good enough.” He sighed. I stared at him in disbelief. “We simply did not know enough to make it right,” he added.

Now I was sad, too. Climbing up the woodpile to sit next to him, I leaned my head against his shoulder, as crestfallen as he and our neighbors.

“But we tried so hard.”

“Yes,” he said. “We did.”

The failure of the furnace sets the tone for much of the rest of “Snow Falling in Spring.” Although the Cultural Revolution had grand goals, carrying out the plans was more difficult than it seemed and often had unanticipated results. For example, Moying Li mentions another government plan: to eliminate the sparrow. The idea was that this small bird ate seeds and crops, so by killing off the species in China food production would be boosted. Although the war against sparrows was highly successful and millions were killed, the next year saw crop failure as insects that would have normally been kept in check by the sparrows ravaged the fields.

Perhaps the most memorable statement in “Snow Falling in Spring” is found at the beginning of the fourth chapter.

Most people cannot remember when their childhood ended. I, on the other hand, have a crystal clear memory of the moment. It happened one night, in the summer of 1966, when my elementary school headmaster hanged himself.

Moying Li starts by describing her early days in school. She paints a vivid picture of caring, fun loving, teachers and interesting assignments that kept her busy and happy. But the atmosphere in Moying Li's school changed when the Red Guard movement began to gain momentum. Basically the Red Guard was a vast student group that developed as a backlash movement in response to Western ideology being taught in Chinese schools. The Red Guard felt that much of the instruction in Chinese schools was really propaganda designed to corrupt Eastern minds and turn young students away from Communism, toward Democracy. Whether this was the case or not, the Red Guard made it their job to expose school officials that they felt were not showing enough support for the Communist government.

Moying Li does an excellent job of showing the steps that led the Red Guard from watchdog status to full fledged militant terrorism. Then she shows how Red Guard violence touched people progressively closer to her, first her favorite teachers, then the school headmaster, and finally her own family.

For the full article, click here.

Robin Abrahams, author of the forthcoming MIND OVER MANNERS, featured on the Today Show

Robin Abrahams, author of the forthcoming Mind Over Manners, was featured on the Today Show to discuss unemployment etiquette.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Walter Lewin, author of the forthcoming FOR THE LOVE OF PHYSICS, featured in Time

College Too Expensive? Try YouTube


By AP/JAKE COYLE
April 9, 2009; Time

In 2002, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched the MIT OpenCourseWare with the plan to make virtually all the school's courses available for free online.

As a visitor, one almost feels like you've somehow sneaked through a firewall. There's no registration and within a minute, you can be watching Prof. Walter Lewin demonstrate the physics of a pendulum by being one himself. (See the 50 best websites of 2008.)

Last December, MIT announced that OCW had been visited by more than 50 million people worldwide. But why would institutions that charges a huge price for admission give away their primary product?

Ben Hubbard, program manager of the webcast project for the University of California, Berkeley, believes it has always been a part of a university's vocation. "The mission of the university has been the same since our charter days back in the 1800s," said Hubbard. "It's threefold: there's teaching, research and community service. Probably in the 1800s they weren't thinking of it as the globe, but technology has really broken down those barriers of geography."

In 1995, Berkeley launched its webcasts with video and audio webcasts of classes.

In 2007, Apple created iTunes U, a service that allows schools to make material accessible only internally by students or externally by anyone. Most schools do a little of both.

To read the full article, click here.

Ramin Ganeshram, author of the forthcoming CURRY CHRONICLES, featured in Forbes

Trinidad: The America Of The Caribbean

With a three-year economic lag behind the U.S., Trinidad should be preparing for the worst.


By Ramin Ganeshram
April 20, 2009; Forbes

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- When I was a child visiting my father's country of Trinidad, where progress, it was often said, was roughly about 20 years behind the States, I could see this was true. By 1980, we had two color television sets in our home in New York, but the small 12-inch black and white TV my father brought to his family in Chaguanas was the only one on the block. The cases upon cases of beer and soda he bought to stock the kitchen when we visited were a wonder of excess to the neighbors, and our American clothes and shoes were a source of endless fascination to the local kids. Except for Coca Cola, Pepsi and some Nestle products, there were few American conveniences to be had at the local supermarket, which was little more than what would be called a corner shop in New York.

By the 1990s, progress had leaped to being just 10 years behind the States. My father's village had become a bustling metropolitan area in its own right. American jeans, T-shirts and sneakers jammed shops vying for space with locally made Panama suits and East Indian clothes. Major American health and beauty companies peddled their locally branded lotions and cosmetics on the shelves of the local chemist shops. Bootlegged CDs sold on the street featuring both American pop music and as-yet-unreleased soca and calypso tracks.

When I was there in 2005, the gap had reduced to five years. Malls had popped up around the country, mostly featuring Trinidadian versions of American products. "Bling" abounded: cellphones, baggy pants and thick gold chains on young men; girls with belly shirts and cleavage, a far cry from the socially conservative society I knew, influenced by Hindu, Muslim and conservative Christian mores, carnival-time being the only exception.

To read the full article, click here.

Deborah Cramer, author of SMITHSONIAN OCEAN, to speak at Newburyport Literary Festival

Deborah Cramer will speak at the Newburyport Literary Festival on April 25th, in Newburyport, Mass.

In addition to Cramer, on the roster for this year's festival are literary luminaries from every genre. To name just a few, this includes Anita Shreve, Julia Alverez, Elinor Lipman, Richard Bausch, Peter Orner, Lewis Turco, Anne Easter Smith, David Crouse, Junot Diaz, and Andre Dubus III.

To get more information about the festival, click here.

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE selected as BookBrowse's Editors Choice

Featured Book for April 18th

Passing Strange, by Martha A. Sandweiss

Passing Strange was featured on BookBrowse's homepage as the "Editor's Choice" book for three days, until April 18th.

BookBrowse is currently serving about 1.5 million page views to 360,000 unique visitors each month.

To learn more about the author, read an excerpt or a review, click here.

Raymond Arsenault, author of THE SOUND OF FREEDOM, featured in Associated Press Article

Concert pays tribute to Marian Anderson

By Natasha T. Metzler, Associated Press Writer
April 13, 2009; AP

More than 2,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for a concert honoring the 70th anniversary of Marian Anderson's historic performance there in 1939.

Because of the color of her skin, Anderson was denied the opportunity to perform at nearby Constitution Hall and local high school. So, instead, the opera singer sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in April 1939 to a 75,000-person crowd of blacks and whites standing together.

In the Sunday afternoon sunshine, African-American opera star Denyce Graves performed three of the same songs Anderson sang 70 years ago: "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)," "O, Mio Fernando" and "Ave Maria."

Wearing one of Anderson's old dresses, Graves called her predecessor "one of my greatest heroes."

"It is the honor of my life and my career to be celebrating this day of freedom with you," she told the audience.

She joked that when she looked over Anderson's performance list and saw "O, Mio Fernando" she thought "my God she sang that song; that's really hard."

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell recited excerpts from President Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address. Afterward he remarked on Lincoln's famous call to heal the nation's wounds after the Civil War, "with malice toward none, with charity for all," telling the audience they should aspire to those words.

The Chicago Children's Choir, women's a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock and the U.S. Marine Band also performed at the concert.

Introducing a number called "Would You Harbor Me," a member of Sweet Honey in the Rock said the song was "written because this country has been a harborer to so many, but at the same time it has rejected so many."

Those words highlight Anderson's own story. She grew up in poverty in South Philadelphia, but became famous in the 1930s, performing for royalty and in major concert halls in Europe, New York and Philadelphia.

When her manager tried to book Anderson at Constitution Hall, the largest venue in segregated Washington at the time, she was rejected by the Daughters of the American Revolution, which owned the hall and prohibited African Americans from performing there. The district's school board also turned her away from singing at a school's auditorium.

"To me, it's just very dramatic," said Josephine Pesaresi, 75, the daughter of Justice Hugo Black, who attended the 1939 event. "People are younger, they don't realize what huge things have happened and how far we have come. It makes me weep, I'm so happy."

Pesaresi, who sat near the stage at Sunday's concert, said in an interview Saturday that the anniversary made her recall how her father had grown in his racial outlook. Black, once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, later joined an unanimous Supreme Court in outlawing segregation in public schools in 1954 and often voted with the court's liberal wing on civil rights cases.

"He and my mother went to that concert, because he so firmly believed in equality," she said.

Sunday was a time to reflect "where we were then, where we are now, and how far we have to go," said Raymond Arsenault, who has written a book on Anderson's concert and has consulted with the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. The commission and the National Park Service are sponsoring the event.

According to Arsenault, the 1939 event wasn't just a concert. "It was this sort of crack in the mold; it just showed people this alternative vision of what America might be like if it lived up to its goals of liberty."

To read the full article, click here.

Raymond Arsenault, author of THE SOUND OF FREEDOM, featured in WHYY

Marian Anderson remembered for Lincoln Memorial Easter performance

By: Elizabeth Fiedler
April 12, 2009; WHYY

A Philadelphia native who once sang on the streets for nickels and dimes is being remembered for a concert she gave 70 years ago. On Easter Sunday 1939, Marian Anderson performed for a crowd of at least 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The historic concert is considered by many to have been a pivotal moment in American race relations.

Marian Anderson was said to have “the voice of the century.”

(Scroll down for audio version of this story, which includes sample of Marian Anderson singing My Country ‘Tis of Thee)

Even with that voice, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Anderson sing in Constitution Hall because of the color of her skin.

Historian Raymond Arsenault says the snub rallied many people who’d never really spoken out before to band together to find somewhere for Anderson to sing.

Arsenault: It seemed so gratuitous, such an insult. She’d been able to sing in all the capitals of Europe but not in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. And so this inspired kind of an interracial, nascent civil rights struggle.

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt dropped her membership in the DAR and helped arrange the emotional and historic open air concert.

To listen to the podcast, click here.

To listen to Anderson's performance, click here.

Raymond Arsensault, author of THE SOUND OF FREEDOM, featured on Weekend Edition

Marian Anderson's Big Moment: A Look Back

Weekend Edition Sunday
April 12, 2009; NPR

Seventy years ago, a concert took place on Easter at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. At least 75,000 people attended the performance, which was heard across the country on NBC Radio. The performer was opera singer Marian Anderson.

The location for the concert was not chosen for its audience capacity. Anderson had tried to book Constitution Hall, but the Daughters of the American Revolution, which owned the hall, refused to let her perform there because she was black.

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt interceded and arranged for the alternate venue.

In his new book The Sound of Freedom, Raymond Arsenault argues that standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that Easter, Anderson set in motion events that would change the country.

"It was really against her nature to be an activist," he says. "For her, it was all about the music."

But Anderson didn't just touch people musically that day — she touched them culturally, as well.

"She confounded the expectations and she forced people to reshuffle the deck," Arsenault says. "It didn't make them racial integrationists overnight, but it gave them at least a glimpse of another world."

To listen to the interview, click here.

Raymond Arsenault's THE SOUND OF FREEDOM reviewed in Library Journal

April 1, 2009; Library Journal

History

Marian Anderson rose from humble beginnings in Philadelphia to become a world-renowned contralto and one of the most prominent African American women of her time. Arsenault (John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History, Univ. of South Florida; Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice) adds to the large body of literature on Anderson with a book focusing on her iconic 1939 Easter concert. Having been denied the right to perform in Constitution Hall because of its white-performers-only policy, Anderson sang for 75,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Arsenault writes that this was the "first time anyone in the modern civil rights struggle had invoked the symbol of the Great Emancipator in a direct and compelling way," with Anderson striking a historic blow for civil rights. While readers should be aware of Allan Keiler's more general Marian Anderson or Anderson's own autobiography, My Lord, What a Morning, Arsenault's book is a good one for serious students of the civil rights movement.—Jason Martin, Univ. of Central Florida Libs., Orlando

Raymond Arsenault's THE SOUND OF FREEDOM reviewed in Publisher's Weekly

Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 4/06/2009

April 6, 2009; Publisher's Weekly

Commemorating the 70th anniversary of African-American contralto Marian Anderson’s culture-shifting 1939 Easter Sunday performance at the Lincoln Memorial, the story of this underappreciated Civil Rights milestone resonates even louder in the wake of President Obama's election. Civil rights historian Arsenault (Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice) paints a detailed portrait of America's struggle for racial equality through one of the 20th century's most celebrated singers (of any color). Despite a 40-year career as a world-class entertainer, performing around the globe, Arsenault suffered innumerable racist indignities in her homeland, culminating in the controversial declaration by the Daughters of the American Revolution that barred her from performing in Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Hall. In defiance, Anderson and her entourage arranged for the free, open-air Easter concert, which drew an estimated crowd of 75,000. The peaceful demonstration struck a vital blow for civil rights, and in particular for integration at Constitution Hall, nearly 25 years before Martin Luther King's march on Washington. Arsenault relies heavily on historical manuscripts and newspaper articles, but his vivid understanding of the players keeps the narrative fresh and insightful. Anderson died in 1993, at age 96, but this vivid tribute to her work and times does her memory a great service. (Apr.)

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE reviewed in the St. Petersburg Times

Review: 'Passing Strange' by Martha A. Sandweiss answers questions about geologist Clarence King


By David L. Beck, Special to the Times
April 12, 2009; St. Petersburg Times

You've probably never heard of him, but Clarence King was famous once. As a geologist, he helped map the American West, and he organized the United States Geological Survey as its first president. As a writer, he had a bestseller, Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada.

He dined at the White House and had a genius for friendship; among his intimates were writer and diplomat John Hay, historian Henry Adams and novelist Henry James. Hay, who in his youth was Lincoln's secretary and who in the fullness of his years was McKinley's secretary of state, thought King the best man of his time and was puzzled by the fact that King's talents did not make him rich.

"I fear he will die without doing anything," Hay wrote to novelist-editor William Dean Howells, "except to be a great scientist, a delightful writer, and the sweetest-natured creature the Lord ever made.''

The answer to the puzzle, Martha A. Sandweiss believes, lies in a duplicity of character so deep that it prevented King from focusing his energies and eventually sapped them. The sweetest-natured creature the Lord ever made was also a world-class liar.

He had to be. His friends always knew of his not-quite-kidding admiration for women of what he called "archaic" races — Mexican, Indian, Hawaiian. But they didn't know that as "James Todd" he courted, married and had five children with Ada Copeland, who was born a slave.

King died in Phoenix in 1901 of tuberculosis. He was 59. Ada Copeland Todd King died in Flushing, N.Y., in 1964, at 103, in the house that John Hay had bought for her anonymously.

To read the full review, click here.

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE reviewed in the Houston Chronicle

Passing Strange's love story is a black and white issue


By STEVE WEINBERG
Houston Chronicle
April 10, 2009; Philadelphia Daily News

A few years ago, historian Martha A. Sandweiss read in passing that Clarence King — a Caucasian male famous in the 19th century as a surveyor of the vast frontier and a best-selling author about the land west of the Mississippi River — lived a double life as a self-proclaimed African-American male.

During an era when many light-skinned blacks hoped to pass as white, King, who lived from 1842 to 1901, moved the other direction, passing as black for some of each year without the knowledge of his white friends.

The cause of the reverse passing? Love.

In 1888, King had met and married an African-American woman named Ada Copeland, 18 years his junior. Copeland, who had made her way to New York City from rural Georgia and found a job as a domestic, knew nothing about King’s fame in white high society. Instead, she knew him as James Todd, a name he had concocted. King/Todd, who was known for his brilliant conversation in high society, told Copeland he worked as a Pullman porter, with the long train trips accounting for his long absences. Although King did not look like somebody with even the remotest amount of African-American heritage, Copeland and her friends believed he must be black. Furthermore, why would any successful white male want to pass as black?

So for 13 years, until his death at 59, King carried on the deception as Copeland’s common-law husband and father of their children. He revealed the truth to Copeland near the end of his life. The revelation apparently did not shake Copeland’s love for her husband but, naturally, complicated matters during a struggle over his estate. The complications never dissipated completely for Copeland, who lived another 63 years, finally dying in 1964 at 103.

Sandweiss’ sleuthing has produced a fascinating dual biography of a man who left behind lots of evidence about his life, and a woman born into slavery who left behind little. Those same sleuthing skills led Sandweiss, a historian who specializes in researching the American West, to produce essentially a second book between the same covers, a contextual treatise about race and class in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.

To read the full review, click here.

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE selected as Amherst College Book of the Month

Featured Book for April 2009

Passing Strange, by Marni Sandweiss, Professor of American Studies and History

The Amherst Reads featured book offers readers an opportunity to engage more actively with books by Amherst authors. Between interviews, online discussions, full reviews and appearances by authors at Amherst Association events, we hope readers come away with a better sense of connection to the College and the wealth and breadth of its intellectual life.

To learn more about the author, read an excerpt or a review, click here.

Raymond Arsenault, author of THE SOUND OF FREEDOM, featured in the Philadelphia Daily News

'To thee we sing': Historic Marian Anderson concert will be re-created on Independence Mall

By TOM DI NARDO
Philadelphia Daily News
For the Daily News
April 7, 2009; Philadelphia Daily News

The Anderson legacy


Perhaps no one knows more about the impact of Anderson's 1939 concert than Raymond Arsenault, author of the just-published book "The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America" (Bloomsbury Press, $25). Arsenault will discuss the book and Anderson's legacy at the Constitution Center tomorrow night.

"In 1939, Lincoln wasn't yet considered the great emancipator," explained Arsenault, "and the memorial wasn't sacred ground until then. Of course, Dr. King's 'I Have A Dream' speech was given there in 1963, and certainly that's why President Obama insisted on that location for his pre-inaugural concert. No one thought it unusual today that Aretha Franklin sang 'My Country, 'Tis Of Thee.'

"Anderson had faced all kinds of racism in the South. And singing at the Salzburg Festival in 1935, where Arturo Toscanini called hers 'a voice such as one only hears once in a hundred years,' the Nazis wouldn't even allow her name on the program. She wouldn't sing where blacks were segregated in balconies or back seats, but would allow what she called 'vertical integration,' where whites and blacks could sit on either side of the aisle."

Anderson almost canceled the Lincoln Memorial concert, never imagining she would become a civil rights icon. The concert made it evident that racial problems were of national consequence - not just a Southern problem but a stain on the national honor at a time when totalitarianism was sweeping through Europe.

"Anderson was . . . the first to enter into what was a white province - not jazz, blues, minstrelsy, vaudeville, or juke joints," said Arsenault. "Without her, we might not have heard of Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman or Denyce Graves. She confounded the stereotypes, beating them at their own game with poise, reserve and stature."

Anderson left an example of musical royalty, demonstrating the power of grace, determination and colorblindness. She once wrote:

"When I sing and see a mass of faces turned up to me, it never occurs to me that most of them are white. They are the faces of human beings. I try to look through their faces into their souls, and it is to their souls that I sing."

For the full article, click here.

Raymond Arsenault's THE SOUND OF FREEDOM reviewed in BookPage

Easter Sunday, 1939


REVIEW BY RON WYNN
April 9, 2009; BookPage

Art's ability to entertain is readily acknowledged, but its motivational and inspirational qualities aren't always recognized. Those aspects are celebrated in award-winning author and historian Raymond Arsenault's outstanding new book The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert that Awakened America.

This volume shows how reaction and response to one concert, Anderson's historic Easter Sunday performance at the Lincoln Memorial 70 years ago, energized the movement against racism and injustice. Long before that, Anderson had spent the professional equivalent of a lifetime breaking barriers and shattering stereotypes. Though not the first black vocalist operating in the classical/operatic arena, Anderson's thundering, spectacular contralto won praise from Europe's toughest critics and finest conductors. Arsenault shows how she took techniques mastered in the black church to a different musical setting, proving equally masterful with opera and spirituals.

But Anderson's amazing 1939 concert is Arsenault's primary focus here. The Daughters of the American Revolution was then among the nation's foremost political and social organizations and its leaders had previously opposed Anderson's appearance at Constitution Hall because she was black. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the group in protest and convinced Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to let Anderson perform at the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson's singing not only solidified her reputation, it electrified the 75,000 in attendance, and garnered the good will of people around the world. Arsenault equates this with subsequent milestones like Jackie Robinson's integration of major league baseball and Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of the bus.

Anderson achieved other firsts, like breaking the Metropolitan Opera's color bar in the 1950s. Still, for the generations who aren't well acquainted with her career, The Sound of Freedom provides critical perspective on her most significant achievement.

Raymond Arsenault's THE SOUND OF FREEDOM featured in The New Yorker

Voice of the Century
Celebrating Marian Anderson

By Alex Ross
April 9, 2009; New Yorker

On Easter Sunday, 1939, the contralto Marian Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The Daughters of the American Revolution had refused to let her appear at Constitution Hall, Washington’s largest concert venue, because of the color of her skin. In response, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the D.A.R., and President Roosevelt gave permission for a concert on the Mall. Seventy-five thousand people gathered to watch Anderson perform. Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, introduced her with the words “In this great auditorium under the sky, all of us are free.”

The impact was immediate and immense; one newsreel carried the legend “Nation’s Capital Gets Lesson in Tolerance.” But Anderson herself made no obvious statement. She presented, as she had done countless times before, a mixture of classical selections—“O mio Fernando,” from Donizetti’s “La Favorita,” and Schubert’s “Ave Maria”—and African-American spirituals. Perhaps there was a hint of defiance in her rendition of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee”; perhaps a message of solidarity when she changed the line “Of thee I sing” to “Of thee we sing.” Principally, though, her protest came in the unfurling of her voice—that gently majestic instrument, vast in range and warm in tone. In her early years, Anderson was known as “the colored contralto,” but, by the late thirties, she was the contralto, the supreme representative of her voice category. Arturo Toscanini said that she was the kind of singer who comes along once every hundred years; Jean Sibelius welcomed her to his home saying, “My roof is too low for you.” There was no rational reason for a serious venue to refuse entry to such a phenomenon. No clearer demonstration of prejudice could be found.

One person who appreciated the significance of the occasion was the ten-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. Five years later, King entered a speaking contest on the topic “The Negro and the Constitution,” and he mentioned Anderson’s performance in his oration: “She sang as never before, with tears in her eyes. When the words of ‘America’ and ‘Nobody Knows de Trouble I Seen’ rang out over that great gathering, there was a hush on the sea of uplifted faces, black and white, and a new baptism of liberty, equality, and fraternity. That was a touching tribute, but Miss Anderson may not as yet spend the night in any good hotel in America.” When, two decades later, King stood on the Lincoln Memorial steps to deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech, he surely had Anderson in mind. In his improvised peroration, he recited the first verse of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” then imagined freedom ringing from every mountainside in the land.

For the full article, click here.

SHYNESS author Christopher Lane interviews Philip Dawdy in Psychology Today "Side Effects"

"The bipolar child is a purely American phenomenon": An interview with Philip Dawdy

By Christopher Lane, Ph.D.
April7, 2009

Philip Dawdy, a prize-winning investigative journalist, has for several years written a powerful, well-researched, and well-regarded weblog, Furious Seasons, which focuses on American psychiatry, mental health, and the way we think about treatment options. Given his intensive work on the issues, I wanted to ask him several burning questions about ADHD, bipolar disorder, and other controversies in American psychiatry.

You've written extensively about the psychiatric diagnosis of teens and preschoolers. How do you account for the astonishing rise in the number of diagnoses we're seeing in these age groups, especially with regard to ADHD and bipolar disorder?

To me, you can lay all of this squarely at the feet of the pharma companies, which had a slew of newish drugs come online in the 80s and 90s and wanted them taken by as many humans as possible—consequences for the patients be damned—and a crew of child psychiatrists at Harvard/MGH who see deeply-flawed, ill-for-life children where other psychiatrists might see personality disorders and issues that will burn out over time. The pharma companies and the Harvard crew worked hand-in-hand to bring America a generation of ADHD kids and bipolar children, and their profound influence can be seen in the millions of children and teens who now carry lifetime diagnoses and take gobs of psychotropic drugs each day, often to their detriment.

That may sound extreme to some people, but it's worth noting that the rest of the world has not embraced these diagnostic and treatment paradigms—except Britain, where there was an initial embrace of ADHD and stimulants, but where there's now a significant backlash. Meanwhile, in France and Italy ADHD is rarely diagnosed and it's difficult to see where French and Italian culture have suffered as a result. As for bipolar disorder in kids (meaning pre-teens and younger), it's simply not an issue in the rest of the world. The bipolar child is a purely American phenomenon, as big a metaphor of our times as credit swaps, subprime loans, and government bailouts.

Why do you think so many more teenage and younger boys than girls are being diagnosed with ADHD, and what does that say about our culture, education system, parental expectations, and so on?

The data I'm familiar with pegs the boy-to-girl ADHD ratio at 3 to 1, which is pretty dramatic. I suspect that boys get pegged with the diagnosis more than girls do for two reasons: One, boys have always been far more energetic and physically exuberant than girls, a point going back through history, perhaps because they are developing their hunter-gatherer beings. And, two, the hyperactivity piece of ADHD is quite easy to spot and probably leads to greater pressure for kids to be diagnosed because hyperactive boys can be disruptive, especially in school environments.

As out there as this may sound, I think we are as a culture cheating boys of their inherent natures and I have real questions about how that affects their psychosocial development long-term and what it will all mean for manhood a couple of generations down the road (I'm concerned about comparable issues with girls as well). What's more, I think the educational system places too much emphasis on having quiet, compliant kids—far more so than in the past. When I was a kid in the 1970s, boys were pretty much allowed to engage in all kinds of wildness at recess in elementary school and after school, but from what I hear that's being discouraged today. Why the change I couldn't say, but I do know that there's been a real push in our culture to silence outward signs of male aggressiveness, both in kids and adults.

As for parents, I think they are under a lot of self-imposed pressure to have perfect kids with high grades who get into top universities or they've somehow failed as parents. The ADHD drugs and the diagnosis itself have been foisted on them as a way to have their kids better liked among school peers and to achieve higher grades and perform better on the many, many standardized tests kids must take these days. What's interesting to me is that parents and our culture may well have been sold a bill of goods here, as the recently released MTA study (a long-term tracking study of kids through teens with ADHD, both on and off-meds) showed that long-term treatment with stimulants didn't appreciably improve GPAs and other test scores.

For the full interview, click here.

Martha Sandweiss featured in Ta Nea Magazine

Ta Nea Magazine Online
Thursday, March 9, 2009; Ta Na Online

To watch the video, click here.

ITa Nea (Greek: Τα Νέα, Translation: The News) is a daily newspaper published in Athens, owned by Lambrakis Press Group that also publishes the newspaper To Vima.

Raymond Arsenault's THE SOUND OF FREEDOM reviewed in the New York Times

‘Voice of the Century’ Broke Racial Barriers

By DWIGHT GARNER
April 2, 2009; New York Times

In the early 1930s, years before the concert at the Lincoln Memorial that made her an international symbol of the American civil rights movement, Marian Anderson, the great Philadelphia-born contralto, was probably better known overseas than she was in the United States.

Anderson’s concerts, which combined opera arias and German lieder with black spirituals, won over not just crowds and critics but also Europe’s classical music luminaries. After she performed at the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s country house in 1933, singing his compositions in his native language, he called out for “not coffee, but champagne.”

When Anderson (1897-1993) was smuggled in to sing at the 1935 Salzburg Festival after non-Aryans were banned by the Nazis, Arturo Toscanini was in the audience. “Yours is a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years,” he told her. His words stuck. For the rest of her life Anderson would be referred to as “the voice of the century.”

In his new book, “The Sound of Freedom,” Raymond Arsenault delivers not a proper biography of Anderson — there have already been a couple of those, in addition to her 1956 autobiography — but a tightly focused look at the political and cultural events that led up to and came after her famous 1939 concert. It’s a story that’s well worth retelling.

For the full review, click here.