Also on January 7, in 1955, Marian Anderson became the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

In the 1930s Anderson was denied the right to sing in her own country’s capital because she wasn’t white. At the urging of Eleanor Roosevelt, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes permitted her to perform at the Lincoln Memorial, where, on April 9, 1939, she sang before a crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions. Read more.