Lewis - Washington : a history of our national city

Washington

Washington

A History of Our National City

Tom Lewis

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

New York

Copyright 2015 by Tom Lewis

Published by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10107.

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Designed by Jack Lenzo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lewis, Tom, 1942

Washington : a history of our national city / Tom Lewis.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-465-06158-7 (e-book) 1. Washington (D.C.)--History. 2. Washington (D.C.)--Politics and government. 3. Washington (D.C.)--Social conditions. 4. Social change--Washington (D.C.)--History. 5. City planning--Washington (D.C.)--History. 6. Political culture--Washington (D.C.)--History. I. Title.

F194.L488 2015

975.3--dc23

2015022843

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For

Jill,

the best

and

to the memory of

Thomas J. Condon,

mentor and friend

Contents

Peter Charles LEnfants 1791 plan, titled in the cartouche, Plan of the city intended for the permanent seat of the government of t[he] United States: projected agreeable to the direction of the President of the United States, in pursuance of an act of Congress passed the sixteenth day of July, MDCCXC, establishing the permanent seat on the bank of the Potowmac. Facsimile created by the US Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1887.

Plan of the City of Washington based on Andrew Ellicotts adaptation of Peter Charles LEnfants plan. Published in Londons Literary Magazine and British Review, February 1, 1793.

Joseph Passonneaus 1996 three-dimensional map of central Washington, The Monumental and Commercial Center of The National Capital and The Surrounding Residential Neighborhoods.

The Concerns of the Nation

Whatever concerns the capital concerns the nation.

Montgomery Schuyler, 1902

I t is an oft-told story. By 1939, many Americans knew of Marian Anderson and were awed by the majestic power of her contralto voice. She had performed in the major concert halls of Europe, Africa, South America, and the Soviet Union; in the previous year she had presented seventy concerts throughout the United States. Enthusiastic Washingtonians, white and black, had filled her annual recitals to benefit Howard University at the Belasco and Rialto theaters and in the auditorium at Armstrong High, the citys vocational school for black students. Each song seems to be the spontaneous voicing of a mood, wrote a local music critic about an Anderson concert that included works of Handel, Schubert, and Sibelius. It is this identification of the singer and the song that makes her interpretations a delight. Many others had heard her on WMAL, the citys powerful CBS radio station. Wherever she performed, including at the White House, Marian Anderson confirmed Arturo Toscaninis declaration after her performance at the Salzburg festival: Yours is a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years.

The impresario Sol Hurok knew he would have no trouble filling Washingtons Constitution Hall for an Anderson performance. Built by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) a decade earlier, it ranked as the largest and finest concert hall in the capital and hosted the best classical soloists and orchestras in the world. But it would not host Marian Anderson. The hall is not available for a concert by Miss Anderson, the halls manager wrote; the president-general of the DAR added that her organizations contracts for performers restricted the hall to white artists only. Though segregation was the quiet norm in the capital, and was visible in restaurants, restrooms, hotels, and movie theaters, most in the city were surprised to learn that the color line applied to performers as well as audiences. Many musicians and prominent politicians objected; the violinist Jascha Heifetz took time during his performance at Constitution Hall to attack the DARs decision, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her membership in the organization.

But the local indignity didnt end with the DARs refusal. The District of Columbia school board denied Anderson the use of the 2,000-seat auditorium in its white Central High School. After NAACP publicist Walter White skillfully mounted a public and private protest, the school board voted to allow the contralto to sing, so long as the concert was not to be regarded as a precedent. The compromise satisfied no one.

By the end of March, Hurok had devised another plan, and with the help of White, Eleanor Roosevelt, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, and Ickess assistant, Oscar Chapman, it succeeded: at 5:00 p.m. on Easter Sunday, April 9, Ickes spoke from a temporary stage erected on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of 75,000 that stretched across the Mall to the Washington Monument and to millions more listening across America on the NBC radio network. In this great auditorium under the sky, all of us are free, the secretary proclaimed. Genius, like justice, is blind, he continued, for genius with the tip of her wing has touched this woman... a free individual in a free land. Genius draws no color line. And then Marian Anderson stepped to the microphones, looked out upon the crowd and to the Capitol Dome beyond, and filled the Mall with her voice:

My country, tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

To thee we sing;...

Pointedly, she changed the last line, Of thee I sing, taking care to emphasize the plural pronoun, we. And just as pointedly, she concluded her program, which included a Donizetti aria and Schuberts Ave Maria, with a spiritual:

Nobody knows the trouble Ive seen

Nobody knows my sorrow...

It was quite a beautiful awakening of blacks in the city, one white witness wrote. You got this feeling, there she was in front of Lincoln, and what a great step forward this was.

One witness of Marian Andersons concert called it the most civilized thing that has happened in this country in a long time. A reporter for the Washington Post noted the massive figure of the Emancipator looking down benevolently as Anderson sang the great hymn to liberty My Country, Tis of Thee... as it was never sung before. Washington Post , April 12, 1939. Credit : Getty Images