Choir Girl from Philadelphia

Destination Freedom. Station WMAQ presents Destination Freedom, dramatizations of the great democratic traditions of the Negro people, and a part of the pageant of history, and of America's own destination freedom. Today we tell the story of the great contralto Marian Anderson, in a chapter entitled, Choir Girl from Philadelphia.

It was a cool Easter afternoon in Washington D.C. When the tall girl from Philadelphia walked towards the stairs at the Lincoln Memorial, she walked through the crowd of 75,000 clerks and carpenters, ditched diggers, judges, lawyers, porters, people who had come a hundred miles to hear a concert to watch the tall woman walk up the stairs

The stairs and stand under the stone figure of Abraham Lincoln. And the crowd became as quiet as old Abe and waited for her to speak. She looked to her accompanist and he touched the key.

And she looked down the long flight of stairs she had climbed. Closed her eyes as she was ready to sing. For an instant thought of the other stairs 15 years back on Madonna Street in Philadelphia Where two tall girls with scrub bucket and brushes Bathled the pushback dirt in the marble steps Marion

Marion wait Rest a minute. I'm tired. Huh? Don't you get tired? I? Don't think we'll ever make it up all these stairs. Oh, we we've got to why we got to I'm tired. It's the only way to get the quarter.

This hadly says if we get the quarter we finish them. She says, I know, I know, but it's crazy. Oh, duh. Scubbing all these steps just to get money to buy a violin. Aren't you gonna help me?