A salute to two great women.

In the previous post I said that Eleanor Roosevelt was #1 on my list of great women. Here is one of the major reasons. In 1939, world-famous American contralto Marian Anderson was scheduled to sing at Washington's Constitution Hall. The event was cancelled by the halls owners: the Daughters of the American Revolution, whose policy was to not let an African American perform on the stage. Outraged by this, Mrs. Roosevelt resigned her membership to the society and, the next day, commented on social injustice in her newspaper column, "My Day" bringing national attention to the issue of civil rights. Ms. Anderson did not sing at Constitution Hall. Instead on Easter Sunday, 1939, she sang at the base of the Lincoln Memorial for an mall audience of more than 75,000 people. The concert, which was broadcast, reached an audience of millions. That's the kind of inspiring and united event we desperately need today.