Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir: Blog

Marian Anderson is remembered as one of the best American contraltos (women with lower singing voices) of all time. She was the first African American singer to perform at the White House and the first African American to sing with New York's Metropolitan Opera.
Marian Anderson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 27, 1897. She was educated in the public schools. She displayed a remarkable skill for singing when she was very young, and she loved singing for her church choir. When she could not afford singing lessons, her fellow choir members raised the money that allowed her to study with a famous singing teacher.
When Anderson was twenty-three years old, she entered a competition and won first place over three hundred other singers.The prize was the opportunity to sing with the New York Philharmonic orchestra. Further sponsorships enabled her to continue her studies in both the United States and in Europe. Following Anderson's debuts (first performances on stage in a particular [...]

FEBRUARY 2012 – BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, a self-described "Afroborinqueño" (Black Puerto Rican), was born January 24, 1874, of María Josefa and Carlos Féderico Schomburg. His mother was a freeborn Black midwife from St. Croix, and his father a mestizo merchant of German heritage. They lived in Puerto Rico, in a community now known as Santurce. Young Schomburg was educated at San Juan's Instituto Popular, where he learned commercial printing, and at St. Thomas College in the Danish-ruled Virgin Islands, where he studied Negro Literature.
 
By Schomburg's own account, it was in the fifth grade that a teacher glibly asserted that people of color had no history, no heroes, no notable accomplishments. Young Schomburg embarked on a lifelong quest to scientifically refute the mythology of racism in the Americas. He became a fiery debater and documentarian of the accomplishments of Afro-Latinos such as Puerto Rican artist José Campeche, [...]

Women's History Month
The public celebration of women's history in this country began in 1978 as "Women's History Week" in Sonoma County, California. The week including March 8, International Women's Day, was selected. In 1981, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) co-sponsored a joint Congressional resolution proclaiming a national
Women's History Week.
In 1987, Congress expanded the celebration to a month, and March was declared Women's History Month. The Women's Movement Two significant factors contributed to the emergence of women's history. The women's movement of the sixties caused women to question their invisibility in traditional American history texts. The movement also raised the aspirations as well as the opportunities of women, and produced a growing number of female historians. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, one of the early women's historians, has remarked that "without question, our first inspiration was political. Aroused by feminist charges of economic [...]