The Voice That Challeged A Nation

Author:  Russell Freedman
Title:  The Voice That Challenged A Nation
Illustrator:  Nancy Showcross and John Pollack
Genre:  Children's Historical Nonfiction
SubGenre:  Biography
Theme:  Music & Civil Rights Movement
Primary & Secondary Characters:  Marian Anderson (Primary)
Date of Publication:  2005
Award(s):  Robert F. Sibert Award
Publisher:  Scholastic Inc.
Summary:  This book tells the remarkable story of the great African American singer Marian Anderson, and details her life and musical career through the lens of the civil rights movement in this country. Drawing on Marian Anderson's writings and other accounts from her contemporaries, this book shows readers a singer honing her craft despite the social boundaries that limited the careers of black entertainers in the 1920s and 1930s. Though quiet in her ways by comparison, Marian Anderson came to stand for all black artists when, with the help of figures as prominent as Eleanor Roosevelt, she gave her landmark 1939 performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which marked the end of segregation in the arts. This is an amazing book for students to read because it shows in great detail the struggle that African Americans had during the Civil Rights Movement through the music business. Alot of students read Civil Rights books about the general racism, riots, and violence that African American's faced but this book gives the struggle through the point of view through music and the arts industry which might be something students haven't been exposed too and this book is a great way to teach students what that was like.