On February 1, 2018, the DAR helped celebrate the 75th anniversary of the mural depicting Marian Anderson’s historic 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial at a ceremony held at the Department of the Interior where the mural is located. The program highlighted Marian Anderson’s life and legacy and culminated in the U.S. Secretary of the Interior signing a proclamation naming the mural as the first element within the new African American Civil Rights Network Act, a program intended to preserve and protect the memory of the civil rights movement.
The mural, titled “An Incident in Contemporary American Life,” was officially dedicated in the Department of the Interior on January 6, 1943. Marian Anderson sang at the mural dedication and the following day, on January 7, 1943, Marian Anderson performed a charity concert to a sold-out, integrated audience of 4,000 at DAR Constitution Hall.
