Marian Anderson as Cold Warrior: African Americans, the U.S. Information Agency, and the Marketing of Democratic Capitalism

In an effort to bolster their image abroad, from September to November 1957, the U.S. State Department sent Marian Anderson on a tour of East and Southeast Asia. Under most circumstances, it would have been a tenuous decision to send an African American woman on such a mission, especially since many people across the globe criticized U.S. domestic race relations. However, after the 1939 Freedom Concert, the 1955 integration of the Metropolitan Opera House and the 1956 publication of My Lord, What a Morning!, a ghostwritten autobiography, Anderson had symbolic currency evoking the potential success of all people in the United States and the success of democratic capitalism. The U.S. Information Agency (USIA) did not present the Asian countries with a familiar face with whom they were enamored but instead presented them with an individual whom the USIA perceived as a known quantity, embodying an already established message of African American success.

The State Department goal was to spread the U.S. democratic ideology throughout the world. Because of events such as the Lincoln Memorial concert and representations such as My Lord, What a Morning!, Anderson seemed to be the embodiment of the ideology. Since the use of cultural figures and artifacts was less obviously propagandist, they were more readily welcomed. That Anderson was an African American was a boon to the State Department because of the negative image the international press gave the United States with its history of racism. This became increasingly important during Anderson's tour because while she was away, Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, committed well-publicized racist resistance to desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. Anderson, as a State Department emissary and an African American woman, needed to navigate challenging terrain. The stakes were even higher because the tour was the subject of a CBS documentary See It Now episode titled "The Lady from Philadelphia," which would be distributed both domestically and internationally.

The tour was deemed a success by the State Department, which claimed that it bolstered both international goodwill and domestic pride for the United States. The State Department used the already established symbolism to their benefit, allowing them to circumnavigate the clear issues of civil rights abuses and resistance. In the See It Now episode, they further downplayed issues of race by nurturing a highly passive gendered image—despite the fact that issues of race were actually at the forefront of the political and ideological agendas worldwide. At the same time, what was significant and different about Anderson's role as emissary is that while other USIA tours focused especially on exporting what they considered to be true American products—such as jazz—presumably because of the already established symbolism, they supported Anderson's tour to perform Western classical music. Although their intent was to present a vision of an American success based on the contemporary status quo, they overlooked Anderson's practice of including spirituals in each concert. The spirituals contained an inherent critique of the racial hierarchy that permeated U.S. society. While jazz demonstrated innovation (thus supporting entrepreneurship and capitalism), the spirituals would critique it all. In this article, I focus on the State Department's motivations for sending Anderson, their efforts at propaganda, the depictions of Anderson in "The Lady from Philadelphia," and the State Department's evaluation of the tour.

Anderson's symbolic currency was established through the Easter Sunday concert at the Lincoln Memorial. This concert provided some resolution to a public act of discrimination. In 1939, Marian Anderson, world-renowned contralto, was scheduled to sing at Constitution Hall, which was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Because of their discriminatory policy allowing only white performers, she was barred from singing in the hall. Marian Anderson was African American and did not meet the DAR's criteria. Through a much celebrated controversy, the DAR's policy was put under national scrutiny, and in 1939, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt covertly facilitated a performance by Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in an...