Sister Days: Nia (Purpose)

Kwanzaa day five: The day of Nia, “purpose”: “to make as our collective vocation the building… of our community… to restore our people to their traditional greatness.”

On December 30, 1935, at the depth of the Great Depression, amid the desolate frost of nature and fortune, Marian Anderson raised her “voice of the century” to build the spirits of our commu-nity.  Having broken her ankle, she could not walk into place on stage that night.  Wheeled on behind a closed drape, she appeared standing in the curve of the piano at the curtain’s retreat, her face mystically angular in the light, as if by some unseen inner power she had magically, majestically, parted the barriers between her and her audience.  That she had.  Anderson could sing “Deep River my home is over Jordan” and take you there.  In a career begun with being snubbed by music schools and vocal coaches in her native Philadelphia, she triumphed in Europe, gave historic testament to the power of truth with her concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memo-rial (see April 9), and made her 1955 Metropolitan Opera debut as the century-old opera’s first African American diva. Who but the mighty Marian could have sustained such deep, fresh tones for over thirty years, transcending so many obstacles and so much time?

The daughter of John and Anna Anderson, she bore the stand-ard for us all.  In the wisdom of a people, what she had learned kept her going forward and giving back: “There is a Negro spirit-ual, ‘I open my moth to the Lord and I will never turn back.  I will go, I shall go, to see what the end will be.’ And it sums up so much of what so many people need to feel who don’t find all those wonderful things around them.  I will go and I shall go to see what the end will be.  Why? Because I believe in what I find at the end.”

-Dr. Janus Adams

In partnership with SwagHer Magazine, Dr. Janus Adams, Emmy award-winning journalist and historian presents SISTER DAYS Inspiring Moments in African American Women’s History.

During Kwanzaa Adams will share seven days of uplifting meditations on courage, daring, and resistance that bring us valuable reminders of how real women in real times– from the Daughters of Africa to Mary Johnston to the first African American  diva to perform at the Metropolitan Opera Marian Anderson – created a better way of life for themselves and a better world for others. In reading their stories, we ensure that these women live on–as shining beacons to light our own quests for happier, more fulfilled lives.