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Then in 1934, nine years after she had left the United States, she toured Poland, Switzerland, Russia, Italy, Spain, Latvia, Belgium, Hungary and Austria.
Ms. Anderson said that one of the happiest days of her life was when she had made a substantial amount of money and could support her mother financially; she called her mothers work where she was scrubbing floors, and told them that she would not be returning to work anymore. .
Then, after a concert in June 1935, Sol Hurok, a Russian manager, who was known for his devotion to his clients, came backstage and offered to be her manager and take her back to America, to perform a minimum of seven concerts. He wanted her to be accepted as a musician and an artist. She agreed, but it was not easy. People criticized her constantly, but she did not get discouraged. People would say she looked like a chocolate bar, and compared her to café au lait (coffee with milk).
Not everybody was that discriminative though. Once, when she was performing in Salzburg, she heard that Arturo Toscanini (a well respected maestro) was also there and that he might come to one of her concerts. He did, and during intermission, he came back to her dressing room. She was so surprised and in shock, she could not remember a word he had said. But people standing nearby had and they told her: "A voice like yours is heard once in a hundred years."" .
D.C. Concert.
And then an exciting opportunity came along. In 1936, Marian was invited to sing in Washington D.C. at the White House for President and Mrs. Roosevelt. A few years later, in 1938, Howard University asked Mr. Hurok to arrange another Washington D.C. concert. Marian also wanted to come back to the Nation's capital, but she wanted to sing at a specific concert hall: Constitution Hall. This was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), whose ancestors fought against the British in the Revolutionary war.