Lillian Evanti

Annie Lillian Evans was born on the twelfth of August 1890 in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Wilson Bruce Evans — a distinguished educator who in 1902 became the first principal of Armstrong Manual Training School, the District's first high school devoted to the vocational education of Black students — and Annie Brooks Evans, a music teacher. Reared in a home of learning and song, the young Lillian was encouraged by adoring parents who engaged a private music teacher for her gifts.

She studied at Miner Teachers College and graduated from Howard University with a bachelor's degree in music in 1917, a commencement performance that first drew national notice in the Black press. She married the pianist Roy W. Tibbs, and in 1924 she set out for Paris to pursue the operatic stage that America had largely closed to Black singers. There she fashioned her professional name, "Evanti," from her maiden name Evans and her married name Tibbs — a name at once her own and, to European ears, more euphonious.

In February 1925, at Nice, she made her debut in the title role of Delibes's Lakmé, becoming the first Black American to sing professionally with a European opera company. Her voice carried her onward to Toulon, Montpellier, Monte Carlo, Italy, the Caribbean, and South America, and she later performed at the White House for Eleanor Roosevelt.

Returning home, she founded the Evanti Chorale and served as a goodwill artist abroad, and in 1963 she walked in the March on Washington. May the honored name of Lillian Evanti — the voice that opened a door the world had shut — be remembered with pride.