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(L-R) William Basinski, Marian Anderson, Billie Holiday, James Ray, Mac Miller (Image: Private Media) Two days after Donald Trump declared victory, the 6am Greyhound bus from Washington DC to Pittsburgh and on to Ohio and Kentucky is a quarter full when the exquisitely grumpy driver pulls away from Union Station and into the embers of morning. Track one: Union Station DC, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” Union Station is a grand and beautiful building, designed to adhere to several shapely classical styles at the beginning of the 20th century. Sharply declining after its 1940s heyday, it nearly collapsed in the early 80s, and, after COVID-19, is collapsing once more .

During World War II tens of thousands of passengers would pass through every day. On the morning of Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939 , one of those passengers was opera singer Marian Anderson, who arrived from Philadelphia and made her way through the triumphal arches of the entrance on the way to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial . There, Anderson performed a free concert for 75,000 people, many of them the political elites of the time.



She had been denied the opportunity to perform at DC’s Daughters of Revolution concert hall on account of her skin colour — in response, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organisation and organised the Lincoln Memorial concert. This American Carnage: Touching down in Pittsburgh, where all roads lead in 2024 Read More One book described the performance as “the conc.

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