This week we’ll take a look back at the incredible tributes to various musical genres presented by The White House.
“In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement” was a concert hosted in February 2010 by President and Mrs. Obama featuring songs from the Civil Rights Movement as well as readings from famous Civil Rights speeches and writings. Participants including Bob Dylan, Jennifer Hudson, Smokey Robinson, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, John Mellencamp, Smokey Robinson, Seal, the Blind Boys of Alabama, the Howard University Choir, The Freedom Singers and more performed.
The White House also hosted a “Music that Inspired the Movement” workshop for high school students from across the country. Robert Santelli, the executive director of The GRAMMY Museum, and Smokey Robinson, the legendary Motown singer facilitated the workshop with performances by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, one of the original Freedom Singers in the 1960s who traveled around the country carrying stories in song of local Civil Rights Movement campaigns to national audiences.
“In Performance at the White House” is a series of musical events created to showcase the rich fabric of American culture in the setting of the nation’s most famous home.