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Lillian Evanti

Lillian Evanti (August 12, 1890 – December 6, 1967), was an African-American opera singer.

Life
She was born in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Armstrong Manual Training School, where her father, W. Bruce Evans, was the first principal.

She graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor's Degree in music and studied in France and Italy. Evanti, a soprano, sang at the Belasco Theater in 1926 with Marian Anderson. She debuted in 1927 in Delibes's Lakmé at Nice, France. As an opera singer and concert artist, she toured throughout Europe and South America. From 1932 to 1935 she gave recitals in the United States to praise and acclaim for the "tonal beauty of her voice.", including a private recital at the White House for an audience of Eleanor Roosevelt and her friends.

In 1943, she performed with the Watergate Theater barge on the Potomac River. In 1944, she appeared at The Town Hall (New York City). She received acclaim as Violetta in Verdi's La traviata as produced by the National Negro Opera Company in 1945.

In 1963, she walked with her friend Alma Thomas in the March on Washington.

Family
She married Roy W. Tibbs, a former director of the Coleridge-Taylor Society, a Washington D. C. African-American chorus founded in honor of the composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor. They lived at 1910 Vermont Avenue in the Shaw Neighborhood of Northwest, Washington, D.C., which is now known as the Evans-Tibbs House and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. They had a son, Thurlow E. Tibbs, Jr.