Nutter's oratory second only to Angelou

Carrie Rickey filed this report from last night's Marian Anderson Award ceremony at the Kimmel Center.

Because the Marian Anderson Award event ran past Inquirer deadlines, we did not report that Mayor Nutter awarded the prize to co-honoree Dr. Maya Angelou, resplendent in red sequins, who delivered a stemwinding poem she wrote commemorating the 50th anniversary of the United nations, an apotheosis of humility and humanity. With apologies to Norman Lear, the witty co-honoree, the mayor gave the second-best speech of the evening when he succinctly told the story of equal rights in America in a sentence: "In 1939 Marian Anderson sang in front of the Lincoln Memorial when she was denied a concert in Washington, D.C.; 25 years later Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream Speech" ...before the Lincoln Memorial; 44 years later Barack Obama is elected president of the United States."

Click here for Philly.com's politics page.