Jackson Mahalia Essay

Submitted By KellyRoesli1
Words: 523
Pages: 3

Jackson Mahalia

My Research topic is Jackson Mahalia, she was born on the 26th October 1911 and died on 27th January 1972. She died at the age of sixty-one years old. From what I know after reading the passage, she was one of the greatest gospel singers of all times. Mahalia Jackson Began to sing at the age of four years old in the children’s choir at Plymouth Rock Baptist. Mahalia Jackson also became the symbol of the civil rights movement during the famous march on Washington in 1963.
Mahalia Jackson was born in New Orleans in 1911, Mahalia Jackson grew up in a “shotgun” home shared by thirteen people on water street. Her aunt Duke raised her after her mother passed away.
In 1927, Jackson moved to Chicago, where she lived with her another aunt Hannah Robinson. Sooner after she arrived, she joined the choir of the Greater Salem Baptist Church. She also became the choir’s first soloist after the director heard her sing “Hand Me Down My Silver Trumpet, Gabriel. “

In 1937, Jackson had made her first set of recordings with Decca Records. Her first recording was "God's Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares”. She then lost her contract with Decca records because she refused to make a blues record and remembering her pledge of only singing gospel music. Then, Jackson got married to her first husband, Ike, she also decided to buy a home and invest in her own business, a beauty shop and a florist shop. She was also building a community of gospel musicians, among these people there was Thomas Dorsey. He was a talented Atlanta born African American composer and pianist & they became partners as travelling act they both ushered in the Golden age of Gospel.

Mahalia Jackson also struggle with racism and had urged her to get involved in the Civil Rights movement. With the Montgomery bus boycott, the movement had begun to unfold quickly. On 1956, Civil Rights leaders called on Jackson to sing and lend her financial support to the rallies, marches, and demonstrations. At the station,