Mahalia Jackson: Voice Of The Civil Rights Movement : NPR: When you hear the voice, you know the woman.
'That's where the power comes from,' says the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who first met the singer in the 1960s. 'When there is no gap between what you say and who you are, what you say and what you believe — when you can express that in song, it is all the more powerful.'
Mahalia Jackson was born in 1911 in New Orleans. When she was 16, she traveled the well-worn path up the Mississippi River to Chicago.
Beginning in the 1940s, she was one of the first singers to take gospel out of the church, drawing white audiences and selling millions of records. She inspired generations of singers, including Aretha Franklin, Della Reese, Albertina Walker and Mavis Staples of The Staples Singers.
Still, Staples says, Mahalia Jackson's success didn't always go over well back home in the black church.
