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Mahalia Jackson Facts & Worksheets

Mahalia Jackson was an American gospel music singer known as the “Queen of Gospel Song.”

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Mahalia Jackson was an American gospel music singer known as the “Queen of Gospel Song.” She was widely considered to be one of the most influential singers of the 20th century, with a career spanning over 40 years.

See the fact file below for more information on Mahalia Jackson, or you can download our 29-page Mahalia Jackson worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE

  • Mahalia Jackson was born on the 26th of October, 1911, in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Charity Clark and Johnny Jackson. 
  • Her parents were unmarried, which was known to be a typical arrangement among black women in New Orleans. Her father lived elsewhere and never acted as a parent, unlike her mother. Both sets of her grandparents were born into slavery. Her paternal grandparents were on a rice plantation, while her maternal grandparents were on a cotton plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, about 100 miles (160 km) north of New Orleans.
  • Her mother’s older sister, Mahala “Duke” Paul, was her namesake, sharing the spelling without the “I.”
  • Mahalia, her mother, and her other aunts lived with her Aunt Duke in a leaky three-room shotgun house on Water Street (Sixteenth Street), New Orleans.
  • She was called “Halie” by her family – which meant she was counted as the 13th person living in her Aunt Duke’s house.
  • Mahalia was born with bowed legs and eye infections, which healed quickly. Her Aunt Bell even tried to treat Mahalia’s legs with grease and water, but it did not show any results. During the first few years of her life, Mahalia was nicknamed “Fishhooks” because of her legs.
  • Her family was a devout Baptist who attended nearby Plymouth Rock Baptist Church.
  • As members of the church, they were expected to attend services, participate in activities by the church, and follow a code of conduct: no jazz, no card games, and no “high life”: drinking or visiting bars or juke joints.
  • Jackson enjoyed music sung by the congregation rather than the traditional Protestant hymns sung by their church’s choir.
  • Her mother became ill and died of an unknown cause when she was five. Her death resulted in her Aunt Duke taking her and her half-brother to another house on Esther Street.
  • She would split her time between working, scrubbing floors and making moss-filled mattresses and cane chairs, playing along the levees catching fish and crabs and singing with other children, and spending time at Mount Moriah Baptist Church, where her grandfather sometimes preached.
  • The full-time minister at Mount Moriah Baptist Church strongly influenced Mahalia’s singing style, as the minister was known to give sermons with a sad “singing tone.” The church became a home for Mahalia, where she had found music and safety; she often fled there to escape her aunt’s moods.
  • She once attended McDonough School 24, but since she would be the one who would fill in for her aunts if they were ill, she rarely participated for an entire week. By the age of 10, Mahalia had to drop out of school and began taking in the laundry as her family needed her at home more. By the age of 12 and already possessing a big voice, she joined the junior choir.
  • Bessie Smith was her favorite singer and the one that she most often mimicked. Mahalia’s family owned a phonograph, and when her Aunt Duke was at work, she would play records of Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, and Ma Rainey while singing along with it and scrubbing the floors.
  • By 14, her bowed legs began to straighten, but Aunt Duke’s beatings never stopped. The whippings she would get from her Aunt Duke turned into being thrown out of the house and spending many nights with one of her aunts who lived nearby. The final confrontation caused Mahalia to move into her own rented home for a month before she felt lonely and unsure of how to support herself.
  • After her Aunt Hannah and Aunt Alice moved to Chicago, Mahalia’s family was concerned for her and urged her Aunt Hannah to take her back there with her after a Thanksgiving visit.

SINGING IN CHICAGO

  • On a freezing December, Mahalia arrived in Chicago and spent a week on her aunt’s couch as she was miserably homesick. When Sunday came, her aunts took her to an environment where she felt immediately at home, the Greater Salem Baptist Church.
  • Even though Mahalia’s voice was powerful, the congregation was unused to an animated delivery. Despite that, Mahalia was invited to join the 50-member choir and a vocal group formed by the pastor’s sons, the Johnsons.
  • There is a considerable contrast between the musical services of the white and black churches; white churches tend to be on the formal side and avoid shouting. The difference between styles was vividly illustrated when the Johnson singers, along with Mahalia, who solely performed, appeared at the church one evening; the pastor was scandalized by the exuberant shouts. Bringing “twisting jazz” into the church was the pastor’s reason for accusing Mahalia of blasphemy.
  • Mahalia was mainly unaware of how she moved her body while she sang because she was often so into singing. The pastors urged her to wear loose-fitting robes to hide her movements. They had also accused Mahalia of employing her “snake hips” while dancing when the spirit moved her.
  • After enduring the remarks towards her, Mahalia decided to hire a talented black operatic tenor to conduct a professional assessment. Mahalia was dismayed by this assessment because the professor told her to stop hollering and learn to sing songs that white people could understand.
  • Though dismayed, this did not hinder her spirits, and soon she was able to find the mentor that she sought, Thomas A. Dorsey. Dorsey trained Mahalia for two months, persuading her to sing slower songs to maximize their emotional effect.

FISH AND BREAD SINGER

  • In 1931, Mahalia made her first recordings, singles she intended to sell at National Baptist Convention meetings, although she was mainly unsuccessful. In 1932, on Dawson’s request, she sang for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential campaign.
  • Mahalia dreamed of becoming a teacher or a nurse when she first arrived in Chicago, but before enrolling in a school, she had to take over her Aunt Hannah’s job when she became ill. Steady work had become her second priority to singing. By this time, she began to refer to herself as a “fish and bread singer,” which meant she was working for herself and God.
  • Mahalia pleaded with God to spare her grandfather, who had a stroke while visiting her and swore she would never go to a theater again. Her grandfather survived, and Mahalia kept her promise. She refused to attend as a patron and rejected opportunities to sing in theaters for her entire career.
  • At one point, Mahalia attended the audition for The Swing Mikado due to her guilt when she first refused her husband’s suggestion of auditioning. Even though the role was offered to her, she immediately rejected the position to her husband’s disbelief. She also turned down Louis Armstrong and Earl “Fatha” Hines when they offered her to sing with their bands.
  • Mahalia met Mayo “Ink” Williams in 1937, a music producer who arranged a session with Decca Records.
  • She proceeded to record four singles, namely: “God’s Gonna Separate the Wheat From the Tares,” “You Sing On, My Singer,” “God Shall Wipe All Tears,” and “Keep Me Every Day.” The records’ sales were weak, but it was distributed to jukeboxes in New Orleans, one of which Mahalia’s entire family huddled around in a bar, listening to it repeatedly. The owner of the recording company gave her a new proposition, they would record her further if she sang blues, but once again, Mahalia refused.

START OF THE MUSICAL CAREER

  • In 1938, Mahalia earned a beautician’s license and, at the same time, bought a beauty salon in the heart of Bronzeville. The place almost immediately became successful, and it became the center of gospel activity. At some point, due to her busy schedule, she sold the salon.
  • Dorsey proposed a series of performances to promote his music and her voice, to which Mahalia agreed, and they toured off and on until 1951. He would accompany Mahalia on piano and would often write songs specifically for her.
  • Soon, Mahalia became the choir director at St. Luke Baptist Church, which she had to give up due to time constraints. At the same time, she also bought a building as a landlord. She also found the salon so successful that she had to hire help to care for it when she traveled on weekends.

NATIONAL RECOGNITION

  • In 1946, Mahalia appeared at the Golden Gate Ballroom in Harlem and was cast by Art Freeman, a music scout for Apollo Records. Bess Berman, Apollo’s executive chief, signed Mahalia to a four-record season, allowing Mahalia to pick the songs.
  • Mahalia’s first release in Apollo, “Wait ‘til My Change Comes,” backed with “I’m Going to Tell God All About it One of These Days,” did not sell well, neither did her second, “I Want to Rest” with “He Knows My Heart.”
  • Berman asked Mahalia to record blues, but she refused, which resulted in her almost getting kicked out of the company. Freeman asked Berman if Mahalia could record one more session to the song she sang as a warmup at the Golden Gate Ballroom concert, “Move On Up a Little Higher.”
  • In 1947, “Move On Up a Little Higher” was released, selling 50,000 copies in Chicago and 2 million copies nationwide, which also landed the number two spot on the Billboard charts for two weeks.
  • Berman set up another recording session with Mahalia, wherein she sang “Even Me,” which sold a million copies, and “Dig a Little Deeper,” which sold under a million copies.
  • The position as the official soloist of the National Baptist Convention was created for her, and her audience multiplied to the tens of thousands. Mahalia also campaigned for Harry Truman, earning her first invitation to the White House.
  • Mahalia became more in demand, making radio and television appearances simultaneously and going on tours. Eventually, she performed in Carnegie Hall on October 4, 1950, to a racially integrated audience. Mahalia also had a successful 1952 tour abroad in Europe, and she was also especially popular in France and Norway. And in 1954, Mahalia had her gospel program on the CBS television network and scored a pop hit with “Rusty Old Halo.”

INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION

  • She appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island in 1958, performing along with Duke Ellington and his band. Mahalia and Ellington also worked on an album under Columbia Records entitled Black, Brown and Beige in the same year. Future Columbia recordings from Mahalia include The Power and the Glory (1960), Silent Night: Songs for Christmas (1962), and Mahalia (1965).
  • Mahalia made her debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1959. In the same year, she also appeared in Imitation of Life 1959. 
  • She was also recognized as an international figure, with her performances that included singing at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. Jackson toured Europe again in 1964, wherein she was mobbed in several cities.

CIVIL RIGHTS WORK

  • Mahalia was also an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. At the request of her friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahalia sang at the March on Washington in 1963, performing “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned.”
  • Mahalia published her autobiography, “Movin’ On Up,” in 1966. After King died in 1968, Mahalia sang at his funeral and largely withdrew from public political activities.

DEATH AND LEGACY

  • Mahalia had several hospitalizations for severe health problems in her later years. In 1971, she had her final concert in Munich, Germany.
  • By January 27, 1972, Mahalia died of a heart attack.

Mahalia Jackson Worksheets

This fantastic bundle includes everything you need to know about Mahalia Jackson across 29 in-depth pages. These ready-to-use worksheets are perfect for teaching kids about Mahalia Jackson. Mahalia Jackson was an American gospel music singer known as the “Queen of Gospel Song.” She was widely considered to be one of the most influential singers of the 20th century, with a career spanning over 40 years.

Mahalia Jackson Worksheets
Mahalia Jackson Worksheets
Mahalia Jackson Worksheets

Complete List of Included Worksheets

Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document.

  1. Mahalia Jackson Facts
  2. Fact or Opinion
  3. Puzzle 
  4. In the Making
  5. Mahali-who?
  6. Rise to the Top
  7. Word Search
  8. Finish the Lyrics
  9. A Thousand Words
  10. Cover Making
  11. Mahalia’s Life

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Mahalia Jackson?

Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972) was an American gospel singer and civil rights activist. She was known for her powerful, expressive voice, and her recordings of songs like “Move On Up a Little Higher” and “How I Got Over” helped to popularize gospel music in the 1950s and 60s. She was also an important figure in the Civil Rights Movement, performing at rallies and marches alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders.

What was Mahalia Jackson’s early life like?

Mahalia Jackson was born on October 26, 1911, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her mother died when she was a young child, and she grew up in poverty. She began singing in church as a child and developed a love for gospel music. She moved to Chicago in the 1920s and continued to sing in church choirs, eventually becoming a soloist and performing at various churches and events around the city.

What were some of Mahalia Jackson’s most famous recordings?

Some of Mahalia Jackson’s most famous recordings include “Move On Up a Little Higher,” “How I Got Over,” “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” Her music helped to popularize gospel music and bring it to a wider audience.

How did Mahalia Jackson contribute to the Civil Rights Movement?

Mahalia Jackson was a close friend and ally of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and she performed at many rallies, marches, and events associated with the Civil Rights Movement. Her performances often provided inspiration and encouragement to those involved in the struggle, and she was known for her stirring renditions of songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “I’ve Been ‘Buked, and I’ve Been Scorned.” She also used her fame and influence to advocate for civil rights and speak out against racism and injustice.

What is Mahalia Jackson’s legacy today?

Mahalia Jackson is remembered as one of the greatest gospel singers of all time, and her recordings continue to be popular and influential today. She also played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement, using her talent and platform to promote social justice and equality. Her legacy serves as a reminder of the power of music to inspire and bring about positive change in the world.

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