Mahalia
Published on 1. February 2002
Book
Hardback
144 pages
978-0-7636-1011-1 (ISBN)
Description
Born poor in New Orleans in 1911, young Mahalia Jackson loved singing the gospel at the Mount Moriah Baptist Church each Sunday. Swaying and clapping her hands, Mahalia made each word a mediation and could bring a congregation to its feet, astonishing all who heard her powerful voice. At the age of sixteen, she moved to Chicago and began her long road to fame. Through it all-hit records and concerts, protest marches with Martin Luther King Jr., and personal pain and loneliness - Mahalia's faith in God and justice never wavered. Roxanne Orgill's dramatic narrative reveals how Mahalia's soulful voice and message of hope helped introduce gospel music to the world, and inspired thousands of civil rights activists who marched for equality in the 1960's.
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Person
Roxanne Orgill is an award-winning writer on music, whose reviews and feature articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. She is also the author of Shout, Sister, Shout: Top Ten Girl Singers Who Shaped a Century and If Only I Had a Horn: Young Louis Armstrong. About Mahalia she says, "What interested me was how a woman with the modest aim of doing the 'Lord's business', which to her meant singing gospel songs, could end up with such a wide reach. Mahalia moved deeply not only her people - Baptist church folk - but other Christians, and Jews, and even people of no faith. I wanted to understand how she did that." Roxanne Orgill lives with her husband and two young children in New Jersey.