Mahalia Jackson Voice Influences

Sid Ordower talks with Jesse Jackson
on the one-year anniversary of Martin
Luther King's assassination.
Ordower, host and producer of the
Jubilee Showcase, loved gospel music
and saw it as a way to address some of
the ills of the world.

Courtesy Sidney and Steven Ordower.

Gospel traditions profoundly influenced the civil rights movement. Gospel was present at moments of triumph and calamity. Mahalia Jackson, strongly influenced by the preaching of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., considered her own voice a tool that could affect change. During the march on Washington, August 28, 1963, King asked Jackson to sing his favorite spiritual, "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned." Later that day, King delivered his famous, "I Have a Dream" speech.

In 1968, Jackson sang Dorsey's "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" at King's funeral.