Mahalia Jackson was born on this day in 1911 in New Orleans

Oct. 26, 1911

Mahalia Jackson, the “Queen of Gospel,” was born in New Orleans. After moving to Chicago, she was one of the first singers to bring gospel music from the church into the mainstream, attracting white audiences and selling millions.

“I sing God’s music,” she explained, “because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope.”

In 1950, she became the first gospel singer to perform at Carnegie Hall, and 11 years later she sang at President John Kennedy’s inauguration ball. She became the voice of the civil rights movement.

In 1956, she performed during the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, raising money for the movement. But when she returned to Ralph Abernathy’s house, it had been bombed. She continued to appear at events with Martin Luther King Jr., who said a voice like hers “comes not once in a century, but once in a millennium.”

In 1963 she sang at the March on Washington. When King deviated from his prepared text, she asked him, “Tell them about the dream,” a reference to a speech he had given months earlier in Detroit. His speech became known as the “I Have a Dream” speech – one of the most famous speeches in U.S. history.

The marches didn’t stop, and neither did Jackson, who saw her music as something that could help “reduce some of the hatred and fear that divides white and black people in this country.” Her performance of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” became King’s favorite. When he was murdered in 1968, she sang the song at his funeral.

When she died of heart failure four years later, Aretha Franklin sang the song at her funeral, which was attended by more than 50,000 people in Chicago.

Jackson was the first gospel artist to win a Grammy Award in her lifetime, and after her death she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.