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Mahalia Jackson CDs
Gospels, Spirituals & Hymns /
The Best of Mahalia Jackson /
Black, Brown and Beige /
The Best Loved Spirituals
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Funeralizing Mahalia
By Charles-Gene McDaniel "I don't like to see you all so dry,"
the Rev. John Thurston admonished the thousands who attended the
service for the queen of the gospel singers. "You might as
well take off your gloves if you're going to funeralize Mahalia
Jackson." The pastor, a friend of the singer, spoke at
midpoint in a service which had been anything but staid. His
admonition made it even livelier as more "amens" and
"hallelujahs" rang out in the theater at McCormick
Place on Chicago's lakefront. "Mahalia would make the mayor
shout," Mr. Thurston said.
The mayor to whom he referred was Richard J. Daley of
Chicago, who sat on the platform with other notable
personalities who came to pay tribute to his friend Mahalia
Jackson. he, in turn, was paid tribute with applause and "amens"
from the congregation after warm words of praise from the Rev.
Leon Jenkins, pastor of Mahalia's church, the Greater Salem
Missionary Baptist. Mayor Daley did not shout -- at least not
out loud -- but Mahalia's memory did, indeed, evoke shouts of
joy and praise to God and Jesus Christ from just about everybody
else.
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One of these mornings I'm
going to lay
Down my cross and get my
crown,
As soon as my feet strike
Zion, I'm going
To lay down my heavy burden . . . |
These words are from "Move On Up a Little Higher,"
the song so special to Mahalia, and the one she sang so movingly
at the August 1963 civil rights demonstration in Washington. She
laid down that burden Jan 27. when she died, at age 60, of heart
failure following abdominal surgery. She had been in ill health
for some time. In his invocation the
Rev. C.L. Franklin of Detroit, father of Aretha Franklin, prayed:
"We didn't come here to cry today . . . we came here to
rejoice, for we know now she laid her heavy burden down. . . .
We acknowledge and hail that she has moved on up a little
higher."
Although mayor Daley kept his Irish catholic funeral reserve,
his tribute to Mahalia emphasized the joy in her life. people
love Mahalia Jackson, he said, "because every song she sang
was an expression of life -- with its joys and its sorrows.
Every song she sang was a story of faith. She herself wanted
only to make a joyful song unto the Lord. And to this she
dedicated her life." People everywhere responded to her
love, the mayor continued, "and this was her reward --
having made life more beautiful and joyous for those of us here
on earth."
I
It was Mayor Daley who asked that the funeral be
moved from Mahalia's home church, which seats 800 to the
5,000-seat theater. Even that hall was not large enough. All seats
were filled an hour before the service started on a cold, overcast
Feb. 2. Many stood in the side aisles while hundreds more remained
in the lobby to listen to the two-hour service over a public
address system. many at the service had not known her, had never
seen her in person, but they -- like the presidents, queens and
kings and the one pope before whom she appeared -- loved and
admired this New Orleans -- born onetime laundress and scrubwoman
whose unmatched voice brought her international fame.
Thousands more had filed past the coffin during
the days before the funeral as the body lay in state in the church
on Chicago's south side. At times the line stretched outside the
building, and many waited in the cold for hours in order to pay
her tribute. Another service in New Orleans on Feb. 4 drew an
additional 5,000. the burial was in Metairie, just outside the
city.
At the Chicago funeral the body lay in a polished
wooden coffin lined with pale blue, surrounded with bouquets of
red roses and topped with a garland of white orchids. the Greater
Salem choir, with which Mahalia got her start as a singer, set the
tone for the service with its opening selection, a lively
"leaning on the Everlasting Arms." Some of the singers
wept during the service, as did Mr. Jenkins and others, but joy
invariably transcended the grief.
Mahalia had devoted herself to sacred gospel
songs, abjuring the blues and never going into nightclubs where
they were sung. But she l loved the singers of these secular songs
-- just as she loved everybody -- and was loved by them. Sammy
Davis, Jr., spoke of her as "more than just a great artist --
she was "something special." And Ella Fitzgerald, in
tears, described her as "one of our greatest ambassadors of
love . . . this wonderful woman who only comes once in a
lifetime."
Davis read a message given him by pres. Richard
Nixon, who spoke of her as an "artist without peer" and
as a "majestic ambassador of good will." The president
also said, "Millions of ears will miss the sound of that
great, rich voice making a joyful noise unto the Lord."
Robert Anderson sang Mahalia's song, "Move On
Up a little Higher," and her accompanists, organist Willie
Webb and pianist Mildred Falls, played. Dolores Campbell sang
"He's Gonna Call me Home." And the audience waved and
swayed as Memphis singer Bradley sang a deeply moving "I'll
Fly Away." Afterward he asked everyone to turn to the person
next to him, shake hands and say, "I love you." Everyone
did.
II
Mahalia was an early supporter of Martin Luther
King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference and served on the
organization's board of directors. At the funeral Dr. King's
widow, Coretta, spoke of "my dear friend, your friend, a
friend to mankind, Mahalia Jackson, black, proud, beautiful,
extraordinarily gifted as a singer and a performer, singing the
songs of her people in her own unique way. She sang a universal
language, for she expressed in her songs, which were deeply rooted
in the black experience, the joys, the sorrows, the sufferings,
the longings and aspirations -- yes, the desire for freedom for
her people."
In his eulogy
Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention,
remarked that Mahalia had "scrubbed floors, but she scrubbed
them well." Even after she became famous, he remembered,
"she would come to revival meetings and rejoice and sing and
shout with everybody." Wherever she appeared, Dr. Jackson
said, "when she finished singing, there was no hatred. We
felt like kinfolks under the banner of truth."
Aretha Franklin ended the service by singing for
Mahalia one of the songs she loved so well, "Precious Lord,
take my hand, lead me on."
Source: The Christian Century (1 March 1972)
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A notable historian
of the early republic, Maier devoted a
decade to studying the immense
documentation of the ratification of the
Constitution. Scholars might approach
her book’s footnotes first, but history
fans who delve into her narrative will
meet delegates to the state conventions
whom most history books, absorbed with
the Founders, have relegated to
obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local
counties and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). Ripostes from
proponents, the Federalists, animate the
great detail Maier provides, as does her
recounting how one state convention’s
verdict affected another’s. Displaying
the grudging grassroots blessing the
Constitution originally received, Maier
eruditely yet accessibly revives a
neglected but critical passage in
American history.—Booklist |
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posted 2 November 2007
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