Mahalia Jackson

Mahalia Jackson was an American gospel singer widely considered one of the most influential vocalists of the twentieth century, integral over a forty-year career to the development and spread of gospel blues in Black churches across the United States. Recording during a period of pervasive racial segregation, she nonetheless sold an estimated twenty-two million records and performed for integrated and secular audiences in concert halls worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling gospel artists in history. She performed at the March on Washington in 1963 shortly before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech.