Dr. King and Mahalia Jackson

Published on: January 15th, 2018

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, here's a clip of one of the many times the Queen of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson, sang with him. This is from August 1966, when she sang before his sermon at the New Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago.

Jackson and King had a long history together. In 1956, Jackson was invited by the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to appear in Montgomery, Alabama, in support of the now-famous bus boycott that launched the modern Civil Rights Movement and made Rosa Parks a household name. It was at this time in Alabama that Jackson first met and befriended Reverend King. She went on to perform by his side frequently in the following years.

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