Motivated by her experiences living and touring in the South and integrating a Chicago neighborhood, she participated in the civil rights movement, singing for fundraisers and at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

As members of the church, they were expected to attend services, participate in activities there, and follow a code of conduct: no jazz, no card games, and no "high life": drinking or visiting bars or juke joints.

For a week she was miserably homesick, unable to move off the couch until Sunday when her aunts took her to Greater Salem Baptist Church, an environment she felt at home in immediately, later stating it was "the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me".

[10] When the pastor called the congregation to witness, or declare one's experience with God, Jackson was struck by the spirit and launched into a lively rendition of "Hand Me Down My Silver Trumpet, Gabriel", to an impressed but somewhat bemused audience.

Thomas A. Dorsey, a seasoned blues musician trying to transition to gospel music, trained Jackson for two months, persuading her to sing slower songs to maximize their emotional effect.

[29][30] The Johnson Singers folded in 1938, but as the Depression lightened Jackson saved some money, earned a beautician's license from Madam C. J. Walker's school, and bought a beauty salon in the heart of Bronzeville.

[38] The next year promoter Joe Bostic approached her to perform in a gospel music revue at Carnegie Hall, a venue most often reserved for classical and well established artists such as Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.

Mitch Miller offered her a $50,000-a-year (equivalent to $570,000 in 2023) four-year contract, and Jackson became the first gospel artist to sign with Columbia Records, a much larger company with the ability to promote her nationally.

Despite white people beginning to attend her shows and sending fan letters, executives at CBS were concerned they would lose advertisers from Southern states who objected to a program with a black person as the primary focus.

Jackson attracted the attention of the William Morris Agency, a firm that promoted her by booking her in large concert halls and television appearances with Arthur Godfrey, Dinah Shore, Bing Crosby, and Perry Como in the 1950s.

She and her entourage of singers and accompanists toured deeper into the South, encountering difficulty finding safe, clean places to sleep, eat, and buy gas due to Jim Crow laws.

[57][58] Motivated by her sincere appreciation that civil rights protests were being organized within churches and its participants inspired by hymns, she traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to sing in support of the ongoing bus boycott.

After hearing that black children in Virginia were unable to attend school due to integration conflicts, she threw them an ice cream party from Chicago, singing to them over a telephone line attached to a public address system.

[i] Three months later, while rehearsing for an appearance on Danny Kaye's television show, Jackson was inconsolable upon learning that Kennedy had been assassinated, believing that he died fighting for the rights of black Americans.

Her phone number continued to be listed in the Chicago public telephone book, and she received calls nonstop from friends, family, business associates, and strangers asking for money, advice on how to break into the music industry, or general life decisions they should make.

Jackson was often depressed and frustrated at her own fragility, but she took the time to send Lyndon Johnson a telegram urging him to protect marchers in Selma, Alabama, when she saw news coverage of Bloody Sunday.

When not on tour, she concentrated her efforts on building two philanthropies: the Mahalia Jackson Foundation which eventually paid tuition for 50 college students, and the culmination of a dream she had for ten years: a nondenominational temple for young people in Chicago to learn gospel music.

As she organized two large benefit concerts for these causes, she was once more heartbroken upon learning of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She attended the funeral in Atlanta where she gave one of her most memorable performances of "Take My Hand, Precious Lord".

Now experiencing inflammation in her eyes and painful cramps in her legs and hands, she undertook successful tours of the Caribbean, still counting the house to ensure she was being paid fairly, and Liberia in West Africa.

"[90] Writer Ralph Ellison noted how she blended precise diction with a thick New Orleans accent, describing the effect as "almost of the academy one instant, and of the broadest cotton field dialect the next".

In Melody Maker, Max Jones contrasted the two: "Whereas Bessie's singing can sound harsh and unlovely, even to jazz students, on first acquaintance, Mahalia's voice is obviously an instrument of uncommon beauty...

[99][4][100] The New Grove Gospel, Blues, and Jazz cites the Apollo songs "In the Upper Room", "Let the Power of the Holy Ghost Fall on Me", and "I'm Glad Salvation is Free" as prime examples of the "majesty" of Jackson's voice.

[101] Compared to other artists at Columbia, Jackson was allowed considerable input in what she would record, but Mitch Miller and producer George Avakian persuaded her with varying success to broaden her appeal to listeners of different faiths.

These included "You'll Never Walk Alone" written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the 1945 musical Carousel, "Trees" based on the poem by Joyce Kilmer, "Danny Boy", and the patriotic songs "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", among others.

[108][86] She roared like a Pentecostal preacher, she moaned and growled like the old Southern mothers, she hollered the gospel blues like a sanctified Bessie Smith and she cried into the Watts' hymns like she was back in a slave cabin.

[117] Promoter Joe Bostic was in the audience of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, an outdoor concert that occurred during a downpour, and stated: "It was the most fantastic tribute to the hypnotic power of great artistry I have ever encountered.

"[120] During her tour of the Middle East, Jackson stood back in wonder while visiting Jericho, and road manager David Haber asked her if she truly thought trumpets brought down its walls.

[127] Ralph Ellison called Falls and Jackson "the dynamic duo", saying that their performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival created "a rhythmical drive such as is expected of the entire Basie band.

"[142] Franklin, who studied Jackson since she was a child and sang "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at her funeral,[143] was placed at Rolling Stone's number one spot in their list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, compiled in 2010.

In interviews, Jackson repeatedly credits aspects of black culture that played a significant part in the development of her style: remnants of slavery music she heard at churches, work songs from vendors on the streets of New Orleans, and blues and jazz bands.