Born in 1911 in New Orleans, Mahalia Jackson’s grassroots upbringing was not easy on her as a child. She grew up sharing a three-room house with twelve people in the Black Pearl neighborhood of New Orleans. At the age of five, she was confronted with the tragic death of her mother and moved in with her exceptionally harsh aunt, Mahala “Duke” Paul, who was actually Mahalia’s namesake. She didn’t allow Mahalia to listen to blues records at home, and Mahalia often sought exposure to music at church socials instead. At Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, her grandfather, who was born into slavery, delivered sermons as a preacher. It was here in her family church that Mahalia started her love for singing. 

Mahalia worked odd jobs in New Orleans like scrubbing floors or making cane chairs, but any time  not working was spent playing with other children in the levees or singing at her Church. Looking for better jobs, she moved to Chicago with her aunt, Hannah, at the age of 16 in 1927. But she didn’t find her footing immediately. In her autobiography Movin’ On Up, she remembers “the darkness and cold of those days” when she moved to Chicago. She first found a job as a domestic, feeling “low and lonely and afraid in Chicago,” and she perceived the city as a “penitentiary” closed off by skyscrapers. 

Despite the challenges, she stayed in Chicago and didn't return to New Orleans for 15 years. Mahalia's experience of migration mirrors that of many Black Americans in the 20th century, who fled racist violence in the South but struggled to find their place in Northern cities. That said, the energy of Black Chicago struck Mahalia. She was deeply motivated by Black Chicagoans’ commitment to uplift their own community. Here, more opportunities for African Americans existed, and Mahalia’s gospel career finally began to pick up in the late 1940s. This experience grounded her in the fight for civil rights through the rest of her life.