Death
Jackson died in Chicago on January 27, 1972 of heart failure and diabetes complications. Two cities paid tribute, Chicago and New Orleans. Beginning in Chicago, outside the Greater Salem Baptist Church, 50,000 people filed silently past her mahogany, glass-topped coffin in final tribute to the queen of gospel song. The next day, as many as could – 6,000 or more – filled every seat and stood along the walls of the city's public concert hall, the Arie Crown Theater of McCormick Place, for a two-hour funeral service. Mahalia's pastor, the Rev. Leon Jenkins, Mayor Richard J. Daley, and Mrs. Coretta Scott King eulogized Mahalia during the Chicago funeral as "a friend – proud, black and beautiful".Sammy Davis, Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald paid their respects. Dr. Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., delivered the eulogy at the Chicago funeral. Aretha Franklin closed the Chicago rites with a moving rendition of "Precious Lord, Take My Hand".
Three days later, a thousand miles away, the scene repeated itself: again the long lines, again the silent tribute, again the thousands filling the great hall of the Rivergate Convention Center in downtown New Orleans this time. Mayor Moon Landrieu and Louisiana Governor John J. McKeithen joined gospel singer Bessie Griffin; Dick Gregory praised 'Mahalia's "moral force" as main reason for her success", and Lou Rawls sang "Just a Closer Walk With Thee". The funeral cortège of 24 limousines drove slowly past her childhood place of worship, Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, where her recordings played through loudspeakers. It made its way to Providence Memorial Park in Metairie, Louisiana where Jackson was entombed. Despite the inscription of Jackson's birth year on her headstone as 1912, she was actually born in 1911. Among Mahalia's surviving relatives is her great-nephew, the Indiana Pacers forward Danny Granger.
Jackson's estate was reported at "more than a million dollars". Some reporters estimated that record royalties, television and movie residuals, and various investments made it worth more. The bulk of the estate was left to a number of relatives – many of whom cared for Mahalia during her early years. Among principal heirs were relatives including her half-brother John Jackson and aunt Hannah Robinson. Neither of her ex-husbands, Isaac Hockenhull (1936–1941) and Sigmund Galloway (1964–1967), were mentioned in her will.
Read more about this topic: Mahalia Jackson
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Why wait for Death to mow?
why wait for Death to sow
us in the ground?”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)