During the post-Civil War years, the congregation style of singing was transformed by the new Pentecostal congregations, also known as Holiness and Sanctified. (5) African American gospel music was a twentieth century phenomenon which evolved through the people that moved from rural communities to urban centers in cities. They left their areas of limited promise and social and economic terror in hopes of starting over. (4) Gospel was s style of repertoire and singing. The music was delivered as a high powered spiritual force. The emphasis was placed on the vocal rhythms. Gospel music combined call and response forms, with slow-metered , lined out protestant hymns. Born in 1912, Mahalia Jackson was the third of six children. Growing up in segregated, racist times, Mahalia lived in what she called ashotgun shack?. White folks owned the bars and grocery stores of the neighborhood. Blacks were left with the left over jobs, often working for white families, or working on the railroad tracks. Mahalia's father found work on the riverfront, dock towns and on the boats. On Sundays, her father worked preaching in a Baptist church. For as hard as her parents worked, money always seemed to be short. When Mahalia was only five years old, her mother died. Her father remarried and acquired a whole new family with the marriage. Although she never earned any pay for her work, Mahalia began doing chores for her Aunt Duke after school. Both sets of Mahalia's grandparents were born into slavery and she was doomed to head the same way. When Mahalia was in eight grade, she began to look for work outside of her aunt's chores and got a job as a laundress. (4) When Mahalia finally became famous, she always demanded her payments in cash, paid up-front. The reason for her requests was because often times during her childhood years, they never received the payments they worked hard to receive. They would often be cheated out of their sums because plantation owners claimed that the money they earned was equal to their fees for room and board.
