Mahalia Jackson was an American gospel singer. Possessing a contralto voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel", she became one of the most influential gospel singers in the world and was heralded internationally as a singer and civil rights activist. She was described by entertainer Harry Belafonte as "the single most powerful black woman in the United States", she recorded about 30 albums during her career, her 45 rpm records included a dozen "golds"—million-sellers. "I sing God's music because it makes me feel free", Jackson once said about her choice of gospel, adding, "It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues." She was born on October 26, 1911, as Mahala Jackson and nicknamed "Halie". Jackson grew up in the Black Pearl section of the Carrollton neighborhood of uptown New Orleans; the three-room dwelling on Pitt Street housed a dog. This included Little Mahala. Several aunts and cousins lived in the house as well. Aunt Mahala was given the nickname "Duke" after proving herself the undisputed "boss" of the family.
The maternal side of her family consisted of her mother's siblings: Isabell, Boston, Hannah, Rhoda, their children and patriarch Rev. Paul Clark, a former slave. Jackson's father, she grew up with her maternal cousins Paul Clark Jr. Amelia Clark and Dorothy Mae Clark. John A. Jackson Sr. was a stevedore and a barber who became a Baptist minister. He fathered five other children besides Mahalia: Wilmon and Yvonne, Edna and Johnny Jr.. Her father's sister, Jeanette Jackson-Burnett, her husband, were vaudeville entertainers, their son, her cousin Edward, shared stories and records of Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith and Bessie Smith, whose voices and blues singing impressed her so much that she would imitate their ways of bending and coloring notes. At birth, Jackson suffered from genu varum, or "bowed legs". Doctors wanted to perform surgery by breaking her legs. Jackson's mother would rub her legs down with greasy dishwater. Despite the condition, Jackson performed dance steps for the white woman for whom her mother and Aunt Bell cleaned house.
Jackson was four or five years old when her mother Charity died at the age of 25, leaving her family to decide who would raise Halie and her brother. Aunt Duke assumed this responsibility, the children were forced to work from sun-up to sun-down. Aunt Duke would always inspect the house using the "white glove" method. If the house was not cleaned properly, Jackson was beaten. If one of the other relatives could not do their chores or clean at their job, Jackson or one of her cousins was expected to perform that particular task. School was hardly an option. Jackson loved to sing and church is where she loved to sing the most, her Aunt Bell told her that one day she would sing in front of royalty, a prediction that would come true. Jackson began her singing career at the local Mount Moriah Baptist Church. At 12 years old, she was baptized in the Mississippi River by Mt. Moriah's pastor, the Rev. E. D. Lawrence went back to the church to "receive the right hand of fellowship". In 1931, at the age of 20, Jackson moved to Illinois, in the midst of the Great Migration.
After her first Sunday school service, where she gave an impromptu performance of her favorite song, "Hand Me Down My Silver Trumpet, Gabriel", she was invited to join the Greater Salem Baptist Church Choir. She began touring the city's churches and surrounding areas with the Johnson Gospel Singers, one of the earliest professional gospel groups. In Chicago, Jackson met the composer Thomas A. Dorsey, known as the Father of Gospel Music, he gave her musical advice, in 1939 they began a five-year association of touring, with Jackson singing Dorsey's songs in church programs and at conventions. His "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" became her signature song. In 1936, Jackson married Isaac Lanes Grey Hockenhull, a graduate of Fisk University and Tuskegee Institute, 10 years her senior, she refused to sing a pledge she would keep throughout her professional life. She was offered money to do so and she divorced Isaac in 1941 because of his unrelenting pressure on her to sing secular music and his addiction to gambling on racehorses.
Early in her Chicago years, Jackson recorded "You Better Run, Run". Not much is known about this recording and no publicly known copies exist. Biographer Laurraine Goreau cites that it was around this time she added the "i" to her name, changing it from Mahala to Mahalia, pronounced. At the age of 25, her second set of records was recorded on May 21, 1937, under the Decca Coral label, accompanied by Estelle Allen, in order: "God's Gonna Separate The Wheat From The Tares", "My Lord", "Keep Me Everyday" and "God Shall Wipe All Tears Away". Financially, these were not successful, Decca let her go. In 1947, Jackson signed up with the Apollo label, in 1948, recorded the William Herbert Brewster song "Move On Up a Little Higher", a recording so popular stores could not stock enough copies to meet demand, selling an astonishing eight million copies; the success of this record rocketed her to fame in the U. S. and soon after, in Europe. During this time s
Beasley Coliseum is a general-purpose arena on the campus of Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. Opened 47 years ago in June 1973, its current seating capacity is 11,671 for basketball, it is the home venue for both the Cougars men's and women's basketball teams of the Pac-12 Conference. The arena was renamed in 1981 for Wallis Beasley, a long-time sociology professor and executive vice president, shortly before his retirement from the university, he was WSU's faculty representative for athletics in the 1960s and served as interim university president. For its first eight years, the venue was known as "Washington State University Performing Arts Coliseum." The building used "space frame" construction novel at the time. The elevation of the court is 2,550 feet above sea level; the project was approved by the WSU board of regents in early 1969. The building's inaugural event in 1973 was the university's commencement exercises on June 3, its first sporting event was an NBA exhibition game between Seattle and Portland on September 25, 1973.
The first collegiate sporting event was a men's varsity basketball game against LSU on December 1 preceded by a freshman game. Intercollegiate basketball was played in Bohler Gymnasium, which opened in 1928 and is now home to Cougar volleyball. Located on the east side of campus, the building includes the home arena for Cougars men's and women's basketball, it is named Friel Court in honor of Jack Friel, the longtime head coach of the WSU men's basketball team, who led the Cougars to 495 victories in 30 seasons. Friel stepped down as head coach in 1958 and five years became the first commissioner of the Big Sky Conference based in Pullman, because that's where he lived; the court was named for Friel in late April 1977, announced by President Glenn Terrell at a meeting of the board of regents. The court surface was tartan for its first decade; the Coliseum has hosted the sub-regionals of the NCAA men's basketball tournament three times: 1975, 1982, 1984. The 1975 tournament had 32 teams and the sub-regional had just two games: Big Sky champion Montana and second-ranked UCLA advanced on Saturday night before 10,500.
Pac-8 champion UCLA trailed Big Ten runner-up Michigan by four at halftime and needed overtime to win by nine. In the opener, WSU alumnus Jud Heathcote's Montana beat independent Utah State by six. Five days in the Sweet Sixteen in Portland, UCLA defeated the Grizzlies by a mere three points. By 1982, the tournament had 48 teams and its Pullman sub-regional had four games with six teams, headlined by the Northwest's top two teams, fourth-ranked Oregon State and #8 Idaho. Both were seeded with first-round byes and advanced: Oregon State dispatched Pepperdine and Palouse neighbor Idaho outlasted Iowa in overtime to advance to the Sweet Sixteen, with 12,340 in attendance on Sunday afternoon; the next week in Provo, Utah, OSU eliminated Idaho was defeated by Georgetown, the eventual runner-up. The 1984 tournament had six played in Pullman on the new hardwood. WSU's archrival Washington beat Nevada upset third-seeded Duke, while eventual champion Georgetown outlasted SMU 37–36 before over 10,500 spectators on Sunday afternoon.
With the opening of Spokane Arena in 1995, Spokane has hosted NCAA tournament games in 2003, 2007, 2010, 2014, 2016. The building's full name reflects the fact that it is used not only for concerts, big-name speakers and commencement, but for basketball as mentioned above; the building may be reconfigured for seating capacities of 12,000 in the round to 9,000 in an end-stage configuration for concerts, to 2,500 in a theater configuration using an extensive system of fly-in curtains, an adjustable cloth scrim ceiling, a portable proscenium stored under the floor. The original opera house/theater configuration featured one of the first synthesized acoustical environments using surround speaker systems. An onsite reverberation chamber tuned with fiberglass panels for the specific acoustical configuration was combined with the first commercial use of a digital delay line, the Lexicon DD1 fed to the side and overhead speakers; when properly set up, it was capable producing a convincing acoustical rendition of a theater, an opera house, or by changing the delay settings and retuning the reverb chamber a cathedral.
A sewer drain line had been installed from the southeast corner restroom facilities through the reverb chamber, if a toilet flushed when the system was in operation, the resulting sound effect was extraordinary. After discovering that, locking the restroom was a management priority whenever the theater was prepared for surround sound use. More full digital reverberation replaced the chamber; the Coliseum's Hall of Fame—famous entertainers who have performed there—include comedians such as Bob Hope, Bill Cosby, Jay Leno, Whoopi Goldberg, musical stars or shows such as The Beach Boys, The 5th Dimension, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Def Leppard, Metal Church, Van Halen, Dana Carvey, Drew Carey, Montgomery Gentry, Bill Engvall, Howie Mandel, Grease & Cats. The Harlem Globetrotters have performed there five times; the Coliseum has been the venue, for many years, for the Great Performances series, organized by Festival Dance and Performing Arts Association, of neighboring Moscow, Idaho.
Overflow crowds attended lectures by Noam Chomsky on April 22, 2005, by Jane Good
The Dinaane Debut Fiction Award the European Union Literary Award, is a South African literary award. This award is open to South SADC writers who are residents of these countries; the manuscripts that are submitted must be a first, unpublished work of fiction in English, or translations of other South African languages into English providing the work has not been published in other languages. The word "dinaane" means "telling our stories together" in Setswana, says Jacana. In 2015, the European Union Literary Award was renamed the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, it is supported by various European Union commissions operating in South Africa. The winner is awarded a cash prize of R35 000.00 along with publication of their manuscript with Jacana Media. In honor of Gerald Kraak, who helped run Jacana Media until his death in 2014, the Kraak Writing Grant is awarded; the grant is awarded to an entrant whose manuscript showed great promise and who would most benefit from a three-month mentor-ship with an industry leading mentor.
The Dinaane Debut Fiction Award was first given in 2004. European Union Literary Award2004 Ishtiyaq Shukri, The Silent Minaret 2005 Fred Khumalo, Bitches Brew and Gerald Kraak, Ice in the Lungs 2006 2007 Kopano Matlwa, Coconut 2008 Megan Voysey-Braig, Till We Can Keep an Animal 2009 Zinaid Meeran, Saracen at the Gates 2010 James Clelland, Deeper than Colour 2011/12 Ashraf Kagee, Khalil's Journey 2013 Penny Busetto, The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself 2014 Andrew Miller, Dub StepsDinaane Debut Fiction Award2015/2016 Tammy Baikie, Selling LipService 2019 Mubanga Kalimamukwento, The Mourning Bird 2020 Resoketswe Manenzhe, Scatterlings Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, official site