Glorious Mahalia: II. Stave in the ground

[Verse 1: Studs Terkel & Mahalia Jackson]

I've known you since about 1946

That’d be about seventeen years we've known one another, Mahalia

That's right

Uh, you, your recognition as a internationally known artist

A black woman, a singer of gospel songs, spirituals

Mhm

And you’re involved, you're behind this big freedom rally at McCormick Place, it's May 27th

Mhm

And, uh, Martin Luther King will be there, and Dick Gregory and Al Hibbler, Dinah Washington, and Reverend Abernathy

[Verse 2: Mahalia Jackson & Studs Terkel]

You got to keep moving and you gotta have heart

And you got to just suffer, but you got to keep on moving

There are so many people, in, is trying to, to move, they got to just keep pushing their way

And then there's so many people is, is ready to move, they're ready to, to come up out of poverty and come up out of, uh, oppression

You be trying to tell the world you gotta have a, a real heart, a real soul, a real feeling of, of, of love in your heart

This is in a way what I suppose Reverend Martin Luther King's feeling is all about

Because the nonviolent movement

[Verse 3: Mahalia Jackson & Studs Terkel]

It's pretty difficult, though, isn't it, Mahalia? I mean, is this difficult? You know

Oh, it’s so sad, it’s so sad

Difficult to, uh, turn the cheek, isn't it?

OH, well, that’s his teaching, you know

And I, I have gone along with it pretty much and followed his leadership

But, you know, it's pretty hard, Stud, to, for somebody to keep on knocking you down

And the thing that hurts me so bad is

Down South where I was raised, at New Orleans, Louisiana

And worked with the white people down there

And they would go off, these rich white people and leave their children in my hands

And I would raise 'em and give 'em the Bible and nurse ’em, almost nursed 'em from my own breasts

And, uh, loved their children with all my heart

Not because I was getting paid, 'cause they didn't pay you nothin'

And I look back at things like that and how I loved these children

And took care of these people's children better than some of those mothers did

And the day they can take these little bitty black relatives of mine

And throw water on 'em, keep 'em out of school

This is pretty hard

[Verse 4: Mahalia Jackson & Studs Terkel]

And you're talking about your experience, Mahalia

Here you were, known on the stage, and suddenly

You were just another black woman walking down the street

I don't know, this thing, it's, it's just peculiar

When I'm on the stage or on television and working with white people

They just hug me and love me and say I'm so wonderful and I'm so great

And then when I'm walking down the street like an ordinary citizen, they don't, uh, recognize me

And when I go into the department store in the South

I can't get a sandwich, I can't get a bottle of pop, I can't even get a tab

And I'm just the Mahalia Jackson that they got through saying how wonderful I am

Oh, I don't understand this, what make people act like that?

Well, this is the big question, Mahalia

The split in people

[Verse 5: Mahalia Jackson]

Got a break on television

And looked like somebody told the people on television

This ain't the thing to do, put a Negro on television

And finally the, the sponsor had to cancel the program

[Verse 6: Mahalia Jackson & Studs Terkel]

I realized what it used to be like to see 'em put a stave in the ground

And put a rope around a, the mule's neck

He could just go just so far, he'd got have to eat

The stave in the ground and like a mule, just that's

Far as you can go

They wanna check how you, and no further

No further

And this particular thing of going beyond this narrow circle that

Then you've gotten out of your place, you know, you've gotten out of your place