That's in real life. In art the goodbye is often a very finalized
kind of goodbye, in drama — the same in books,
all read in which the Negro ends up lynched, shot, mowed down,
dying, defeated? How many Broadway plays and movies—take the
two latest examples: In MR. JOHNSON the Englishman took MHA a
gun at the final curtain and killed the Negro boy. In EDGE OF THE
CITY, the black hero, Sidney Poitier, ends up hanged down by a
baling hook—he couldn't win, the fight. Once said to a young
American playwright who had written a play with a defeatist ending
in which the Negro lead was killed by whites, "Why don't you have
the colored character kill the white man at the end?" He said,
"But that wouldn't be a tragedy." "No, I said, but it might make
theatrical history."

Well this is Negro History Week, and I've been invited here
to give you briefly, the history of the gospel song. The spirituals
were anonymous folk songs born out of suffering and slavery, written
by nobody, made up by thousands—the "black and unknown bards" of
James Weldon Johnson's beautiful poem. Gospel songs are not
spirituals. They are not very old in point of time, and they are
not anonymously created. Gospel songs are written. They are, I
think, influenced by the spirituals, but equally so by protégé
hymns, and musically by the blues. Christian singers of gospel songs
do not like their music compared to the blues—and in intent, and
lyric content, it is not like the blues. But musically, it is
like the blues. I once read somewhere that in all countries
religion catches up with and borrows from popular
music, but usually a half centruy late. Gospel songs did not
take so long to catch up with the popular music of the Negro
synagogue. The
people, the blues. /Gospel song caught up shortly after the first
World War. And the first great writer of gospel songs was, before
he got religion, pianist for one of the greatest of the old-time
blues singers, Ma Rainey. (THE DORSEY STORY).
Then he was called Georgia Tom. But

through the slippery snowy streets in Chicago's bitter cold with
this unknown woman, Mahalia went, and up three flights of stairs
in a dark tenement, into the poor apartment where the sick woman
lay. She took her hand and stood by her bed in the drab
little room and sang. That is Mahalia Jackson.

In listening to her tonight, to really understand and enjoy
it, relax and let the songs come to you. Don't try
to analyze her singing, or the songs, not here, not now---maybe
later. Don't listen with your minds, don't even listen with your
ears---listen with your heart.