GATES: The world's preeminent collection of Black gospel music happens to be tucked away in a library at Baylor University in Texas.

DARDEN: If we let this music disappear, future generations are going to judge us really, really harshly.

♪ I'll take ♪ I'll take Jesus ♪ GATES: The Black Gospel Preservation Program is on a mission to preserve recordings from the golden age of gospel, that epic era following World War II that saw a dramatic explosion of Black sacred music on records, on the radio and on the segregated backroads of the American South.

HAIRSTON: We saw gospel music really come into its own as a genre, and it began to be heard by millions of people.

Before, it was just church music, but the golden age of gospel really represents gospel's growth as an industry.

GATES: These stacks are filled with albums created by the great gospel icons; Mahalia Jackson, The Soul Stirrers, James Cleveland, The Caravans, Clara Ward, as well as several lost gems that I was eager to sample in the listening booth.

DARDEN: You need to hear a little bit of Alex Bradford.

GATES: I've never heard Alex Bradford.

DARDEN: Alex Bradford is one of those transitional figures.

Comes late in the golden age.

This is his million selling, Too Close to Heaven.

GATES: Too Close to Heaven.

DARDEN: Now I want you to hear.

He is just a normal tenor but you're going to hit a, hit a pure high C... GATES: Mm-hmm.

All right.

DARDEN: On this that's gonna knock your socks off.

♪ BRADFORD: I'm too close ♪ To my ♪ GATES: Man, what a voice.

DARDEN: You'll still hear that.

GATES: That's beautiful.

♪ BRADFORD: I'm too close ♪ GATES: Mmmm.

REV DYSON: Singers and preachers at their best summon the courage, the uplift, the power, and beauty of Black speech.

♪ BRADFORD: And I know ♪ He'll lead me to that land ♪ Oh ♪ (laughter) GATES: Great!

REV DYSON: A song well song will make you hold on a little longer.

A sermon well preached will make you understand that you are indeed a child of God, and not to believe what the world says about you.

♪ Ain't gonn let nobody, Lord ♪♪ GATES: As gospel music became more popular and more profitable, the gospel sound ventured beyond the walls of the church, from festival stages to mainstream television shows, it transformed Black popular music, and along with preaching, composed the soundtrack of the freedom struggle.

♪ Marching u to freedom land ♪♪ ♪ Oh, don't I ♪ Lord, I don't know ♪ GATES: Until the 1940s, male quartets dominated gospel recordings, but Apollo Records, a small independent label in New York City, decided to take a chance on gospel's star soloist.

BURFORD: Mahalia Jackson's a direct beneficiary of Apollo saying we're now going to record blues and gospel and, and various other kinds of Black music.

♪ There is power ♪ Power ♪ Wonders-working power ♪ In the blood ♪ GATES: While Mahalia Jackson was an accomplished singer on the Chicago gospel scene, her first album flopped, and it would take nearly a decade for her to cut another.

To make a living in between, literally, she had to sing for her supper.

BURFORD: There's this kind of magical gap in her recording career.

She was really waiting around for the industry to catch up with her.

GATES: In 1947, she recorded a song about the promise of salvation and the necessity of getting closer to God... ♪ JACKSON: Move on up little higher, Lord ♪♪ GATES: The title, Move On Up a Little Higher.

♪ Move on up little higher, Lord ♪ ♪ Meet with th Hebrew children ♪♪ DARDEN: "Movin' On Up," is special for a number of reasons.

For a long time, we thought it was just a straight inspirational kind of song.

But now we realize it had a coded message of empowerment.

♪ JACKSON: Move on u a little higher, Lord ♪ ♪ Meet my ♪ JORDAN: Her sound is completely different.

There's shouts interspersed.

There's growls in there.

There's a sense of freedom that she has with it.

♪ All a-God' sons and daughters ♪♪ HADLEY: The way that song builds and the way she gives herself license to really kind of nearly shout towards the end is a direct contrast from what many of those mainline Black churches wanted out of gospel music.

It don't take all that, but yet, Mahalia Jackson was giving all of that.

It's as if it is to say, "This song is for me, if it's not for anybody else."

♪ JACKSON: Yes I'll be waiting ♪ ♪ Oh, at th beautiful golden gates ♪♪ GATES: What was special about her voice?

What gave it its power?

What made it unique?

WARWICK: She believed and trusted in God and was not ashamed and would let you know that.

She believed every word she was singing, and she wanted you to believe it.

She was very spiritual.

Very.

GATES: The success of Move On Up a Little Higher, proved that gospel could be both spiritual and profitable.

REV SHELLEY: When Mahalia Jackson sold two million copies of Move On Up a Little Higher, she wasn't just selling to Black people.

She introduces lots of audiences in the United States and around the world to Black gospel music, right?

And through her success like adds a popular legitimacy to Black gospel.

GATES: As sales of gospel records soared, Mahalia and other musicians increasingly hit the road.

♪ Each and ever day ♪ March fo freedom's highway ♪♪ MAROVICH: Record companies would send a cavalcade of gospel artists around the country, and really built up this sort of incredible audience for gospel music.

♪ I'm too close ♪ To heaven ♪ To my journey's end ♪ Yo ♪ I'm too close ♪ To turn bac to a world of sin ♪ HADLEY: All of these groups are pioneering a bit of a different gospel sound, a looser form that allows for more vamping, a shout chorus, becoming vehicles to showcase lead singers.

♪ Somebody got to mak it to heaven somehow ♪ ♪ Yes ♪ Yeah ♪ So close ♪ I'm almost to reach my goal ♪ JOHNSON: You have the beginning of the first professional full time gospel singers, where they're traveling not just on the weekends and then going back and working at the factory.

They're traveling year-round.

♪ Surely, surely ♪ Surely, surely ♪ ZOLTEN: Clara Ward and the Ward Singers, they were part of this rich gospel scene in Philadelphia, and they would record things like, Surely God is Able, that, you know, sold in the millions.

WALD: Clara Ward embodied a different kind of glamour, that was like a kind of urban, Philadelphia glamour, that was very different from Mahalia Jackson's Baptist, Chicago vibe.

♪ Let it shine ♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪ Every day ♪ BURFORD: They were much more visually stunning.

They wore colorful gowns.

They were much more open to singing in venues that one might've not associate with, with gospel.

JACKSON: They went into the clubs because they felt that they needed to hear the good news too.

They said, well you know, "These are the people we need to reach, you know, the ones in the church supposed to be saved and sanctified," supposed to be.

MAROVICH: It's the old, "Why would you preach to the choir?"

The choir's saved.

Go out into the highways and byways.

JACKSON: But the touring circuit was rough, truly rough, because, you know, we're looking at Jim Crow.

GATES: Among its many insults, Jim Crow meant that gospel artists were forced to perform in front of segregated audiences and sleep in segregated lodging.

DARDEN: Mahalia, the biggest star in the land at one point, said, "I'm a star when I'm on the stage here, but as soon as I walk out of this building, I'm in a jungle."

GATES: In the fall of 1954, following eight successful years with Apollo Records, Mahalia signed with Columbia and the CBS network to become a TV, radio, and recording superstar.

SULLIVAN: There's a young singer.

Not a young singer, a middle-aged Negro star.

She's acclaimed as the greatest gospel singer in the country.

GATES: Through appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, she catapulted to a different stage of her career, becoming the voice and the face of gospel music.

SULLIVAN: Here is Mahalia Jackson.

So, let's have a nice welcome for her, would you?

(applause) ♪ It was all ♪ WALD: Television made Gospel music domestically available in a way that it hadn't been.

To be on television was like way bigger than being on radio.

It signaled that people were like personalities.

They were stars.

And I think Mahalia Jackson took advantage of that well, and she came across beautifully on television.

♪ ♪ Yeah, I'v done a few deeds ♪♪ WALD: I think in Jim Crow America, Mahalia Jackson was a really iconic, beautiful, esteemed figure of respectability, rectitude, but also beauty and dignity.

The fact that she performed in robes often gave her a dignified demeanor.

She carried herself with a poise and self-assurance that was clearly from her belief.

♪ Soon I will be done ♪ Trouble of a world ♪ GATES: Despite lucrative offers to record the blues and jazz and a featured role in the Hollywood film, Imitation of Life, Mahalia confessed to Studs Terkel that it was important for her only to sing and record music for the Lord.

♪ I'll sooner will be done ♪ Trouble, Lord, of the world ♪ ♪ With my Lord ♪ Lord ♪ ZOLTEN: The draw of secular music was always out there.

If you just go secular, you're gonna triple the money that you make.

♪ To live ♪ With my Lord ♪ GATES: But, other gospel stars thought, "Surely, God wanted them to move outside of the church's walls.

♪ Oh, Jesus ♪ He gave me water ♪ Gave me water he gave me water ♪ ♪ Jesus gave me water ♪ Jesus, he gave me water ♪ Gave me water ♪ GATES: Sam Cooke, the son of a pastor, was the dynamic lead singer of The Soul Stirrers, an influential gospel quartet.

Cooke possessed that magic spark that brought new audiences to gospel music.

DARDEN: He was a heck of a songwriter, and it's almost all of his best gospel songs are a little vignette stories, most of them taken straight from the Bible.

♪ COOKE: Whoa there was a woman ♪♪ GATES: That's Sam.

♪ COOKE: In the Bible days ♪ She had been sick sick so very long ♪♪ NEAL: He often, you know, understood it the theatrical aspect of reaching and not quite making those notes, but kind of floats and flutters down.

♪ COOKE: Hem of his garment ♪ I know I'll be made whole ♪ NEAL: That Sam Cooke yodel that we all know, that we would later hear in Ronald Isley and Al Greene.

WARWICK: I remember vividly meeting Sam Cooke for the very first time.

I must have been about 13, 14, and I remember, first of all, how cute he was.

Goodness!

Oh, I had a teenage crush on that man.

NEAL: All of these 18, 19, 20, 35, 45, 55-year-old women are rushing close to the stage.

What happens when you bring the idea of sexuality, into this space?

How do we keep young folks tethered to this music?

And the way that you do that is that the music has to look as beautiful as it sounds.

♪ COOKE: The Lor is my shepherd ♪ ♪ He's my guide ♪ Whatever I need ♪ The Lord will provide ♪ MAROVICH: For Sam Cooke, he was doing well with The Soul Stirrers, but here was an opportunity to make $50,000, and he had a family, and it was hard for him to pass that up.

And so, Sam Cooke went pop.

♪ COOKE: Lovable ♪ My girl ♪ She's lovable ♪ MAROVICH: Interestingly enough, the first Sam Cooke single, Lovable, was really a gospel song.

Sam Cooke and The Soul Stirrers sang it as, "Wonderful."

He just changed the word.

He didn't really change anything.

His gospel yodel, his gospel chuckle, he brought that into pop music.

♪ COOKE: Mmmm.

♪ WARWICK: When he crossed over, it was almost natural.

But he didn't lose the quality, nor the spirituality that he had during his Soul Stirrer age.

He took that along with him.

So, if you really listen to everything that he did after that, everything had that gospel feel to it.

GATES: So, musically are you saying that there's no or little difference between Sam Cooke metaphorically on Saturday night and Sam Cooke on Sunday morning?

WARWICK: No that, that's exactly what I'm saying.

♪ COOKE: Darling, you ♪ Send me ♪ I know you ♪ Send me ♪ Darling, you ♪ Send me ♪ Honest you do, honest you do ♪ Honest you do, whoa-oh ♪ BURFORD: People often say that when Sam Cooke crossed over the gospel world turned its back on Sam Cooke.

I don't know if that's the case.

I've talked to people who say, "I continued to listen to Sam Cooke precisely because I could hear the gospel in his voice."

Well, that's a gospel voice at the top of the charts.

♪ I know, I know I know, I know ♪ ♪ When you hold me ♪ GATES: In the late 1950s, Cooke's crossover success and his performances on popular television shows paved the way for a new sound emerging out of the Motor City.

(applause) ♪ ♪ Ever since found the Christ ♪ ♪ Have bee something in my life ♪ ♪ It makes me feel like ♪ Flying away, flying away ♪ Derail ♪ To be alive ♪ HAROLD: Chicago is known as the birthplace of gospel music, but Detroit is just as important, not just for gospel music and singing but also preaching.

♪ It makes me feel like ♪ Flying away, flying away ♪ GATES: In 1946, Clarence Levaughn Franklin became the pastor of Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church.

FRANKLIN: Father!

Into thine hands I commend my spirit.

CONGREGATION: That's right!

That's right!

FRANKLIN: These were things that he said while he was dying.

CONGREGATION: That's right!

GATES: A devoted student of the word, Franklin channeled his deep understanding of the Bible into an exhilarating preaching style, a combination of storytelling and performance called "whooping."

FRANKLIN: And before leaving them, Jesus Christ, tell them his last command!

REV WALTON: What is the whoop?

Whooping is also known as the chanted sermon.

It's a form of delivery where one literally sings out the conclusion, but when you're talking about somebody like C.L.

Franklin... FRANKLIN: When Jesus died for us all, his mother... REV WALTON: He would start off slow with clear, precise articulation of each word.

FRANKLIN: He said unto his mother, "Woman behold thy son."

REV WALTON: And then, as he would begin to build, the words would start to connect more like a melody.

FRANKLIN: For she was working for her own children.

She was functioning as a mother!

You don't hear me tonight.

REV WALTON: Then by the time that he was moving to his final point and celebration, uh, he had a cadence that he would build.

And the cadence often was based upon the breathing pattern.

FRANKLIN: When he said that, uh, he dropped his head.

And said, "It's finished."

REV WALTON: And he was keeping time, and his body would become this orchestra, of which the breath... (mimics breath) That's how the rhythm... (mimics breath) Is kept.

FRANKLIN: I'm gonna say it myself.

Mm-hmm.

Yes, I am.

Into your hand, I commend the spirit.

Oh Lord.

OWENS: When he got ready to whoop, you could feel the crescendo in his voice rise.

You knew when it was coming.

The organ would start to play and the deacons would stand, and the church would stand.

(C.L.

Franklin whooping).

(C.L.

Franklin whooping).

(C.L.

Franklin whooping).

(applause) REV WALTON: The art form of whooping is something that C.L.

Franklin perfected down in the Delta.

GATES: Franklin's exposure to the spirituals and gospel, as well as to the Mississippi delta blues can be heard in his chanted style of preaching.

(C.L.

Franklin whooping).

REV THOMAS: Whooping is the ability to add tone... FRANKLIN: God, help us!

REV THOMAS: Sound, music, rhythm, cadence, meter to the close of the sermon, and it's really one of the most beautiful things in, in God's created world because it lifts the message, when done right.

I don't mean the manipulative stuff.

I don't mean the cheap stuff.

I don't mean just trying to get people to stand up, but when done well and done right by some of these folks, like C.L.

Franklin, it lifts us so high and so deep.

(C.L.

Franklin whooping).

GATES: Seeking to grow his audience beyond New Bethel's walls, Franklin decided to broadcast his sermons over the radio.

NEAL: C.L.

Franklin understood that what makes a preacher is the size of their congregation, and a building is only so big.

How do you create a bigger building without having a bigger building?

FRANKLIN: And I call myself a mighty big man.

Mm, I was reaching with men of state.

GATES: The idea caught fire.

Starting in the 1950s, Franklin recorded more than 70 albums of sermons with the help of Joe Von Battle, a local record store owner.

How did he hook up with C.L.

Franklin?

MUSIC: Well, Reverend C.L.

Franklin's church was down the street from Joe's Record Shop, and my father had the idea of recording him because of the extraordinary preaching of C.L.

Franklin.

That musicality of his speaking, you know, this was a new phenomenon, and so, uh, my father wanted to capture that.

He would go to the church and record him live and record these live sermons, and then he would bring them back to the record shop and then they would have them pressed in wax.

And they would literally put them on trains, put them on buses, and, uh, have them, uh, dispersed throughout the world.

GATES: Wow.

MUSIC: And that is what began to establish C.L.

Franklin as a national phenomenon in the African American community.

REV DYSON: I myself, as a six or seven-year-old boy, going down to my grandfather's farm in Alabama, discovered C.L.

Franklin because of those records, and I was mesmerized and enchanted by his voice.

By his ability to evoke the meaning of the gospel while dipping it into the healing waters of Black rhetoric.

FRANKLIN: Now the question is, is God still stirring the nest?

GATES: The albums sold so briskly, that Franklin became known across the country as the man with the million-dollar voice.

In his most popular recording, Franklin borrowed the motif of a mother eagle stirring its nest which he took from the book of Deuteronomy.

Franklin made it his own.

FRANKLIN: Mmmm, he stirred the nest in history when we came as slaves to this country.

CONGREGATION: Oh, yeah.

FRANKLIN: Mmm, you don't hear me.

I know it was rough and I, I know it was bad, mm.

And I know that we had a hard time.

Oh Lord.

ANDREWS: I listen to C.L.

Franklin still, to this very day, uh, because of his skill at the preaching exercise.

(laughing).

GATES: What do you mean?

ANDREWS: Well, when C.L.

preaches, uh, you don't know where he's going, but you do know where he's going.

There ain't but one Christian sermon, and that's Jesus.

But every Sunday we go and hear a preacher take us to Jesus in a different way.

♪ FRANKLIN: I, love the Lord.

♪ ♪ He heard my cry... ♪ I, I... ♪ GATES: So, it's all about storytelling.

ANDREWS: It is, it is, and connecting the biblical story with our story.

Why get upset about what they do to us?

Look what they did to Jesus.

That's a Black way of explaining our existence on this earth.

He's the cornerstone, yet the world rejected him.

And so, you hear a whole message about what it means to live in hope in the midst of the rejection.

That's what Black preaching is.

♪ ARETHA: There is ♪ A ♪ NEAL: And then he had this 14-year-old daughter.

Amazing voice.

Let's get her on record too.

♪ ARETHA: That I see ♪ Filled ♪ GATES: Your father was the first person to record a 14-year-old... MUSIC: Yes.

GATES: Aretha Franklin.

MUSIC: Yes.

He was the very first person to ever put her on record, on wax, as they used to say.

GATES: Right.

MUSIC: Aretha really did have something extremely special, because when you hear my father's recordings of her she has as much power as anybody middle-aged.

COHEN: Aretha Franklin as a teenager is also singing on the gospel circuit, which in addition to bring her to many churches across America, she was working incredibly hard as a young woman to learn her craft.

♪ ARETHA: Beneath ♪ CONGREGATION: My Lord.

COHEN: Her melisma, her way of stretching out a syllable, and different notes in this amazing incredible way, let alone from a teenager.

GATES: Steeped in the church, Aretha developed her musical gifts by her father's side.

COHEN: Aretha Franklin was the prime recipient of the influence of C.L.

Franklin because he had such a range of emotions and a range of ways of saying and a way of improvising.

He always knew how to holler, how to get a congregation moving, how to jump, but not too much.

And for someone like Aretha Franklin or for any musician, that is essential, how to do a lot, how to express so much, but to not overdo it.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, our friend, our host and our narrator for today, the famous songwriter and gospel singer, James Cleveland!

GATES: Aretha found a kindred spirit in James Cleveland, the young minister of music at New Bethel Baptist.

A protégé of Thomas Dorsey, Cleveland became one of the most influential mentors to the next generation of gospel musicians.

♪ Said I wasn' gonna tell nobody but I ♪ ♪ Couldn't keep it to myself ♪ Oh, I, couldn't keep it ♪ MAROVICH: James Cleveland came out of the traditional sound.

He was born in Chicago, 1931.

His grandmother took him to Pilgrim Baptist Church where he watched Dorsey and the choir sing.

REV WALTON: He's going shopping for Mahalia Jackson.

Learns how to play piano from the great Roberta Martin.

He's in high school, starts singing with the Crusaders and then goes on tour with Albertina Walker and the Gospel Caravans.

I mean so, his very life in his first two decades is the history of gospel music.

COHEN: He lived for a while in the Franklin household when Aretha Franklin was growing up, he was close to her father, Reverend C.L.

Franklin.

NEAL: Reverend C.L.

Franklin knew that he needed young ears, and he needed a musician could, could, who could translate what he was hearing to a broader audience.

GATES: Franklin soon became a power broker in Detroit, leveraging his large solid church base with his tight relationships with gospel musicians.

NEAL: He is this center of this orbit, this space in Detroit that draws all these different forces.

The people who come through the city come to see him.

So, whether it's Oscar Peterson or Dinah Washington or Mahalia Jackson, right, young Martin Luther King.

All these folks are going to come and, and have dinner at C.L.

's house, and so, in many ways, I think he helps to bridge the future of gospel music, but also the future of the Civil Rights Movement, right, literally at his dinner table.

♪ I believe ♪ I believe ♪ I believe ♪ I do believe ♪ People get ready ♪ There's a train comin' ♪ Ooh ♪ GATES: In June 1963, Franklin helped organize the Walk to Freedom.

100,000 people marched up Detroit's main thoroughfare, Woodward Avenue, culminating in a keynote speech by Dr. King delivered before a capacity crowd at Cobo Hall.

It was at this gathering in Detroit that Dr. King for the very first time, would utter his signature phrase.

DR. KING: I have a dream this afternoon.

One day right here in Detroit, Negroes will be able to buy a house or rent a house anywhere that their money will carry them, and they will be able to get a job.

GATES: It turns out he had borrowed that phrase from a young dynamic female preacher.

Her name was Prathia Hall.

REV MOSS: He remembers the prayer that Prathia Hall gave, the words that she gave about having a dream, and that rested in his mind.

HIGGINBOTHAM: She said, "You have to have a listening imagination."

For her, reading the scripture was a way to get into a story.

That was about sound.

The sermon itself becomes a song.

The song becomes the sermon.

GATES: From his earliest days in Atlanta, throughout his entire career as a civil rights leader, the lyricism of Dr. King's sermons and speeches reflected the strong influence of women.

MARTIN: His dad was a preacher, but a great deal of Martin's formation theologically and his giftedness came from his mother.

Alberta King was an accomplished musician and teacher, and she had Martin learn the piano as a young man and she had him singing in the choir, and so, so much of Martin's musicality comes from his mother.

DR. KING: No Lincolnian emancipation proclamation can do this for us.

No Kennesonian or Johnsonian Civil Rights Bill can do this for us.

If the Negro is to be free, he must move down into the inner resources of his own soul and sign with a pen and ink of self-assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation!

♪ JACKSON: Yeah ♪ We shall overcome ♪ We shall overcome ♪ GATES: But King knew all too well that the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement couldn't be sustained on rousing sermons alone.

The legendary gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, provided the foundation of the movement's soundtrack, financial support with her checkbook, and emotional solace in Dr. King's darkest hours.

BURFORD: Mahalia Jackson got involved with the Civil Rights Movement.

She started foundations to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King's civil rights organization.

She would at any moment kind of show up and support a King event and they became lifelong friends.

And I think their relationship is really interesting because it's a reminder of the relationship of speech and song, not just within Black worship, but within the Civil Rights Movement.

HADLEY: She had a wealth of experiences that would benefit a very young Martin Luther King facing these impossible tasks.

We can't imagine the duress that he was under.

There's this great video of both of them, at a rally at a church in Chicago, and he's getting ready to speak.

He's in the pulpit, and he looks young and pensive, not quite so sure, and Mahalia Jackson starts leading, Joshua Fit th Battle of Jericho.

♪ JACKSON: Oh, Joshua fi the battle of Jericho ♪♪ HADLEY: And his whole countenance shifts and changes.

The whole mood in the church changes because it is as if Mahalia Jackson understands and is able to channel all of that weariness, that worry, and literally releases that tension.

♪ JACKSON: Joshua fi the battle of Jericho ♪ ♪ Jericho, Jericho ♪ Joshua fit th battle of Jericho ♪ ♪ And the wall came tumblin' down ♪♪ HADLEY: And now, people can return to the business at hand, this action that they are about to take, and Martin Luther King comes back and he says... DR. KING: A voice like this comes only once in a millennium.

(cheering) HADLEY: And it's just a beautiful thing to witness how her being who she was, and her generosity with her gifts and her talent, was able to still him and steel him.

♪ JACKSON: Joshua fi the battle of Jericho ♪ ♪ Jericho, Jericho ♪ HADLEY: And push a whole congregation of Black folks forward so they literally could, "Move On Up A Little Higher."

That's just like amazing to me.

Just amazing.

♪ JACKSON: In his hand ♪ Go blow on the horns, cried Joshua ♪ ♪ The battle is in my hands ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ Joshua fit th battle of Jericho ♪♪ ♪ GROUP: I woke up thi morning with my mind ♪ ♪ My mind, it was ♪ Stayed on freedom ♪ O-oh, we woke up thi morning with my mind on ♪ ♪ Stayed on freedom ♪ O-oh, we woke up thi morning with my mind on ♪ ♪ Stayed on freedom ♪ Hallelu, hallelu hallelu, hallelu ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ CASSELBERRY: The music of the Civil Rights Movement, it's vitally important.

It's a sound that brought together all the sacred sounds that Black people had developed up to that point.

So, it brought spirituals.

It brought gospel.

And so, by pulling all those sounds into the music of the Civil Rights Movement, it was a way to have all of the energy of all of our ancestors.

REV BARRON: Fannie Lou Hamer, Bernice Johnson Reagan, and others were taking the music of the church and employing it in protest actions in the community as they were fighting for civil rights.

HAMER: I'm Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer and I farmed on the Marlowe plantation for 18 years.

CASSELBERRY: Fannie Lou Hamer was a force of nature.

If you look at her life on its face, there's no reason to expect that she would have been the power that she was.

Youngest of 20 children.

Her grandparents were enslaved, her parents were sharecroppers.

She was a sharecropper in Mississippi, probably one of the worst places to be Black in America.

GATES: The daughter of a preacher, Hamer attended a mass meeting sponsored by SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

That meeting would change the course of her life and the course of the movement.

CASSELBERRY: Once she gets to understand the moral circumstances in which she's living in, in a more political way.

It changes her and she becomes a warrior for justice.

HAMER: All these people here, we got to do something.

And we been down so long we ain't got no other way to go but up.

(cheering) HIGGINBOTHAM: Really touched people's heart.

The sincerity of her voice, and the message that she took out.

She was a, a walking sermon, so to speak, but when she sang... HAMER: Now everybody sing that, you know it!

♪ Go tell it on the mountain ♪ Over the hill and everywhere ♪♪ PIERCE: Fannie Lou Hamer embodies the way that the singing and the preaching come together.

She didn't need a formal congregation.

She didn't need an ordination to be the best of the Black sermonic moment.

CASSELBERRY: What do preachers do?

They galvanize.

They help us take ancient stories or biblical lessons and morals and place them in a contemporary context.

Their call is also to help people to move forward, and that's what she was doing.

♪ HAMER: Hole insid us began to shout ♪ ♪ Let my people go ♪ REV BARRON: The music of the church was music that was infusing them with faith, infusing them with boldness and courage to go out and to take up the fight.

♪ We shall not ♪ We shall not be moved ♪ GATES: The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom would be a showcase for sermon and song.

The day's program packed, King had been allotted only a few minutes to deliver his remarks.

Those remarks would turn out to be the speech of a lifetime.

And, as always, Mahalia was there to lift him up.

♪ I've ♪ Been buked ♪ And I've ♪ Been scorned ♪ DARDEN: I've Been Buke and I've Been Scorned, is an honest to God deep, deep spiritual.

It would have been known by the great majority of the people there.

♪ She sings it in her most dramatic Baptist surge singing stretching it out, and it becomes almost magisterial.

♪ DARDEN: And she is hypnotizing.

♪ But the one thing ♪ BURFORD: That moment at the March on Washington, where she's singing before, uh, King speaks, is kind of a moment of transfer that you might see in a Black church.

You often get a song just before the minister comes up.

DR. KING: I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

REV MOSS: He had a prepared speech, and he goes on to talk about the particular failure of the United States for Black people.

I mean, he's real clear on that.

GATES: Scanning the crowd from behind, Mahalia noticed that the throngs of marchers stretched along the Mall seem to be getting restless.

DARDEN: Sitting behind him over one shoulder she's watching the crowd because that's what Mahalia does, and she sees that that cadence, that power that she had seen earlier in Detroit isn't there.

And that's when she says, "Tell them about the dream, Martin.

Tell them about the dream."

And coming from anybody else it might have, it might have thrown him off his cadence, but it doesn't.

He pivots in mid-sentence, and then moves like the, the great Black preachers that he has heard and begins with this rhythmic cadence, this song-like incantation that becomes one of the great speeches in American history.

DR. KING: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

SEN WARNOCK: Th I Have a Dream speech is a sermon.

It is informed by the ethics and the values of the church and that old southern Black Baptist tradition that gave birth to him.

DR. KING: One day right there in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little White boys and White girls as sisters and brothers.

REV MOSS: His close is a chant and it's musical to communicate to everyone this is celebration.

DR. KING: We will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and White men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last!

Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

(cheering) REV THOMAS: America discovered Black preaching on mass scale with Martin Luther King, because, all of a sudden, with, I Have A Dream, they could feel.

The color of your skin, the content of your character, it's intellectual, powerful depth.

I mean, the imagery, is all of it there, and the compassion that Black people have given White people based upon outrageous, inhumane treatment and still talk about we and us and being a part of America.

(siren wailing) GATES: Less than a month after the march on September 15, four little girls were murdered at a Sunday school in Birmingham.

Four days later, a gathering of musicians would offer a powerful message of resilience.

The gifted choir master, James Cleveland, met with members of the Angelic Choir from Nutley, New Jersey.

They recorded an iconic anthem based on the book of Mark chapter four verses 37 to 39.

It tells the story of a raging tempest that Jesus calms simply by commanding three words: peace be still.

♪ Master ♪ The tempest is raging ♪ The billow are tossing high ♪♪ HAIRSTON: This song seemed to speak not only to people who loved God, but to people in the world, because at that time people needed peace, and so that song just spoke to the mood of the nation and the culture.

♪ Help is nigh ♪ Thank you Jesus ♪ Carest Thou ♪ Not that we perish ♪ HAIRSTON: Reverend Cleveland's voice was somewhere between a growl that's the sound of sandpaper, and yet, it was something that was free about his performance.

REV WALTON: It was that sincerity it was that authenticity that people felt.

It's just absolute genius.

♪ You can be, can be ♪ A demon, a demon ♪ Or an evil man ♪ Whatever, or whatever ♪ GATES: It's a song about peace, but its dramatic arrangement underscores the violent truth of Black life in America.

But it also was a sustaining reminder that no matter how stormy the seas, no one has to battle the wind and the waves alone.

♪ And skies ♪ They all shall sweetly obey ♪ CASSELBERRY: Why is it so important for music to be participatory?

Why is it so important for music to be communal?

Because it was helping people to understand the sound was, is actually more powerful than, than what was, than what they were up against.

NEAL: It's as if James Cleveland's on stage singing with an army, not just a small band, right?

With an army.

It changes the sound of Black music.

♪ CLEVELAND: Master ♪ GATES: The commercial success of the live church recording of, Peace Be Still, established an innovative template for the next generation of gospel artists and producers.

COOPER: The goal is to capture what happens on Sunday morning at the Black church.

The worship atmosphere.

People who are churched, you understand that.

That resonates directly with you.

People who are unchurched, this is a new experience.

This is what's going on inside those four walls.

The hollering, the hand clapping, the foot stomping, the call and response.

All of the elements of demonstrative behavior that goes into this Sunday morning atmosphere is refashioned on these live recordings.

That's why that recording is so important.

That shifted the whole terrain of gospel music production.

♪ Oh, peace ♪ Be still ♪ Be still ♪ (applause) GATES: From his partnership with Savoy Records and creation of the Gospel Music Workshop of America, Cleveland helped jumpstart the explosion of the Gospel Choir Album and solidified his reputation as King James.

♪ Can't nobod do me like Jesus ♪ ♪ Can't nobody d me like the Lord ♪ ♪ Can't nobod do me like Jesus ♪ ♪ He's my friend ♪ Oh, can't nobody ♪ Can't nobody do me like Jesus ♪ ♪ Do me like Jesus ♪ Can't nobody ♪ GATES: In the years to come, Cleveland's legacy and the iconic sound of the choir would inspire a new generation of gospel artists to innovate, taking the Lord's music into the mainstream.

♪ What's his name, Jesus ♪ What's his name, Jesus ♪ What's his name, Jesus ♪ What's his name, Jesus ♪ Call his name, Jesus ♪ In times of trouble, Jesus ♪ And he'll be there on the double ♪ ♪ Jesus ♪ Oh, he's ♪ My, he's my ♪ Friend, yeah ♪ (music plays through credits) NARRATOR: Scan this QR code with your smart device to immerse yourself in all things "Gospel" with exclusive interviews, a music playlist, a companion concert performance and more.

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♪ ♪ ♪ Oh let it be ♪ ♪ Dear Lord ♪ ♪ let it be ♪ ♪ ♪