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| Husband-and-wife team introduce kids to 'Martin & Mahalia' |
But until Andrea, the writer, mentioned it a few years ago, Brian, the illustrator, didn't know that Mahalia Jackson, the Queen of Gospel, sang at the March on Washington nearly 50 years ago on Aug. 28, 1963.
"Everyone knows about Dr. King's 'I Have a Dream' speech," Brian says in an interview with his wife. "But how many people know that Mahalia Jackson was also there?"
They will now if they read the Pinkneys' latest book, Martin & Mahalia: His Words, Her Song (Little Brown, for readers 6 and up), whose release is timed to the anniversary of the march.
It's a perfect project for the couple, whose motto could be "His Pictures, Her Words."
"Martin and Mahalia were two vocal giants," Andrea says. "Their voices — his sermons, her spirituals — influenced so many others."
Andrea, 49, grew up in Washington, D.C., hearing stories about the march from her father, Philip Davis, who, as one of the first black interns in Congress, attended the march along with 250,000 others.
"My mother also wanted to go," she says, "but she was eight months pregnant with me."
That same day, Brian, now 51, was celebrating his 2nd birthday in Boston, where his dad, Jerry Pinkney, was designing greeting cards before going on to a career as a children's book illustrator. (He won the Caldecott Medal for the best picture book in 2010 for The Lion & the Mouse.)
Andrea, who has two teenage girls with Brian, remembered that her dad and other marchers were given maps as part of an "Organizing Manual." She found a copy, and it serves as the framework for Brian's watercolors in Martin & Mahalia.
Andrea's opening lines in the book suggest a march: "You are here./Let the map lead the way./Let the dove fly ahead./On the path./To the dream./To the words./And the songs."
Brian says his watercolors contrast his two subjects by "employing blues and greens for Martin, red and oranges for Mahalia, and purples and magentas when Martin and Mahalia blend their talents."
From history books, Andrea learned that Jackson met King in 1955 during the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, which launched his civil rights crusade.
In 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, she was the lead-in for King, singing the gospel classic I've Been 'Buked, and I've Been Scorned.
She also influenced King's speech, which famously soared beyond his prepared text. Based on several history books, Andrea writes that Jackson, who had heard King speak many times before, "called out to her friend, 'TELL THEM YOUR DREAM, MARTIN!' " And he did.
The book ends by noting that after King was assassinated in 1968, Jackson sang Take My Hand, Precious Lord at his funeral. And when Jackson died in 1972 at age 60, King's widow, Coretta Scott King, delivered an eulogy at her funeral, praising Mahalia "for being black and proud and beautiful."
