MARTIN, ROBERTA

MARTIN, ROBERTA. Gospel singer (12 February 1907 in Helena, Arkansas; 18 January 1969 in Chicago, Illinois). Her family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when she was ten years old. She obtained her musical education in the public schools of Chicago, where she came under the tutelage of Mildred Byrant Jones at Wendell Phillips High School. About 1931 she was called to the Ebenezer Baptist Church to accompany the gospel chorus recently organized by Theodore Frye and Thomas A. Dorsey. In 1933 she...