The Southwest Michigan State Choir of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC)—led by director, pianist, vocalist, arranger, and composer Mattie Juliet Moss Clark—helped inspire the mass choir movement. Thanks to Clark’s pioneering effort and uncompromising musical standards, there is hardly a state or major city in the United States today that does not have a mass choir. Indeed, many cities worldwide now have mass choirs.
Clark was born in Selma, Alabama, on March 26, 1925, as one of...