Biography

She began studying piano when she was 7. She studied voice at Spelman College, and graduated in 1946. As a career back-up, she earned a master's degree in Spanish from Columbia University Teachers College. She also attended the Mannes School of Music and the Berkshire Music Center. A series of scholarships helped fund her musical training. She won the International Music Competition in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1951.

She was an African American soprano who helped break the color barrier in opera. Her father, a railroad mail clerk, organized voter-registration drives for blacks, and saw to it that she and her five sisters attended college.

In 1953, she became the first black singer to appear in a principal role at La Scala, in Rossini's "L'Italiana in Algeri". Her American debut took place in 1955 at the San Francisco Opera, where she sang the lead female role in Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Golden Cockerel." She refused to sing before segregated audiences, a decision inspired by a similar move by Paul Robeson and one that she said cost her work in the American South.

She was named after her grandmother Mattie Wilda.

She sang at the inauguration of Atlanta's first African American mayor, her nephew Maynard Jackson.