On a cold, sunlit January day in 2000, while driving from Ithaca, New York to New Haven, Connecticut, Aretha Franklin, C. L.'s daughter, boomed from the car’s CD player singing gospel hymns released years before she became the acknowledged "Queen of Soul." These were her first records, taped live before an open mike at Detroit’s New Bethel Baptist Church—her father's church—in 1956 when she was but 14 years old. (They are available on Aretha Gospel, Chess CHD-91521.)

Her rendition of "Never Grow Old" particularly moved me. As I listened, imagining the recessed choir loft, with the young teenager at the mike in front, by her father's pulpit, my mind turned to C. L.'s sermons which I had been studying intently for months. They were masterful sacred performances, I thought, each built around a sustained and compelling message and delivered in a "whooped", or chanted, musical style that revealed one source of his daughter’s extraordinary musical talent. Of the more than 70 sermons I was working with, four especially struck me for their powerful depiction of faith’s impact on both private and public life. Somewhere during that car trip before New York’s Route 17 turned into Connecticut’s Route 34, I realized that C. L.'s sermon, "Without A Song," was the key to much of his life and its legacy. While the other sermons ("The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest," "Dry Bones in the Valley," and "Moses at the Red Sea") are indeed masterpieces, this sermon more than others countered the harmful effects of an enforced silence, of being without a song and the voice to sing it. It was the most appropriate symbol for his life's work.

Franklin (1915-1984) grew to adulthood in the Mississippi Delta at a time when "segregation in the raw," as he later called it, dominated the region. Lynchings and other forms of violence against African Americans were a common method of reminding blacks of their social place in a world dominated by racist thought. Like almost every other black Mississippian at that time, young Franklin could not escape that oppressive atmosphere, which was as pervasive as the dense, humid air of a Mississippi August. A loving mother who demanded excellence and the power of the black church community with whom he worshipped as a boy helped young Franklin solidify his determination to never allow the hostility of others to silence him. In the process, he discovered his voice, entered the ministry, and over the course of four decades led others through a similar process.

These thoughts ran through my mind as I listened to his then young daughter's masterful voice, and I began to realize that I had found the theme, the voice, if you will, for the book as well.

The sermon, "Without A Song," is based on the 137th Psalm, where the Israelites, in Babylonian captivity, are asked to sing for their captors' amusement. In a lament that echoes down even into our own time—in Verdi’s opera, Nabucco, as in songs by the Medallions and Steel Pulse—the Israelites respond: "How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?" Franklin's response was direct, even blunt: The Israelites should have sung, he told his congregation, because "Some things you can’t say you can sing." In contrast with the Israelites, who had yet to reach their Promised Land, African Americans were in what many countrymen considered their Promised Land—but it remained “a strange land” for black citizens nonetheless. If that "strangeness" of segregation and prejudice were to be transformed, black Americans would need to find their individual and their collective voice. It was that voice that could transform themselves, and the nation, with its powerful reminder that, even for an unknown, individual slave surviving in a harsh, horrific system, "a change is goin' come". As C. L. reminded his congregation of an old hymn that described how God gave Moses the power to part the Red Sea and save the Israelites, a current of anticipation and hope snaked through his audience, particularly when Franklin sang out in his strong baritone of a slave named Mary: "Oh Mary, don't weep. Don't mourn; / Pharaoh's army got drownded; / Mary, don't weep, and then don't mourn."

In faith, through human effort, came the conviction that God would not abandon even the least of his people; that to find one's voice was to transcend the oppressiveness that some sought to impose. Indeed, it may even transform the oppressor.

The more I thought of that sermon, the more I realized that its core message was in fact the central meaning of C. L. Franklin's ministry. As he insisted his audiences lift their voices and express their songs, Franklin urged them as well to lay claim to this land in the face of the very hostility that made it so strange. The result, a communal song of dissent and of affirmation, encouraged all—Babylonian and Israelite, black and white Americans—to transform that land, and in the process to explore more fully the intimate ties of their common humanity.

 

What others have said about SINGING IN A STRANGE LAND

" I'm delighted with the book. As much as I knew, there were still some things I didn't know. I'm delighted [Nick Salvatore] thought enough of my dad to write the book and document some historical facts."
Aretha Franklin in the DETROIT FREE PRESS

"Singing in a Strange Land is indispensable to understanding--and being invigorated by--a vital part of our interconnected American identities that remain unknown to too many of us."
Nat Hentoff

Salvatore "deals with both the sacred and the secular dimensions of Franklin's life and career: the influences of both the rich oral tradition of black Baptist preaching and the pulsating rhythms of the blues....The book is an absorbing study of a fascinating figure and the author...seems to have absorbed much of the city's distinctive political history, and to have tapped into the soul that moved Franklin in song and sermon and that thrived beneath the beat of Motown."
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"Salvatore's biography reads on any random page like a gripping novel of mid-twentieth century America, raw, exciting and profoundly involving....Some works of non-fiction cannot simply speak. They need to sing, and 'Singing in a Strange Land' just belts it out. Here is a book you just don't read. This is a book you hear, and once you listen, chances are you won't stop till the song is over."
Rick Kleffel in THE AGONY COLUMN BOOK REVIEW (on line)

In "this richly textured biography...[Salvatore] deftly interweaves Franklin's life with the swirling undercurrents of fast-breaking events of the era....Franklin never wavered from his belief in the 'power of black political and cultural expression to create a fuller American democracy.' This faith is aptly captured by the central metaphor of Salvatore's title: 'At the center of that struggle [Franklin] stressed the necessity to sing because of the pain; to nurture one's voice in a strange land was in fact to develop a vision of the possible that countered the debilitating limits others imposed.' And so he did."
BOSTON GLOBE

"Salvatore's mastery of biographical narrative provides a rich and enduring portrait of the African American experience from South to North through the twentieth century. As well, Salvatore's supremely assured writing on African American religious culture and politics is most impressive: this book is, incidentally, one of the most compelling works now existing on twentieth-century African American religion."
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

"...a deeply researched and powerfully written biography....It may be unfair to compare C. L. Franklin to Ray Charles or to juxtapose Singing in a Strange Land with the blockbuster film about Charles's life. But the powerful, evocative writing in Salvatore's book begs comparison to the larger-than-life images that spring from Hollywood. Ray Charles is  better known than the Reverend C. L. Franklin, but after reading Singing in a Strange Land many readers may wonder why."
REVIEWS in AMERICAN HISTORY

"In an era when Martin Luther King Jr. usually gets the lion's share of publicity for civil-rights activism, it's refreshing to read about C.L. Franklin, "the preacher with the golden voice," a progressive pastor of Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church from 1946-79....Franklin became one of the leading figures of the civil-rights movement...was well-known for his "blues-style" of preaching, and he could fill up a room with his charisma....Nick Salvatore, a Cornell University American Studies professor, revives Franklin's musical and religious reputation and ...tells a good story."
DESERET MORNING NEWS

"Singing in a Strange Land isn't just the biography of C.L. Franklin. It's also about life in the segregated South. It is about religion and politics and music. And it is about refusing to be silenced....Salvatore makes Franklin come alive on the page through the words of the pastor himself, as well as the words of those who knew him in both his public and private lives."
NIGHTS and WEEKENDS.COM

This book "delivers on the promise of its title. Nick Salvatore smoothly interweaves the biography of the Rev. C.L. Franklin with the stories of the Great Migration, the coming-of-age of the black church as a significant force in the struggle for equality and ...the evolution of gospel music....Franklin's famous daughter, Aretha, is not a significant presence in this story, and her relative absence is hardly noticeable. It is her father's turn to have his story told, and prize-winning historian Nick Salvatore does so admirably."
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES

"Salvatore's book is a thorough biography of Franklin and an exploration of how music rooted in the church - gospel, blues and soul - changed American popular music."
HARTFORD COURANT

"Salvatore's new book...provides the first extensive look at the life and times of one of the nation's foremost spiritual leaders, while also spotlighting...how Franklin's galvanizing sermons and mercurial personality won him entry into Detroit's busy cultural scene....Franklin died in 1984, but his role in the merging of religion and politics that fueled the civil rights movement is monumental. Salvatore's book finally puts his contributions into proper perspective."
NASHVILLE CITY PAPER

"Professor Salvatore's book is a must read for those seeking new avenues of exploration aimed at revealing many aspects of the hidden history of the African-American people."
Abayomi Azikiwe for the MICHIGAN INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER

Salvatore's "remarkable new book...[separates] an enormously influential father from his (now) vastly more famous daughter.... C. L. Franklin's life within the black church and the civil rights movement is thoroughly...documented for the first time in this exemplary book."
THE BUFFALO NEWS

"...historian Nick Salvatore has produced a thoroughly researched and splendidly written biography."
JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY

"Nick Salvatore...does an excellent job of portraying Franklin as a brilliant, but far from faultless man, thanks to in-depth interviews with the members of Franklin's family....fellow preachers, secular and gospel music stars, and people whom he'd served as a pastor.... Franklin was not the leader of a great movement, or even of a major civil rights organization. However, he helped shape the messages of those who were, and this excellent biography tells the story of the civil rights movement in an in-depth, yet easy-to-follow form."
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

"This is a refreshing well written biography that stands as a reminder that a conservative theologian can support progressive social change....Readers get a feel for inner city Detroit politics and social upheaval as a backdrop to a deep look at one of the most influential civil rights spokespersons of the era."
BLETHER, THE BOOK REVIEW SITE (on line)

"Salvatore's superb biography accurately argues for Franklin's singular contributions to popular culture and black religion."
JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY