Singing in a Strange Land

C. L. Franklin, The Black Church, and the Transformation of America

By Nick Salvatore

Lttle Brown & Co. (2005)

Facts About Franklin

Born in the Mississippi Delta in 1915, in Sunflower County; family moved to adjoining Bolivar County when C. L. was about 9 or 10.
C. L. stands for Clarence LaVaughn.
Barely knew his father, Willie Walker; was adopted by Henry Franklin who married his mother, Rachel Pittman Franklin, about 1920.
While working the cotton crop with his parents and two sisters on the family’s rented farmland, young Clarence often stopped to preach to birds and other animals, much to the displeasure of his stepfather.
As most black children at that time in the Delta, he never finished grade school.
In 1929 he experienced conversion during a revival in his home church, St. Peter’s Rock Baptist, in Cleveland, Mississippi; two years later, at age 16, he declared that he was called to preach.
In 1936 he married Barbara Vernice Siggers, in Shelby, Mississippi. They would have four children together and each also had a child with another partner.
After some years as a “circuit rider,” preaching in four churches on successive Sundays because no one church could pay a living wage, C. L. accepted a call to lead New Salem Baptist Church in Memphis in 1939.
Within a few years, his preaching drew large crowds and his reputation grew. He also started a weekly radio program that combined hymns, a brief sermon, and analysis of recent events concerning black Americans during World War II. The local black paper called it “a veritable voice in the wilderness.”
In 1944, he accepted a position at Friendship Baptist Church in Buffalo, NY—a larger, more financially secure congregation.
At Friendship Baptist C. L. first encountered a sizeable black trade union group in his congregation, which had an impact on his political thinking.
In 1945 he gave his first full sermon at the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention, then the largest organization among African Americans. His reputation as a preacher continued to grow and attract wider attention.
In 1946 C. L. moved to New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, where he would remain until his death in 1984.
In less than a decade, he became the most famous and preeminent preacher in black America. In 1951, for example his Sunday evening service could be heard live on Detroit radio, and continued to be broadcast for more than 25 years; in 1953 he began to have his sermons recorded live and distributed by a local producer, Joe Von Battle.
Also in 1953, C. L. joined the gospel tour, traveling nationally with such singers as Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward, Alex Branford, and the Soul Stirrers, then led by the young Sam Cooke.
In 1956 Von Battle sold the rights to Chess Records, the blues label, and the company’s broad distribution network helped to make the recordings best sellers in black America.
Also in 1956, WLAC, a 50,000-watt, clear signal from Gallatin, TN, just outside Nashville, featured a recorded sermon of Franklin’s every Sunday night at 10:00 P.M., sponsored by Randy’s Record Store.
What made C. L. such a commanding national figure was the nature and structure of his sermons: he “whooped,” or chanted, the last third to a half of them, in musical key, and never at the expense of his message. His message, more often than not, affirmed the centrality of faith for humanity even as it sought to explore faith's meaning in the all too real social and political lives of his audiences.
C. L. separated from his wife in 1948; in 1952, Barbara Franklin died.
C.L.’s daughter, Aretha, began her singing career in her father’s church in 1956 when, at age 14, her live recordings of gospel hymns became her first records on Chess.
When Aretha expanded into popular music in 1960, to much criticism in the church community, C. L. immediately and publicly defended her and argued that she had not left the church but was simply using her “God-given” talent.
C. L. had been friends with both Martin Luther King, Jr., and his father, King, Sr., for years. In June 1963, C. L. led more than 125,000 people down Woodward Avenue in Detroit in the famous “March to Freedom.” King, Jr. gave a version of his “I Have a Dream Speech” at that demonstration.
C. L. remained active politically throughout the 1960s. In 1969, after renting his church to a Black Nationalist group for a meeting, New Bethel became the site of a shootout between police and the nationalist group.
During the 1970s, C. L.’s preaching powers began to decline, as sickness and age—after decades of incessant travel—began to take its toll. He traveled less, preached less even in Detroit, and actively mentored a group of younger ministers.
In June 1979, a robber shot C. L. when he broke into the Franklin home. Before help arrived, C. L. lost an enormous amount of blood and was in a coma, from which he never recovered. More than five years later, on July 27, 1984, at 10:30 in the morning, C. L. Franklin died. His funeral, with some 3,000 packed into New Bethel and some 6-7,000 gathered outside, listening on the loudspeakers, was the largest in Detroit’s memory.

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