LISTEN to the program NOW in streaming audio: NEW! Sign up for our OFF THE PAGE PODCAST! (What's that?)

The Sacred and Secular in Afro-American Life

          During decades of enslavement, enforced second-class citizenship and a struggle for equality, the church was the most powerful of all African-American institutions. Religious leaders provided comfort and courage to their people and appealed to the conscience of the entire nation. Black churches became spiritual, service, social and cultural institutions, led by clergy who were loved and respected. From the 1930s through the 70s, during a time of upheaval and change in American life, one of the most influential of all African American preachers was Rev. Clarence LaVaughn Franklin.
          Franklin's life story has now been told in "Singing in a Strange Land" by Nick Salvatore, Maurice and Hinda Neufield Founders Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and professor of American Studies at Cornell University. It is an extraordinary story, for Franklin began life in the humblest of circumstances, a black child born to sharecropper parents in rural Mississippi during a time of racial segregation, lynch law and grinding poverty. His formal education did not go beyond grade school but the church was an early influence. As a teenager he was moved to preach from local pulpits and even deliver sermons to the mules he walked behind as they tilled the cotton fields.
          C.L. received ministerial training but also sought out church events and revival meetings and developed a powerful speaking style and an excellent singing voice. He was soon called to serve the New Salem Baptist Church in Memphis - a city that was a center of African American life and music - and then to the Friendship Baptist Church in Buffalo. Franklin's move north paralleled the exodus of millions of black people from the Jim Crow South in the 1940s and 50s, part of what was believed to be the largest internal migration in world history.
          Franklin's New York experience was short, for in 1946 he moved to Detroit and the pulpit of the New Bethel Baptist Church. Salvatore emphasizes the diversity within the African-American community. The migration from the Deep South had brought with it a style of preaching - it was commonly called "whooping"- that was emotional, rhythmic, with a spontaneity that might not be felt in the more sedentary higher-class black churches. You can listen to excerpts of Franklin's sermons here.

          Gospel music and spirituals certainly carried a message - sometimes a preacher could make a point in song that he couldn't easily speak - but C.L. Franklin's love of music went beyond the sacred. From his days in the blues center of Memphis he enjoyed the sounds of jazz that some might consider the devil's music. Now in Detroit ("Motown") he was friendly with some of the greatest jazz and blues musicians of the day, including Art Tatum, B.B. King, Dinah Washington and Ray Charles. Whereas gospel singer Mahalia Jackson limited herself to the sacred repertoire, Franklin's close friend Sam Cooke successfully took the step from Gospel to rhythm and blues. But the performer who was closest of all to C.L. was his daughter Aretha Franklin, a child prodigy who Nick Salvatore says, "would, in time, transform American music."
          C.L. Franklin strived forcefully for justice in labor issues and racial equality, working alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesse Jackson. His life also was marked by marital infidelity, tax problems and a charge of marijuana possession (from which he was acquitted). Nick Salvatore does not look away from these episodes. The end of Franklin's life was especially tragic. He was shot in his home during an attempted robbery and lingered in a coma for five years until his death in 1984. Ten thousand people attended his funeral.
          Nick Salvatore joins Bill Jaker on OFF THE PAGE to speak about "C.L. Franklin, the Black Church and the Transformation of America." To join in the conversation call during the 1:00 PM live broadcast to 888/359-9754 or post an e-mail HERE or directly to WSKG.Radio@Gmail.com.