On one level, Franklin’s intent was educational. Harry Kincaid remembered C. L. saying that the congregation would benefit from hearing candidates for local or state office because if they won, New Bethel’s people “would understand what they wanted from the candidates themselves.” As always, though, there were other purposes. The guild provided Franklin with a secular platform deeply grounded in church culture from which to exert leadership and support suitable candidates for office. His goal was not political office. Rather, in a fashion consistent with his use of radio technology in his ministry, the guild allowed C. L. to project himself as a leader of a grassroots movement. Arthur Johnson, for one, thought this was the central purpose of the guild. Franklin intended “to give recognition to other leadership,” as Johnson, a Morehouse College graduate, classmate of Martin Luther King Jr., and executive director of Detroit’s NAACP branch during the 1950s, recalled his reaction at the time, “to develop some new strategies of organization. And, quite frankly, to get around the discipline of the N.A.A.C.P.” In this respect, Johnson considered Franklin similar to Martin Luther King Jr., who had encouraged the formation of a social and political action committee in his Montgomery, Alabama, church the year before Till’s lynching. Both men, Johnson remarked, refused to be burdened “with a constitution, with bylaws and all of that, with the disciplines that make for good organization” as represented by the NAACP. Johnson was the very essence of an organization man, and he recognized the potential threat such freelance leaders as King and Franklin presented to the NAACP’s position.15
Yet, regardless of what the educated black elite thought of him personally, C. L. knew they in fact needed him, for he and others like him provided access to the black church—the one truly mass organization in black America. Some among that elite did appreciate Franklin’s considerable skills. Johnson particularly underscored Franklin’s “conscience” as expressed in his preaching. He considered the minister “to be a person of strong intellect,” who possessed a “thinking ability” and “the capacity for vision.” During this time, Johnson thought, Franklin first distinguished himself, “stood above the pack” as “a leader of extraordinary ability . . . always willing to come to the front line, who brought the issues and challenges of our struggle to the center of the pulpit.” This was high praise, even in retrospect, from one whose organization C. L. had scolded so publicly.16
In the decade following Till’s death, Franklin intensified his political activities. He opened New Bethel’s doors to any group or political candidate he considered seriously engaged with social problems. He rarely criticized a candidate from the pulpit and strove to present a range of opinions. But he did damn with silence those with whom he deeply disagreed. C. L. was a liberal Democrat in his political affiliation, which for a black Detroit resident in the postwar decades meant advocacy for civil rights legislation, support for the labor movement to the extent it practiced equality within its ranks, and a demand that the government at every level create equitable socioeconomic conditions for all citizens. To those who would carp that he strayed from the faith, he retorted that even “religious people gotta walk on sidewalks, use electricity and drink water too—to say nothing of having a job.” C. L. had made these points before 1955, but in the aftermath of the Emmett Till protests, he desired to create an institutional presence to embody his call, one simultaneously distanced from the NAACP and from the well-educated, Afro-Baptist church leadership.17
For all of his public engagement, however, Franklin’s challenge to established groups remained limited. He sought to involve more black working people in politics, and gladly offered himself as their representative. To this extent, Franklin threatened the established leadership’s singular control. He lacked, however, the self-effacement and patience required for actual grassroots organizing, for building slowly over time an institutional expression of the changed consciousness his sermons sought. Nor was his political analysis fundamentally different from that of the established leadership.
Franklin’s involvement in the 1956 presidential campaign revealed the parameters of his political thinking. In October of that year, the guild and the Progressive Civic League, a West Side group of black professionals, cosponsored a talk by Adam Clayton Powell. The Harlem congressman had been a frequent visitor in recent years, and Sylvia Penn credited Powell with encouraging C. L. toward political action a few years before. But the late October talk proved troublesome. Shortly before it, Powell, a lifelong Democrat, endorsed publicly for reelection the incumbent Republican president, Dwight David Eisenhower. So intent was Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic challenger, on retaining the support of southern Democratic segregationists in the Congress, Powell and many African Americans thought, that his commitment to enforce Brown v. Board of Education seemed hesitant at best. Although Powell made it clear that he supported Democratic candidates for all other offices, his announcement for Eisenhower caused an uproar, especially as the congressman claimed that during a meeting in the White House, he received from Eisenhower “his promise to prove [if reelected] that he is not a captive of the south.”18
Powell, who besides being a congressman was pastor of Abyssinian Baptist, Harlem’s largest and most influential church, had agreed to deliver a nonpartisan address from Franklin’s pulpit on Sunday evening, October 21. Like Franklin’s sermons, it was to be carried live over WJLB. Looking to capitalize on Powell’s endorsement of Eisenhower, the local Republican Party purchased the opening fifteen minutes of the hour-long program for a paid political message—in effect, preventing Franklin from introducing Powell—and selected attorney Willis Ward to deliver the speech that would. It was a move guaranteed to infuriate Franklin and many in his congregation, sensitive as they were to the political and social distinctions within black Detroit. Ward himself was a Republican candidate for Congress, running against the popular incumbent, Charles Diggs, Jr. He was also a lifelong member of the elite Second Baptist, where his father had been a deacon for more than twenty-five years. Since declaring his candidacy the previous July, Ward had enjoyed the full public support of his pastor, the influential Republican minister A. A. Banks. Ward’s partisan opening remarks further angered many listeners, and the Republicans ultimately appeared foolish when Powell took the pulpit and endorsed Diggs and the entire Democratic ballot with the exception of its presidential candidate.19
Franklin, present that evening, was sharply critical of Ward’s address, perhaps seeing in it the influential hand of Second Baptist’s minister, who thought Franklin somewhat crude and never accorded him any trace of public recognition. When pressed, C. L. explained that the Federal Communications Commission’s rules concerning the purchase of radio time for political announcements had bound the management of WJLB to grant Ward airtime.
Eisenhower won reelection with nearly 40 percent of the black vote nationally, while Diggs easily won his Detroit district, but the tumult had significantly raised black Detroit’s—and Franklin’s—political temperature. Angry at what the Republicans had done—it was his voice, after all, they had silenced—Franklin demanded the resignation of the New Bethel trustee who had supported Ward. Such public opposition Franklin would not let pass.20
In 1956, Franklin’s fame as a gospel preacher far exceeded his reputation as a political strategist. He had joined the gospel tour three years earlier and crisscrossed the country preaching the sermons Joe Von Battle had already sold. Quickly, a distinctive pattern emerged. A local promoter, often a minister, organized a program, signed local and national gospel groups to appear, and arranged for a local radio station to air repeatedly in advance the particular sermon Franklin would preach. C. L. inevitably arrived with what he called “my group”: a driver, his current personal secretary, two New Bethel vocalists, and a pianist. Following the event, Franklin’s entourage moved on to another city or returned to Detroit, the tour completed.21
The gospel tour was already a well-established feature of black public life when Franklin joined it. In cities a
cross the country, local gospel groups performed year round in area churches. Some of these local groups, such as the Pattersonaires from Memphis and Detroit’s Meditations, with Della Reese singing second lead, achieved a limited national acclaim, but all of them hungered to open for the more famous national singers when they appeared nearby. The Dixie Hummingbirds, the Clara Ward Singers, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Soul Stirrers, Mahalia Jackson, to name but a few, drew large crowds to the biggest churches or, when a number of them appeared together on a program, to a local auditorium. Gospel programs drew a mixed crowd. African American businessmen and professionals often were in attendance, although the majority of these audiences were relatively poor workingmen and working women. There was as well a scattering of whites. The blues-inflected gospel of Sister Rosetta Tharpe or the clarity and depth of Sam Cooke’s vocal anticipation of soul music attracted fans both churched and not. A bevy of small, independent music labels promoted the groups’ recordings while a few performers, Mahalia Jackson, for example, signed with major recording companies. Whether nationally famous or locally known, these gospel singers provided black America, north and south, with a major form of public religious testimony and, although religious traditionalists would reject the very idea, an enjoyable form of entertainment as well.22
What was remarkable about the gospel tour before Franklin’s presence transformed it was the dramatic absence of preachers in this sacred event. Ministers might urge their congregations to attend and, if they promoted the program, might also gain financially from it. Rarely, however, did they offer more than a prayer and usually only very early in the program, well before the main act closed the evening. This arrangement reflected a deeper tension in the Afro-Baptist community. Many ministers regarded music as of secondary importance in their service, but parishioners often responded more enthusiastically to the incessant blues beat backing the gospel message of gifted singers. At times, to a minister’s profound chagrin, the contrast with the reception given his sermon proved embarrassing.23
Franklin rendered this pattern of the gospel tour obsolete. He welcomed gospel singers, not least because, as Jasper Williams observed, “he was a preacher who could sing! And, you know . . . you didn’t find that every day.” Indeed, supremely confident of his talent, already known as the “Black Prince,” the “Jitterbug Preacher,” “the preacher with the golden voice,” Franklin regularly and enthusiastically appeared with some of the best singers in the country. Promoters quickly positioned C. L. Franklin last on the program, which was usually held not in a local church, as had been customary, but in the largest auditorium available. Like the white evangelical Billy Graham, C. L. began to reach mass audiences never before thought possible.24
In 1956, C. L. appeared on a gospel program in Jackson, Mississippi, organized by a local minister, L. H. Newsome. As he usually did, Franklin arrived that afternoon with his group and settled into a segregated hotel. After having his shoes shined and his clothes cleaned, he visited with Newsome, who was also a gospel DJ on a local radio station. As Newsome played the sermon the audience would hear that evening, Charlie Thompson, a teenager living in Jackson who knew Newsome, came by the station and met the famous Detroit preacher for the first time. More than forty years later, the power of that experience impressed him yet. Franklin, he remarked, “had an elegant appearance,” his clothes were impeccably stylish, and he possessed something even “regal about him.” He was younger in appearance than Thompson expected and carried himself with “a certain little strut . . . a certain walk about him,” erect, square-shouldered, even “ram-rod,” yet with a rhythm to his gait. Even with an overwhelmed teenager, Franklin offered recognition and respect. He “would look you right in your eyes with a smile,” Thompson remembered, and when he shook hands, he wasn’t distracted or focused on someone else: “He gave you his total attention.” S. L. Jones, then twelve, also attended the evening program at the large Masonic Temple in Jackson and approached Franklin at its conclusion. Decades later, he remembered the man with profound appreciation: “And he took the time to talk to me and I told him who I was.”25
The program itself was staggering, including the Maceo Wood Singers, with whom the young minister Samuel Billy Kyles then performed, and Roberta Martin and her singers. The Clara Ward Singers were then at the height of their fame, with the powerful voices of Henrietta Waddy and Marion Williams backing the incomparably talented Ward herself. Also there was Little Sammy Bryant, a dwarf and one of the major soloists in the New Bethel choir, who projected her powerful voice across large halls in a fashion that made audiences gasp. Finally, the preacher’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Aretha, approached the microphone. She had recently recorded her first gospel songs live, before an open microphone, during services at New Bethel and had only recently begun touring with her father. For all the polish and mature command she would later possess, the raw power and passion in her voice at this time still mark her first gospel recordings as among her best work. Only after her performance, which the preacher witnessed from his seat on the platform facing an audience already nearing its emotional peak, did Clarence LaVaughn Franklin move to center stage.26
Incredibly enough, given what had just occurred, he began with a hymn, with “his prayer song,” Charlie Thompson remembered, “Father, I Stretch My Hand to Thee.” Thompson could not recall how many verses the preacher sang that night, but when Franklin felt the hymn had worked its power, he moved into his sermon, citing the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians 3:13-14 as his text. In the sermon, recorded the year before as Pressing On, C. L. stressed Paul’s humility rather than his well-known insistence on ascetic virtues, asserting that Paul would take credit for but one virtue, namely, his dedication to press toward salvation despite whatever may have occurred in the past. Then, after all of the emotion of the gospel music, his whoop electrified the audience, matching, indeed surpassing, the earlier gospel tones as he brought his message home. “But I never heard anything or anybody move a crowd of people the way Reverend moved those people that night,” Thompson later mused, still in the wonder of it. “I was sixteen years old and I was, and I ain’t never [been] moved to that extent.”27
Charlie Thompson was not the only person beyond New Bethel who reacted to C. L. that way. Franklin’s preaching, projected through radio speakers by local DJs and from record players, flooded living rooms across the nation and made him almost a familiar presence to thousands upon thousands of listeners. S. L. Jones, who later led Detroit’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where to Jones’s delight, C. L. attended his 1970 installation, marveled at how many people in his own ministry had never met Franklin yet “felt like they knew him . . . [and called] him Frank.” He saw this particularly in preachers in small towns and smaller churches who regularly said, almost matter-of-factly, “I was listening to Frank last night.” They thought of C. L. as “one of the guys” whom they knew from his records, Jones thought, “because he made them feel a part of what he was doing.” Others were struck by different qualities. His reputation as a chanting preacher drew those who found gospel music a touch too secular and, perhaps more surprisingly, those who might like gospel but rejected church itself. Such was his influence that black ministers and lay people alike, churched or not, critics as well as supporters of his theology and lifestyle, flocked to any program he graced.28
C. L.’s sermons on tour echoed those he delivered from New Bethel’s pulpit. In many ways, the very technology that spread his fame constrained this revival preaching. Audiences wanted to hear the recorded sermons they already knew; they wanted to see this man in full delivery, to feel God’s power work on them through him—viscerally, physically, spiritually. While there “may be some deviations,” some moments where “you can improvise,” Franklin later reflected, “you generally stay within the same theme.” At first, he resented this limitation on his ministerial prerogative to preach as he pleased, especially as the most recently released sermon was usually in demand. Franklin felt that the promoter’s
insistence that audiences “want to hear what they have been hearing” truncated his need “to express myself in other sermons.” But he adjusted, and especially as the total of sermons Franklin released reached seventy-five, he had a greater leeway with producers and audiences alike.29
The fundamental purpose of his preaching, however, was no different on tour than at New Bethel. As was true for the gospel singers in their fashion, the goal of C. L.’s efforts was to evangelize, to bring people to Jesus, by moving audiences “in more ways than just the emotional,” to “impart some thoughtfulness and inspiration in them.” At every stop, local ministers counseled those who had accepted the call and, not insignificantly, sought to enroll the newly converted in their congregations. Franklin did not think it disrespectful if he and the gospel groups practiced their ministry in a manner that simultaneously entertained and made money. As tensions grew during the 1950s over changes in the religious culture—Could ministers be celebrities in their own right and still preach Jesus? Could the Ward Singers and other groups perform gospel in Las Vegas nightclubs and still live out their Christian ministry?—Franklin remained unperturbed. In church or on tour, he held that the black religious community wanted the experience to be “entertaining as well as enlightening.” To Reverend Kyles, “Frank did something that no one had ever done with the spoken word” in the 1950s. He popularized the sermon well beyond the church sanctuary “and strangely enough it did not lose its sacredness. I mean, [audiences] never saw him as a pop [artist]. . . . He was Reverend Franklin. He was deeply religious.”30
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