Though King had again lent his considerable prestige to his friend, this time the effort failed. Franklin was caught between two opposing forces: Detroit’s traditional civil rights leaders bristled at the proposed new competition and redoubled their efforts to undermine Franklin and the DCHR. They almost need not have worried, however, as the tension between Franklin and Cleage precluded further joint efforts. Cleage had filled the conference’s panels with his ideological supporters and had inferred that the meeting would ultimately endorse the Freedom Now Party. New Bethel’s preacher had either ignored or not fully understood Cleage’s organizational efforts, forgetting the adage that the devil was in the details. Franklin fought back, objecting to the political slant of the invited guests, but it was too late to salvage even a shaky unity. Certain that the black revolution was imminent, Cleage considered it his political responsibility as a self-proclaimed leader to achieve that goal by any means he possessed. He had little choice but to resign from the council, as the majority of its directors were Franklin supporters, but he did so with dramatic effect, declaring that the Franklin group “lacked the vision necessary” to maintain the momentum of the June march which, he somewhat contradictorily now pronounced, was “essentially . . . a hollow thing without substance.” With an eye to the masses he momentarily expected to rise in support of his program, this elite-reared son of Detroit’s African American aristocracy grandly proclaimed that in “renouncing the independent black political action represented by the FREEDOM NOW PARTY, and the new Negro image which is called ‘black nationalism,’ the DCHR has renounced any reason for its existence.”39
In his response to Cleage, Franklin delivered the clearest analysis of his political philosophy he ever gave outside the pulpit. In two press conferences, he rejected gradualism in achieving black freedom, deplored the glorification of violence and the embrace of separatism, and reiterated that nonviolence was the “only sane means” to achieve “political power, economic security, and human dignity for all people.” Like his friend King, C. L. reaffirmed his opposition to nationalism: “Neither white nor black segregation is the desired end.” He reminded all of black participation “in the American struggle” over the centuries. The very difficulty of that history as lived by generations past demanded that it “cannot now become negated and determined as futile attempts. Those who are interested in an American Indian reservation-type segregation,” he fiercely argued, “surely are welcome to it.” The history of third parties in America, moreover, “seemingly lead . . . nowhere.” He cited former President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 campaign for the presidency on a third-party ticket, as well as the campaigns of Wisconsin senator Robert La Follette in 1924 and former vice president Henry Wallace in 1948. The prospect was even more discouraging for an independent black party, for “the mathematics of such a proposition, a black minority lining up in a political warfare against a white majority is not practical at all.” In line with his commitment for his people to take their rightful place in the society Franklin considered their home, however problematic that claim remained, he also strongly objected to the involvement of “subversive or Communistic elements” or militant nationalists alike.40
Franklin’s political affirmations reflected the message offered in his Detroit sermons across more than a decade of Sundays. He understood the growing frustration and was perhaps the local public figure with the strongest connections, personally and culturally, to those masses others evoked. The complexity of that understanding led him to insist, as he had in the past and would in the future, that revolutionary romances from the political left or separatist dreams from the right must be rejected outright. Freedom could come—indeed, must come—in the fulfillment of America’s democratic promise, however difficult that task. This was a fundamental difference between Franklin and Cleage, and it could not be resolved. As a consequence, Detroit hosted two conferences that second weekend of November. The DCHR gathering was poorly attended and lacked many of the prominent speakers advertised earlier. Spokesmen, saving face, blamed misleading directions for the small numbers even as they asserted that significant decisions had nonetheless taken place. Cleage’s conference, hastily named the Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference, had slightly larger if still disappointing attendance, but it featured Malcolm X at its Sunday evening rally.
Malcolm’s address, recorded by Milton Henry and widely distributed as “Message to the Grass Roots,” became one of his more popular speeches. Its approach could not have been more different from a Franklin sermon. In a talk rent with contradictions, Malcolm X reduced his political analysis—in itself a departure from the traditional message of Elijah Muhammad—to a simplistic assertion of the power of skin pigmentation to determine destiny. He proclaimed a 1955 international conference of unaligned Asian and African nations as a model for black Americans. The conference, Malcolm exaggerated, recognized in the white man “a common enemy” and barred all whites from their deliberations; thus delegates were able to “talk shop” and achieve unity. The actual history of relations among these erstwhile allies, to say nothing of the fierce political struggles within many of these nations despite shared skin tones, was far different than what Malcolm projected. This idealization of revolutionaries of color led Malcolm into one of the more horrific morality tales of this or any other speech he gave. Recalling a picture he had seen in Life magazine, he praised “a little Chinese girl, nine years old,” as an example black American revolutionaries would do well to consider. The magazine picture caught the child just before she pulled the trigger that killed her kneeling father “because he was an Uncle Tom Chinaman.”
In this speech as well Malcolm developed a soon-to-be-popular distinction, if one without clear programmatic meaning, between “the black revolution and the Negro revolution.” In his wildly misleading narrative, the “house Negroes” predictably catered to the white master and were reputedly rewarded for it, while the “field Negroes—those were the masses” who “in the field caught hell.” Malcolm proclaimed that it was the “house Negroes,” now “twentieth-century Uncle Toms” in the guise of civil rights leaders, that continue “to keep you and me in check . . . to keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent.” Given that the echo of that little girl’s pistol shot yet reverberated in the audience and was an object lesson for dealing with “Uncle Toms,” the speech, geared to touch raw feelings, offered little more than murderous incitement by way of rhetorical exaggeration.41
“Message to the Grass Roots” did possess some nuance, however, particularly when heard. Malcolm’s intonation could generate gales of laughter that softened a stark moment. His exaggerated pronunciation of the term Negro, as “Knee-gro-ow,” mocked equally southern segregationists and traditional leaders shy of the term black. Similarly, his depiction of the “house Negro” who proudly announced, as the master explained he was not feeling well, “We’s sick,” inevitably brought down the house. Malcolm’s truth here resided not in his history but in the public recognition of the psychological impact of slavery and the ensuing century of harsh exclusion. For many who heard him, laced between the peals of laughter was a more painful confrontation with self. He might stride the stage like “a conqueror,” possessing “a fearless tongue,” as one reporter wrote, yet contradictions persisted. His pungent criticism of black men who allowed their women and children to suffer nonviolently in demonstrations while they willingly served in America’s wars never comprehended the deep pride of many black veterans. Instead, Malcolm saw their service as but another example of the black masses’ false consciousness, much as he saw their love of pork, blues, soul music, and Christianity as further evidence of the power others exerted over blacks. Many in Detroit and across the nation listened, and many were moved. Relatively few, however, came forth to join the movement Malcolm promoted.42
The debacle of that second weekend in November 1963, with its dual meetings both poorly attended, marked C. L. Franklin’s last effort to lead a secular political movement. His
opponents among the traditional leadership proved far savvier than he in their political maneuvering, as did the allies he thought he had found. But amid the swirl of ideas, debates, and demonstrations that intensified that fall and into 1964, Franklin, without a platform other than his pulpit, still remained a serious public presence in the city.
Only two weeks after the failed conferences, reporters found their way to Franklin’s New Bethel office for his reaction to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was “a tragic blow,” a saddened Franklin declared, as tragic as the one that “felled President Abraham Lincoln” a century before. He insisted that the assassination was not isolated from other recent events: the “sniper did not pull his trigger alone.” Franklin accused Alabama’s governor George Wallace, Mississippi’s governor Ross Barnett, “and all the forces of hate and evil” who were “as surely in Dallas with the sniper as they were in Jackson, Mississippi when Medgar Evers was felled.” A month later, he presided over the New Bethel funeral of Dinah Washington, the outstanding blues singer and friend who had participated enthusiastically in the June march. In February 1964, in an obvious effort to revive his role as a political leader, Franklin announced plans (ill-fated, he would discover) for a Freedom Jubilee on the anniversary of the 1963 march. That same month, the Michigan Chronicle, whose editors were deeply tied to the traditional black leadership in the city, named Franklin as one of eight outstanding Detroit religious leaders working on behalf of human rights. Stunned, perhaps, when first informed privately, he was quick to capitalize on the honor. Friends sponsored a major testimonial dinner at Cobo Hall the week of the Chronicle’s announcement. Some two thousand people attended, a Who’s Who of black Detroit’s younger political, religious, and entertainment worlds. Elected state representatives served on the ticket committee, as did such aspiring politicians such as John Conyers Jr., and William T. Patrick emceed the three-hour-long program. Four of C. L.’s favorite church singers—Willie Todd, Grace Cobb, Lucy Branch, and William Penn—offered solos. It was a striking public moment. Not present were most of the “old guard” leaders, although by now it was clear that the differences between C. L. and those leaders were more about style and tempo, important as those issues might be, than fundamental political philosophy. None of them, nor most of the dinner guests, embraced Milton Henry’s declaration, delivered two weeks earlier over Detroit radio, that black Americans should reject integration as the central goal of the freedom struggle.43
Later that fall, after a month’s vacation in Los Angeles, Franklin joined with the “young Turks” to endorse John Conyers Jr. for a new congressional seat that opened in a largely black district in the city. The year before, Conyers had joined the effort to unseat Franklin as chairman of the “March to Freedom.” A year later, Franklin recognized the potential benefit for his people in a Conyers victory and held no grudges against the ambitious young lawyer. Conyers’s opponent in the primary was Richard Austin, a candidate clearly aligned with the older black leadership. At stake was not only the race itself but the direction of black electoral politics in Detroit. Horace Sheffield, the TULC founder now thought by many as indistinguishable from the elites he once criticized, backed Austin, as did the established civil rights organizations. Nelson Jack Edwards, New Bethel trustee, member of the UAW’s executive board, and TULC member now sharply critical of its current political direction, supported Conyers. The intense primary fight, a continuation of the struggle against the Reuther administration’s support of Louis C. Miriani in the 1961 mayoralty race, was so fierce that the UAW forbade all staff people from campaigning for Conyers on pain of losing their jobs. That edict proscribed John Conyers Sr., the candidate’s father and a UAW activist since the original organizing drives in the late 1930s, from supporting his son publicly. Franklin was one of the first ministers to endorse Conyers, and he used his Sunday evening radio program to bolster Conyers’s appeal. Ultimately, the UAW’s arrogance turned even some established leaders toward the candidate, who won the primary in a very close race and the subsequent general election in a landslide. Garnering more than 138,000 votes, he overwhelmed black Republican Robert Blackwell’s 25,589 and Milton Henry’s 1, 504 votes.44
Henry’s poor showing was by now a surprise to only a few. Malcolm’s presence had boosted Albert Cleage’s prominence in some circles, but Cleage found it difficult to build a coherent political movement upon the new attention. The Freedom Now Party did field candidates in the November 1964 elections and collected more than twenty-two thousand signatures across Michigan to gain access to the ballot. Supporters predicted the party would attract at least one hundred thousand votes. Cleage stood for governor, Milton Henry challenged Conyers Jr., and attorney Henry W. Cleage opposed incumbent prosecutor Samuel H. Olsen. The results were discouraging. Cleage obtained less than twenty thousand votes statewide, and no other party candidate posed even a minor threat. Unable to convince the very people he claimed to represent, Cleage followed the example of the other self-appointed leaders he had long criticized. In denying that his party had been repudiated by black voters, he blamed the black masses instead. “Negroes lack the indignation that people should have in the face of injustice,” he stated, gliding over the inherent contradiction with his earlier harangues. Within two weeks of the election, Cleage and Grace Boggs resigned from the Freedom Now Party, having lost the power to set postelection strategy to the Henry brothers and their supporters.45
C. L. continued in this public vein in succeeding years. He sponsored visits to Detroit and New Bethel by Coretta Scott King in 1965 (and her husband in 1966); raised money for SCLC’s massive campaign in Selma, Alabama, in 1965; and served on that organization’s national board. He also cofounded the Christian Evangelistic Crusaders, a church-based organization of nine pastors and their congregations intent on rescuing “our young people who have inherited our frustrations and hopelessness” from finding their solutions solely in “secularism and materialism.” These efforts at outreach reflected his belief, affirmed repeatedly in his sermons, that faith and social responsibility were intertwined strands of the same mission.46
Fifty years old in 1965, and in relatively good health, Franklin still cut a trim figure in his stylish suits and glistening hair, his jewelry flashing as he talked. But the young minister he once was had become an energetic, solidly middle-aged man. Unlike many other men of his generation, whose daily life involved limited travels to and from familiar destinations such as work, shopping, church, and friends’ homes, C. L. had spent much of the last decade and more on the gospel tour, crisscrossing the nation in what was, cumulatively, an exhausting set of sacred performances. The physical toll was perhaps most obvious. The flights, the long car rides between tour stops, the friends, the parties, the late-night sessions weighed on him more as the years passed. Each day of the tour was a day spent largely in the public eye, responding to demands from others for his attention, for a word, an autograph, an interview. Each encounter, no matter how enjoyable, drew on his emotional reserve. Franklin was gregarious, outgoing, and possessed reservoirs of energy, but after fifteen years he was exhausted. Beyond the near-continuous motion, the very act of preaching night after night drained him even as it exhilarated. “People expect a lot out of the black preacher,” C. L. once explained, and feel disappointed “unless you extend yourself and expend a lot of energy.” The structure of the tours, moreover, added to the toll. C. L. traveled with a small entourage, and when the car broke down or some other difficulty occurred, it was usually Franklin who dealt with the problem. C. L. “would have done better [on tour] as a Billy Graham,” his friend Billy Kyles pointed out, with “an organization sponsoring what he was doing.” But Franklin rarely operated as an organization man.47
Beneath the physical tiredness and the expenditure of emotion lay even more complicated issues. The glory and honor of being C. L. Franklin was but the flip side of being so famous that there were very few people in whom you could confide. “Who does a C. L. Franklin talk to, you kn
ow,” James Holley asked. “Who does C. L. Franklin use as a mentor?” There were some, to be sure, such as Reuben Gayden, Claud Young, Mahalia Jackson, the Dallas preacher Caesar Clark, and possibly others, though C. L. never directly identified people in this way. What was clear, however, was that their numbers were far fewer than those who sought him out. There was as well a more pressing issue. His gradual recognition of his diminishing inner drive, what Benjamin Hooks had recognized long before as the “intimate kind of commotion” that powered him out of Mississippi and sustained his career, collided with a demanding ego still desirous of the affirmation long offered by the audience’s wave of adulation. “Reverend Franklin’s biggest competitor,” Jasper Williams sharply intuited, “was his past, his youthfulness, and the older you get the less you’re able to compete with yourself.” This recognition was evident in the gradual easing of activities after 1965.48
Being on the road less meant that Franklin was at New Bethel more, and this was good for the church. For numerous reasons, membership had slowly begun to dip after the move to Linwood in 1963. Urban renewal meant the displacement of residents as well as buildings, and for some, New Bethel was no longer as convenient a stop. Those who still resided in Paradise Valley but lacked cars found the city’s limited bus schedule an obstacle. Some had found another congregation to their liking in the years without a permanent structure. The number of young people who remained active in church beyond their teen years also declined noticeably. The new neighborhood, too, may have played a role. The area around New Bethel deteriorated sharply in the years after the church opened, and the crossroads of Linwood and Philadelphia marked an increasingly impoverished spot with both high unemployment and high crime rates. C. L.’s children, concerned over the social deterioration—the family home on nearby LaSalle Boulevard had been ransacked one summer evening in 1962, while C. L. preached a few blocks away—pressed their father again to move the church farther out toward the suburbs beyond Eight Mile Road. He refused, as he did their subsequent request that he move his residence to a better, safer neighborhood downtown. “No, that’s where they need me,” his daughter Erma remembered him insisting, speaking of the neighborhood of both his church and home. “No, this is where I live. This is where I am going to stay.” And that he did, even as the Sunday attendance continued to slip into the 1970s.49
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