Although he remained at home, the costs for Franklin’s twenty-four-hour care remained high. New Bethel established a trust fund that had reached $32,000 by January 1980. As appreciable as it was, that amount covered less than four months’ care; his approximate monthly expenses came close to $9,000. That April, thirteen thousand people jammed into Cobo Hall to hear Aretha, James Cleveland, Pop Staples and his daughters, Mavis and Cleo, Jesse Jackson, and others perform in a concert that raised some $50,000 for expenses. In both 1982 and 1983, major benefits were held at the church, organized by Fannie Tyler, Harry Kincaid, Carolyn King and others, but the financial drain persisted. Claud Young eased it to a degree, for he never submitted a bill for his medical services. But the family’s decision not to apply for available government benefits (the idea of this proud man relying on government benefits grated on the family) necessitated constant fundraising to relieve Aretha of some of the financial burden. These bursts of organizational activity, not unlike Franklin’s own involuntary reactions, raised expectations and momentarily lifted the shroud of sadness. But family, close friends, and well-wishers alike were forced to return to a more depressing reality. The medical log book kept by his nursing staff for almost three years after his release from Ford Hospital left little room for sustained optimism. Amid the notations of visitors arriving, various involuntary motions by the patient, and the instructions from doctors lay the stark, unforgiving data, recorded multiple times each eight-hour shift, of a person approaching his final journey. Everything ingested—he was fed intravenously and, at times, could swallow baby food—and everything eliminated was weighed, measured, and examined. And always, always, with the measured solemnity of a muffled drum in a memorial march, the entry with its unchanging message was inscribed by the shift nurse: “Neuro status remains unchanged.”52
On Easter Sunday morning, 1981, nurse M. Woodall came on duty at seven. She noted that her patient was “comfortable listening to the radio.” In years past, C. L. would have already led a sunrise service, preaching a sermon with power and insight on the multiple meanings of his Lord’s resurrection. That morning, as he lay comatose, his nurse offered a poignant prayer: “Happy Easter Rev. May your resurrection back fully with us be very very soon.”53
As C. L. lay unconscious, powerless, the church and the congregation he had led for so long underwent a painful, angry struggle over his succession. The battle left New Bethel almost as disabled as its pastor. At issue were the terms of the lifetime contract he signed early in his tenure at New Bethel. The key clause in the document provided that C. L. would remain pastor, absent a commanding majority of the membership voting to remove him, “as long as breath was in his body.” He remained breathing, without life support, but clearly could no longer lead the church. Within ten hours of the 1979 shooting, the trustees and deacons named Franklin’s longtime senior assistant, the blind preacher C. (Clinton) L. Moore, as minister-in-charge until the pastor recovered fully. At first, the arrangement worked well. The shock of the shooting, the concern for his recovery, and the sadness for the family and for the congregation as a whole held in check the varied, normal tensions inherent in an organization as complex and important in its members’ lives. But as 1980 gave way to 1981 and their pastor remained unavailable, some began to question the arrangement. At the center of this was Moore. An electrifying preacher in the Franklin tradition, Moore was both popular and ambitious. Moore let it be known that he wished to be named pastor, with Franklin named pastor emeritus, as he was, in fact, performing that position anyway. But Moore’s visible ambition angered different leadership groups within the church. His open desire to replace C. L. stunned the stricken pastor’s most fervent supporters. Fannie Tyler, Carolyn King, Willie Todd, Beverli Greenleaf, Wallace Malone, Harry Kincaid—personal and church secretaries, choir soloists, deacons, and trustees—among others were particularly appalled, because they well knew how Franklin had encouraged and supported Moore for more than a decade.54
Moore’s bluntness precipitated the crisis. “No one can operate anything from a sick bed,” he stated frankly. “Nobody can lead if he doesn’t know what he is leading.” To those like Carolyn King, praying that Franklin would return but committed to honoring his position until “the inevitable,” Moore’s position amounted to backstabbing by an intimate family member. For Deacon Milton Hall, his support for his pastor also transcended contractual obligations. “See,” he told C. L. Moore directly, “Reverend Franklin spoke for me when I couldn’t speak for myself. I said, now he is down, I’ll speak for him.” On October 3, the deacons and trustees of New Bethel gathered and, after much discussion, voted to remove Moore from his temporary position. A strong minority opposed the decision. Moore claimed irregularities in the vote and called a membership meeting for October 20, under his leadership, to place the decision before the entire membership. So important was this congregation to Afro-Baptist Detroit, however, that William Holly, president of the Council of Baptist Pastors, stepped in to preside. Some fifteen hundred voting members attended and, “by a large percentage,” supported Moore’s removal. Moore led a walkout, court suits followed when he tried to retain the New Bethel name, and he quickly established a new church, Enon Baptist.55
New Bethel was devastated. Longtime friends and parishioners hurled epithets at one another, and the Franklin family felt an overwhelming sense of betrayal. The church also suffered a grievous institutional loss. Many left with Moore for Enon; another significant number withdrew from both churches. By spring 1982, New Bethel still had no permanent pastor, had but 105 paying members, and faced the awkward task of celebrating the church’s fiftieth anniversary. Joseph H. Jackson, president of the NBC, preached the anniversary sermon in recognition of New Bethel’s central role in the city’s black religious life. C. L.’s most famous daughter and many other family members stayed away. The emotions would be too painful, an unnamed relative told a reporter. “Things have not been happy for her since her father was hurt and things haven’t been well at the church.” Away from the public eye, however, the remaining deacons and trustees were at work, and on Sunday, July 11, following a series of trial sermons that spring, they installed Robert Smith, Jr., a thirty-year-old pastor from Pratt City, Alabama, as co-pastor, with the understanding that he would automatically succeed Franklin upon his death. Once again, a southerner had come north to lead New Bethel. But it could not be the same.56
EPILOGUE
On Friday, July 27, 1984, at 10:30 A.M., more than five years since he was shot, Clarence LaVaughn Franklin died. He never regained consciousness. The coroner listed homicide as the cause of death. He was sixty-nine years old.1
On Wednesday, August 1, 1984, at two o’clock in the afternoon, the doors of Swanson’s Funeral Home opened. Inside, the body of C. L. Franklin lay in state. It was appropriate that his final rites began there. C. L. had been friends with the Swanson family for many years, and the funeral home itself was on Grand Boulevard East, on the northern edge of the old Paradise Valley area, midway between C. L.’s former home on Boston Boulevard and the site of the New Bethel pulpit he first ascended in 1946. Late into Wednesday night and all day Thursday, and again on Friday morning, the crowds came in the wilting heat to see his face once more, to pay their respects one last time. On Friday afternoon, August 3, O’Neil Swanson temporarily closed the casket, and assistants wheeled it to a resplendent 1940 black LaSalle hearse, with spotless whitewall tires, highly polished finish, and gleaming chrome trim the equal of the stylish man it transported. C. L. Franklin was coming home to New Bethel for the last time.2
That evening, August 3, the family and the congregation held the first of two services to mark C. L.’s passing. With Robert Smith and James Holley the officiating ministers, an overflowing New Bethel joined in a memorial service for this preacher and pastor who lay before them in an open casket. Ward Lott, a New Bethel trustee and Worthy Master of the city’s Prince Hall Masonic Lodge 10, offered condolences on behalf of C. L.’s Masonic brethren
. Tributes also came from pastors, including E. L. Branch, and from Mrs. Robbie McCoy, a longtime friend and religion editor for the Michigan Chronicle. New Bethel’s mass choir offered hymns, as did gospel singer Delores Barrett Campbell. Herbert Pickard, one of C. L.’s favorite pianists, accompanied these sacred performances. As moving as the memorial was, it was but a prelude for the service the following day. That same evening, busloads of ministers and mourners continued to arrive in the city from Birmingham, Buffalo, Chicago, and elsewhere. Even more ministers, the prominent as well as those far less famous, arrived by plane.3
Saturday morning, August 4, at eleven o’clock, at New Bethel—that was the major remembrance, the final farewell. The weather that morning was oppressive, as “a searing heat” gripped the city from daybreak and only intensified as the sun inched towards its apex. By nine o’clock, the nonreserved seats in the church were nearly full, and ushers brought out additional folding chairs to fill the side aisles on the main floor and the nooks and crevices in the corners there and in the balcony. Already the temperature inside matched the 90-plus degrees outside, and a sea of white fans moving “in cadence,” some thought, as in “the old time revival,” sought in vain to circulate the dank, laden air. By eleven o’clock, nearly three thousand people had squeezed within the church, and an estimated six or seven thousand more crowded the streets outside, listening to the choir over loudspeakers. At the front of the church, in the well of the sanctuary, directly below the pulpit, lay Franklin’s open casket, his full body visible. To either side were richly colored wreaths of flowers, into some of which had been braided a recording of one of Franklin’s sermons. Behind the pulpit, the pastor’s chair and portrait were draped in black, and above the choir loft the neon sign proclaimed, as it had for decades, the church’s essential act of faith: “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.”4
Sometime after eleven o’clock—the crowds outside forced innumerable delays—the procession into the church for C. L.’s “transitorial services” to the next life began. Adorned in white, symbolizing hope despite their loss, the family marched slowly down the center aisle, led by Franklin’s eighty-seven-year-old mother, his six children, his niece, and followed by a large group of relatives and close friends. Each stopped before the open casket for a prayer and a final sad goodbye, before turning to their right to fill the thirteen reserved pews in the center section. Next came the pallbearers, followed by the deacons, trustees, and the members of various church boards and committees. Like the family, many wore white. Throughout, the choir sang. The program that morning listed forty-three speakers and eleven different musical offerings. But even if each speaker honored the time limitation Fannie Tyler, his private secretary and organizer of the service, had established, it would have been impossible that day to have heard all. The air was so thick within the church, the crush of people in the pews so intense, that one inadvertently pinned another’s arms in the massed crowd, and many gasped for breath. After consulting with the family and his doctor cousin, Coleman Young announced that conditions would force an alteration of the program. With apologies, some thirty speakers were eliminated and the schedule readjusted to reach more quickly the two main speakers. The first of these called to the pulpit was Rev. Jesse Jackson of Chicago.5
Jackson had spent the spring of 1984 as a candidate for the presidency of the United States in the Democratic Party’s primaries. As he told the crowd, C. L., whom he “affectionately called the Rabbi, the Learned One,” had preached his ordination service in 1968 and, even before that, had brought the young seminary student into this very pulpit. As was evident to many as he processed, holding Aretha’s arm, Jackson had grown close to the Franklin children as well: “Erma and Cecil and Carolyn and Aretha—we’re family.”
C. L., Jackson declared, “was a prophet . . . [a] rare, not just [a] unique” man. His reach stretched beyond New Bethel into the heart of black America: “Did not our ears perk up for years before we had a television or an elected official in America, if we could just hear WLAC, Nashville, Tennessee, Randy’s on a Sunday night? Sunday night, New Bethel, Hastings Street, was the common frame of reference for the black church prototype. The soul of Motown was Hastings Street before Grand Boulevard.”6 A commanding presence in black America, Franklin touched singers and musicians, ministers, and untold numbers in his audiences with his “substance and sweetness,” with his challenge that the church “be relevant and ask the Lord to give us this day, our daily bread.” This he accomplished despite being born half a century “before we had the right to vote. Born in poverty—poverty could not stop him. He was born in segregation. It was illegal for a black man to get an education. No public accommodations. No right to vote.”
Nonetheless, Jackson exclaimed, C. L.’s “flower did blossom. That’s why we’re here today to say thank you for a petal, for an insight, for a song, for a sermon.” But now, like Moses and Joshua, Isaiah and Daniel, like his friend Martin, like Jesus himself, C. L. “had to go home.” Their common faith, Jackson reminded all, found the joy amid the pain, a joy Aretha sang of in one of her first gospel recordings decades before. “There is a land,” he intoned, evoking in the church’s memory her incomparable talent even as a fourteen-year-old, “where we shall never grow old,” where pain and sorrow are no more. That was the land to which C. L. went ahead of us.7
Tributes followed, layered between musical selections from Johnny Taylor, one of C. L.’s favorite singers, Samuel Billy Kyles, and Arthur Prysock, the jazz singer and close friend. Then Jasper Williams, pastor of Atlanta’s Salem Baptist Church and long a protégé in Franklin’s preaching tradition, came to the pulpit. The eulogist, he grasped the microphone in his hands, and with a power and tonality that eerily recalled C. L. himself, he sang: “Fa-a-ther, I stretch my hands to thee.” For a moment, as Williams rendered the various stanzas, it was possible to imagine C. L. himself in the pulpit. As he finished the hymn, Williams moved into his sermon, centered on the theme that C. L. was “a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” Some twenty-five minutes later, with the audience on the brink of physical and emotional exhaustion, Jasper Williams concluded this “extraordinary service,” perhaps the largest ever held in Detroit.8
The cavalcade of hearses, limousines, and private cars stretched twenty city blocks along Linwood, from Grand Boulevard West to Joy Road. Slowly, the cars proceeded to his interment at Woodlawn Cemetery, on Woodward Avenue, where it met Detroit’s city limits.9
So ended C. L. Franklin’s journey, nearly nine hundred miles to the north and east of the tiny Mississippi Delta hamlet where it had begun. But as befits one who rose so far, his influence struck deep and remains even today. C. L.’s complex personality often generated contradictory actions. His sensuous nature led him at times into situations that hurt others deeply. Yet that passionate engagement, when channeled from the pulpit, allowed him to touch many. His faith itself was anything but simplistic. Its biblical roots remained even as he moved away from a fundamentalist approach, and his insistence on faith’s place in the world helped other recent migrants in urban America to define a more assertive place for themselves. He was indeed just a man, and his faults were writ large, one consequence of his fame. But withal, he defined for himself an inner sense of freedom against a harsh American backdrop and communicated that possibility to others in ways that changed lives.
Franklin preached to raise consciousness—of self and of one’s relation to society. His faith encouraged individuals in his audiences to assert in private and in public that they were, in fact, somebody. This was Franklin’s power. It remains his legacy. Even today, one cannot listen to a Franklin sermon without recognizing his effort to draw out each listener, to lift up each voice to new levels. C. L. Franklin understood the necessity for African Americans to sing in this strange land, despite the reaction that caused in many quarters. The act of singing laid claim to the land in the face of the very hostility that made it so strange. The result, a communal song of dissent and of affirmation, encouraged
Babylonian and Israelite, black and white, to transform that land, and in the process to explore more fully the intimate ties of their common humanity.
More than a quarter of a century after bullets stilled his voice, C. L. Franklin’s sermons continue to speak to us. Like people the world over, many Americans discover and define their political and social beliefs in their hallowed sites of worship. Franklin preached a particularly powerful version of this intermingling of the sacred and the secular, one deeply rooted in the African American church tradition. He spoke of tolerance as well as justice, of the centrality of faith as well as the specific responsibility of each individual to live those commitments in this world. He acknowledged reason’s limits but never thought his faith required a rejection of his intellect. If his faith propelled him into the world, he never assumed it provided him with a blueprint for action; rather, his faith led him to explore in public the promise of an American democratic tradition. During his lifetime, C. L. of necessity shared his thoughts primarily with black Americans, so complete was the segregation in law and culture that then enveloped the American imagination. That specific time, thankfully, has passed, and as Americans continue to explore the boundaries between faith and political life, the career of this Mississippi-born preacher speaks powerfully to contemporary debates. C. L. Franklin’s message soared above the limitations of his era, giving voice to the universal meaning at the center of the black church tradition. The overarching themes of his life’s work remain relevant to even broader audiences decades later.
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