The legendary C.L. Franklin is the subject of Nick Salvatore's latest book

By Franklin Crawford

In 1996, Cornell historian Nick Salvatore began a scholarly journey that led him into the life and times of the legendary C.L. Franklin (1915-1984), father of Aretha and arguably the greatest African-American preacher of his generation.

Nick Salvatore, professor of industrial and labor relations and American studies, in Sage Chapel Jan. 31. His new book, Singing in a Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, the Black Church and the Transformation of America, was released this week. Robert Barker/University Photography

Salvatore's findings are stylishly bound within the covers of his third book, Singing in a Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, the Black Church and the Transformation of America, (Little, Brown and Co.).

Singing in a Strange Land is the first full-study of Franklin, whose rise to eminence paralleled the rise of the black church as a socio-political force in the growing civil rights movement in the United States. The arc of Franklin's life, from the Mississippi Delta where he was born to the politically volatile city of Detroit, charts the course of a social phenomenon -- the 20th-century movement of rural southern blacks into northern cities, the emergence of blacks in the trade unions and the upward thrust of an entire population. Salvatore traces Franklin's ascent while describing the back story of a people on the move, searching for a voice in a strange land.

Salvatore is the Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Founders Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and professor of American studies at Cornell. He is the author of Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (1982), which received the Bancroft Prize in History and the John H. Dunning Prize, and We All Got History: The Memory Books of Amos Webber (1996), which received the New England History Association's Outstanding Book Prize.

In structuring his original ideas about how religious beliefs and practices framed racial identity in 20th-century black communities, Salvatore found an apt subject. Franklin was a complex man who practiced what he preached -- that there was no artificial divide between the sacred and the secular. He was at home in the nightclub as well as the pulpit and saw no contradiction in it. His Detroit residence was "a crossroads for post-World War II black musical culture," and he indulged in it. Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, Art Tatum and Sam Cooke called at the Franklin home and attended his sermons.

As Salvatore states in his preface, "to know Franklin is to understand more fully the complex experiences central to modern American life. And to know that, of course, is to more fully understand ourselves."

The inspiration for the book's title comes from one of Franklin's most famous sermons, "Without a Song." Based on the 137th Psalm, it describes the Israelites' refusal to sing for their Babylonian captors. Franklin took exception to the Israelites' silence. He believed the Israelites should have sung.

"Some things you can't say you can sing," Franklin told his congregation, many of them migrants from the deep south -- rural transplants in a strange city in a strange country that was not their promised land, but someone else's.

"The more I thought of that sermon, the more I realized that its core message was in fact the central meaning of C.L. Franklin's ministry," Salvatore writes in an essay about the book. "As he insisted his audiences lift their voices and express their songs, Franklin urged them as well to lay claim to this land in the face of the very hostility that made it so strange. The result, a communal song of dissent and of affirmation, encouraged all -- Babylonian and Israelite, black and white Americans -- to transform that land ...."

Possessed of a startling oratorical gift, Franklin's "sacred performances," as Salvatore calls them, were enhanced by the man's remarkable singing voice. His personalized "whoop and chant" preaching style revolutionized the form, and 75 of his sermons were recorded live and sold nationally. Salvatore was doubly struck by the artistic talents of the messenger as well as the content of the messages.

"The sermons provided pointed social and political analyses that consciously urged others to discover their voices and to engage in the world about them," writes Salvatore. They are relevant still. "C.L. Franklin's sermons are useful today in providing another approach in the current debate in the role of religion and its relation to politics."

Readers can hear samples of Franklin's sermons from several audio files posted on Salvatore's Web site, http://www.nicksalvatore.com.

Winning the trust of the Franklin family was crucial to writing a book informed with 60 personal interviews and a mountain of primary source material. Salvatore's barriers to gaining that trust, he said, had nothing to with race and everything to do with his intention. His scholarly journey was graced by a guide -- Erma Franklin -- Aretha's older sister.

"The Franklins are a prominent family with a lot of connections," said Salvatore. "Erma was insistent in determining that I was not going to write about her father in a sensational or tabloid way. My intention was to write an intelligible, serious book for a broad reading public."

Salvatore's honesty, patience and track record won the day, he recalled.

"Eventually, Erma said, 'Nick, I trust you. But don't mess with me' -- and we came to an agreement."

That opened the door to invaluable contacts. The book, then, is an unauthorized biography -- informed by the Franklin family but in no way laundered to please anyone but the historian in Salvatore and hopefully lots of readers.

Along the way, Erma Franklin became more than a historian's best friend -- she became Salvatore's close, personal friend. And, along the way, Salvatore found himself eulogizing Erma Franklin, in New Bethel Baptist Church, the very church where her father, Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, had preached for a quarter century. She died in 2002.

On Saturday, Feb. 12, Salvatore will return to New Bethel to give a talk and book signing as part of a monthlong book tour.