Singing in a Strange Land

by Nick Salvatore

  my soul

  is an eagle

  in the cage that the Lord

  has made for me.12

  The cage itself was now C. L.’s own body, “and one of these days” he who made it would open the door “and let my soul / go.” Repeating again and again (with an ascending voice in key that approached a scream but for its musicality) the phrase “one of these days,” which drove the congregation to its peak, C. L. promised a time “when burdens / are through burdening,” and “My soul will take wings, / my soul will take wings.”13

  Ralph Ellison, writing in 1955 of jazz and blues artists, suggested that their fundamental purpose was “to achieve the most eloquent expression of idea-emotions” through “the subtle rhythmical shaping and blending of idea, tone and imagination demanded of group improvisation.” The dynamics of Franklin’s group improvisation differed from that of a jazz sextet, as did the setting in which such improvised yet patterned performances occurred. In the hands of this masterful preacher, however, each Sunday’s sermon arched toward achieving that “most eloquent expression” in a fashion that united preacher and congregation at the moment and beyond. As had many of the artists he appreciated, C. L. had refused to allow the oppressiveness of his Mississippi youth to silence his voice; rather, numerous African American communities, sacred and secular, had nurtured it. This collective strength, self-consciously grasped and fitted to his personality, enabled Franklin to simultaneously preach, teach, and effect the experience of God’s presence as few ever had. And for those in Memphis, it was increasingly clear just how rare was the gift this young preacher from Mississippi possessed.14

  Though not immediately, it did not take long for the deacons and trustees of Friendship Baptist to act. Soon after Jenkins’s funeral, C. L. took New Salem’s pulpit one Sunday in stylish fashion, wearing “a kind of Prince Albert outfit . . . tails and all that.” The suit, sharply tailored, was a gift from Friendship, probably in appreciation of his eulogy of Jenkins. For a man who but a few years before appeared at New Salem dressed in a worn suit, “tails and all that” symbolized a rather substantial transformation. He now strode through his ministerial responsibilities with an evident self-confidence in his voice, the power it commanded, and the meaning it delivered. That fall, Friendship invited him to give a formal trial sermon, and an offer was extended and accepted. In January 1944, the Buffalo Criterion, the city’s black newspaper, announced C. L. as Friendship’s “newly elected pastor.” In his first week the new pastor led a church rally that raised a thousand dollars and, in a sign of pastoral firmness, initiated “a complete overhauling of the church’s clubs.” His sermon that Sunday drew “a packed house.”15

  Despite his election, C. L. had not completely left Memphis. The same month Friendship announced his appointment, the Memphis World referred to Franklin as pastor of New Salem. The following month, the same paper reported, “Rev. C. L. Franklin, pastor, is 100 percent behind the [Boy Scout] Troop” at New Salem. Ernest Donelson recalled his pastor remaining well beyond January. In fact, Franklin never intended to lead both churches, but circumstances delayed his departure. Barbara, then pregnant with Carolyn and responsible for two other children less than four years old, could not orchestrate such a complicated move that spring. In Buffalo, moreover, trouble brewed. In March, just two months following Franklin’s election, as he was still splitting his time between New Salem and Friendship, in front of a full Sunday service, C. L. had tendered his resignation, angered over “some discrepancies” that had emerged “between the pastor and his official cabinet of officers.” Over the previous four years Friendship had a pastor who was, in effect, part-time. This gave that “official cabinet” of deacons and trustees great leeway in defining church policy. With C. L.’s arrival, however, they discovered they had not just an outstanding, full-time preacher but an “able, competent and active young minister” who allowed no interference with his ministerial prerogatives. A power struggle had quickly commenced. More than once during his long resignation speech, C. L. asserted that “I am not a child and I don’t expect to be handled as one.”16 But at a church meeting the evening following his attempted resignation, “the situation was ironed out” and C. L.’s resignation rejected amid protestations of “peace, happiness, and concord to the newly-appointed minister.” That settled, Franklin could now make the move from New Salem.17

  C. L.’s migration north was not an isolated event. Black southerners began leaving the region before World War I, and the pattern intensified in the next decade. World War II brought another major wave of migration, as southern blacks sought the better-paying jobs in the defense industries of Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, California, and elsewhere. So great was this “second ‘exodus,’” Nat Williams wrote in the summer of 1943, that he worried that black Memphis would lose its leadership. C. L.’s departure certainly confirmed Williams’s fears.18

  Although a rising figure in black Memphis, Franklin’s motivations for leaving the city shared much with those working-class (and to a lesser degree, middle-class) members of church, neighborhood, and work organizations who also sought their future in colder regions. C. L.’s considerable desire for recognition, for a pulpit that might bring him national attention as well as economic gain, made the switch inevitable. In contrast with New Salem, a local reporter explained, Friendship under M. J. Jenkins had doubled its membership to almost two thousand and had retired its $48,000 mortgage, making it one of the few churches in the city “completely owned by Negroes.” The economic opportunities for blacks in Buffalo meant that Friendship had many union workers attending, “and they could respond to the church financially better than the people of Memphis could.” This translated into concrete improvement for the Franklin family: a higher salary, a comfortable house provided by the congregation, and the prospect of a new model car, much as Jenkins had received from parishioners just months before his death. New Salem, as most Memphis churches, simply could not match these conditions.19

  Buffalo had the added attraction of not being Memphis when it came to race. How many times in Memphis had Franklin been called “boy”? How many times had he been forced to quiet, or suppress, his own voice at such moments? Black Memphians faced persistent harassment, beatings, and the threat of much worse on the city’s segregated buses, when seeking assistance from city and federal offices, and in the city’s factories and plants. Buffalo was no paradise, as C. L. would discover, but the city’s absence of thoroughly segregated public facilities loomed large from the distance. His congregation there also seemed different. The Criterion had praised Jenkins as a “militant and progressive pastor” well before his death, although it provided no details concerning his social or political ideas. That broad political sensibility, perhaps a reflection of the mingling of this new trade union experience with the older collective traditions of the black church, proved highly attractive to C. L.20

  At New Salem, as expected, members expressed mixed feelings about their pastor’s departure. Some were actually “happy to see him go,” Nettie Hubbard recalled, a reflection of ongoing church disputes and a lingering resentment over his involvement with Mildred Jennings. Others wanted him to stay but appreciated his opportunity for advancement. “I like to see people advance,” Lizzie Moore explained, “’cause, see, most people want to do better.” Franklin “got a good start” at New Salem. “We gave him a boost.”21

  On May 24, 1944, Friendship began its five-day celebration of C. L.’s installation. Different Buffalo pastors, accompanied by their choirs and large segments of their congregations, joined with Friendship’s congregation in prayer and praise of the new arrival. At each service, ushers formally escorted C. L. to a seat of honor near the pulpit. After the Saturday service, Friendship sponsored “an elaborate banquet” for more than one hundred people. Finally, on Sunday, May 28, before a packed church with hundreds more standing outside the open windows and doors, C. L. took the pulpit at the eleven o’clock service where, before his inaugural sermon, church o
fficers formally installed him as pastor. At seven that evening, before another large crowd, Franklin delivered a second sermon. Over the course of the ceremonies as many as three thousand people participated, though Barbara and the children remained in Memphis. (Barbara gave birth to Carolyn, the Franklins’ third daughter and last child, on May 10 and could not attend; in a culture that gave primacy to male activity, neither C. L. nor Friendship’s leaders had delayed the ceremony. C. L. indicated his family would join him permanently “as quickly as proper arrangements can be made.”)22

  No record remains of either of C. L.’s sermons that day, but the context of the installation suggested that he would be a force in his new community. The ceremonies themselves were not unique—other Baptist pastors might be similarly feted as well when they arrived at their new church—but the excitement generated in the broader community differed from what most new pastors experienced. The forceful public manner in which he dealt with challenges to his authority and the preaching reputation that preceded him promised a leader of intelligence and strength for the church and, potentially, for the broader African American community as well. Still not thirty, it was hard to believe that only five years separated him from his circuit-preaching days in the Mississippi Delta.

  The “Queen City” was decidedly not Memphis. Its summers could be hot, but rarely did Buffalo experience the humidity that weighted the lungs and made the simplest exertion onerous. Memphians, for their part, might read of violent winter storms that left Buffalo gasping under two or more feet of snow in subfreezing temperatures, but they could no more imagine themselves in such conditions than they could anticipate Rufus Thomas introducing a polka band at the amateur night at the Palace Theater. These regional differences symbolized a different history as well. Buffalo had no tradition of slaveholding, of buying and selling African Americans at public market, and in fact had a strong abolitionist tradition in the nineteenth century. But such historic differences did not prevent sharp racial distinctions from structuring the customs and practices of this manufacturing center at the eastern end of Lake Erie. In 1940, this city in the northwest corner of the state, famous for the nearby Niagara Falls, housed almost two hundred thousand more citizens than did Memphis, but only a bare 3 percent, less than twenty thousand people, were black. As C. L. walked the black commercial section a few blocks from his church, the contrast with Memphis sharply suggested itself. Where Beale Street teemed with black shoppers and music lovers, Buffalo’s equivalent, the intersection of Michigan Avenue and William Street in the city’s Lower East Side, held but a few shops and clubs. Most of black Buffalo lived in this neighborhood but in a racial configuration quite different from Memphis’s pointedly segregated world. As World War II ended, the Lower East Side of Buffalo still remained the enclave of Euro-American immigrants and their children who together accounted for more than 80 percent of the neighborhood’s residents. African Americans and these varied groups of white ethnics lived in residential clusters, often adjoining each other; and even when one group gathered on a certain block, a racial and ethnic mix nonetheless earmarked these streets. To be sure, black neighbors would not be welcomed in Eddie Wenzak’s bar on Sycamore Street, a Polish enclave that hosted other white ethnics but not blacks. Yet whites and blacks lived near and next to each other, shopped on Broadway, the main business street just south of Sycamore, even as they maintained largely separate cultural and religious lives.23

  Friendship Baptist Church occupied a double lot at 146-48 Hickory Street, just up from the intersection with Clinton Street, a short walk from the center of black Buffalo at Michigan and William. Reverend R. B. Robinson had founded the church in 1917; under his successor, Twilus Davis, the church had laid its cornerstone with full Masonic ritual in November 1930. In 1939, the congregation removed Davis from the pulpit for “mishandling church funds and conduct ‘unbecoming a minister’” and had called M. J. Jenkins to replace him.24

  The church members who filled Friendship’s pews each Sunday were largely working people, mostly southern born. C. L. felt as familiar with them as he had with his Memphis parishioners for, he later recalled, Friendship’s members “didn’t feel any different about shouting [in services] . . . than they did in Memphis.” C. L. also found the Friendship choir quite good, although he thought it lacked an outstanding soloist. Increasingly, music was a central aspect of his ministry, and while at New Salem, he formed a lasting partnership with Thomas Shelby, Lucie Campbell’s talented student, whom he had appointed as his minister of music. Franklin invited Shelby, a LeMoyne College graduate and the music director of the National Baptist Convention, to join him in Buffalo. C. L. also hired two assistant pastors. To amass such a professional, full-time support staff, all of whose salaries the congregation supplied, marked a significant change from C. L.’s past experience. The presence of assistants allowed him the needed free time for education and guest-preaching appearances. Young, gifted, and black, Franklin was fortunate to be in one of the few occupations in America at that moment where that precise combination of qualities was a decided advantage.25

  Beyond Friendship Baptist’s solid economic condition, the continued growth of better-paid union jobs among black working people in steel, auto supplies, and other industries reinforced the foundation Franklin inherited. The coming of the union-organizing drives in the late 1930s, coupled with the wartime urgency to maintain high levels of productivity, had significantly improved the standing of many black families. Yet difficult economic conditions remained. Two-thirds of blacks employed in industry in 1940 still held the lowest-paying unskilled jobs. Similarly, Buffalo’s significant growth in clerical and sales positions since World War I produced but 132 black men and women employed in a white-collar workforce of more than 44,000—a figure that suggested both widespread prejudice and a profoundly weak black entrepreneurial class. Even more troubling were the numbers of unemployed in 1940. Citywide, the figure stood at over 17 percent, while within black Buffalo, 26 percent wanted for work. No specific breakdown is available for the employment history of Friendship’s members, but these broader figures suggest a pattern likely found in Franklin’s congregation as well. Employed members, unionized or not, occupied pews on Sunday cheek by jowl with unemployed relatives, neighbors, and friends. Add to this mix a small number of professionals—teachers, doctors, funeral directors, insurance agents, and the like—and the broad outline of the social structure of Friendship and black Buffalo emerges more clearly.26

  Unionized workers created the economic foundation that set Friendship apart from many other Afro-Baptist churches with a large southern-born membership, and C. L. respected the attitudes these union members brought to the congregation. Just as they demanded in the union hall an emphasis on racial as well as economic justice, so too they returned to the black community with new ideas for social action. This intermingling was, however, a complicated process. While no known member of Friendship Baptist recorded their work history of these years, Olin Wilson, a black Methodist in the Queen City, explained in an interview decades later how he navigated the inherent tensions. Born in South Carolina in 1889, during World War I Wilson reluctantly took work on a segregated union job in Virginia, where he despised the racist atmosphere encouraged by white union workers. In 1923, along with other black southern workers, he arrived in Buffalo, recruited by Bethlehem Steel to break a strike of white workers at the company’s Lackawanna plant just outside the city limits. A decade later, still in the plant, he emerged as a key leader with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, which he joined only after receiving assurances that the new industrial union would reject segregation. Risking his job to organize in an era of continued high unemployment required a certain confidence, if not faith. When later asked if he ever feared for his job during these years, Wilson concisely explained how secular and sacred concerns melded in his mind: “I wouldn’t let it worry me at all [at that time],” Wilson replied. He felt that his own union work was “as much my Christian duty” as church
attendance. “That [social action] was the part of Christianity we had left off.” Wilson’s approach resonated among other black working people—he brought many black workers into the union movement—and echoed C. L.’s developing consciousness. In this regard, too, Buffalo held promise for the new pastor of Friendship Baptist.27

  Although New Salem’s and Friendship’s members largely consisted of working people, with rural southern roots and relatively new to the urban, industrial world, the contrasting political climates between the two cities created quite different experiences. Working people in both New Salem and Friendship saw in their pastor the embodiment of their hopes for their own slower but inevitable climb. But the significant differences between the two urban economies allowed Friendship’s members a grander expression of what concrete form those aspirations might assume.28

  The different measurements were immediately evident in the parsonage Friendship selected for the Franklin family. In Memphis, the Franklins had rented a number of houses, all in predominately black South Memphis, within walking distance of New Salem. In contrast, as part of the agreement that accompanied C. L.’s call to Friendship’s pulpit, the trustees purchased a parsonage for the family’s use at 177 Glenwood Avenue, more than two miles north and east of the church and the black residential district. Barbara’s brother, Semial, considered the house a “beautiful place, huge,” its twelve or more rooms comfortably fitting the Franklins and their five children. Located in the Cold Springs neighborhood in the Masten district, a middle-class neighborhood of more than fifty-five thousand when the Franklins moved in, houses in the area had been available since the 1920s for that small group “of the more prosperous [N]egroes” in Buffalo. In this sense, the distance between church and home signified an important social as well as a spatial distinction. The majority of Friendship’s members lived “in the perimeter” at this time, Deacon E. L. Billups noted, referring to the area south of Broadway and east of Main Street that defined the limits of black residences for all but a few. Although C. L. recalled the neighborhood as “a mixed community,” in fact, 98 percent of the entire neighborhood’s residents were white. In contrast, the streets surrounding Friendship Baptist at the same time were more than 60 percent African American and oppressively poor, with more than a quarter of the adult workforce unemployed. It was the first time that any of the Franklins lived their family life beyond the perimeter.29