34.Franklin, Aretha, 49, 52; EF Interview, 37; Todd Interview, 9-10; Boyer, The Golden Age of Gospel, 196-99; Wolff, You Send Me, 84, 142; Pickett is quoted in Hirshey, Nowhere to Run, 47. When Cooke left the Highway Q.C.’s, Lou Rawls took his place; he left in 1953-54 to join the Chosen Gospel Singers, and Johnnie Taylor replaced him. In 1957, when Cooke left the Soul Stirrers to become a pop singer, Taylor became that group’s lead singer. In time all three of these extraordinary lead singers for the Highway Q.C.’s would have successful careers in pop, soul, and rhythm and blues. See Brother John, liner notes to Highway Q.C.’s, Count Your Blessings. (back to text)
35.EF Interview, 49, 66; Corbett Interview, 16; Ross, Secrets of a Sparrow, 92; Wilson, Dreamgirl, 22-23, 26-27; Franklin, Aretha, 36; Bego, Aretha Franklin, 15. (back to text)
36.Franklin, Aretha, 10, 43, 49; Gillespie is quoted in Lester, Too Marvelous for Words, 165; Bjorn, Before Motown, 117. See also Bego, Aretha Franklin, 35-36; interview with Beatrice Buck by author, 7, 36 (hereafter cited as Buck Interview); Jasper Williams Interview, 23; “Preacher with a Golden Voice,” 42; Robinson, Smokey, 25-30; Corbett Interview, 17; EF Interview, 25, 49, 50, 57, 58; Mahalia Jackson, “I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing about in My Song,” on Jackson, Gospels, Spirituals, and Hymns. (back to text)
37.Franklin, Aretha, 40, 43; EF Interview, 2; Penn Interview, 12. (back to text)
38.For other expressions of this idea see Thompson Interview, 31; Duckett, “An Interview with Thomas A. Dorsey,” 11. (back to text)
39.CLF Interview, October 14, 1977, 64-65. (back to text)
40.Michigan Chronicle, January 13, 1951. (I have been unable to find a copy of this recording; in Hayes and Laughton, Gospel Records, 1943-1969, vol. 1, n.p. (CLF entry), it is identified as Gotham G682.) On Joe Von Battle see Michigan Chronicle, October 16, 1948, and July 3, 1954; Bjorn, Before Motown, 173; O’Neal and van Singel, The Voice of the Blues, 214; Murray, Boogie Man, 168, 271. Eddie Burns is quoted in Murray, Boogie Man, 142. On the conditions in Detroit’s recording industry at this time, see Mike Rowe, liner notes to Hooker, Detroit Blues; Dave Sax, liner notes to Hooker, The Legendary Modern Recordings; Murray, Boogie Man, 107-8, 111, 117. (back to text)
41.White’s cultural conservatism regarding the whooped sermon, gospel blues, and decorum for religious services, particularly when the services are broadcast, can be followed in Michigan Chronicle, March 4, 11, and 18 and April 1, 1950; his strong public support for black workers and the UAW during the 1941 Ford strike is discussed in Bontemps and Conroy, They Seek a City, 223; Meier and Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW, 32-33, 55-60, 69-70, and passim. (back to text)
42.Michigan Chronicle, October 10, 1953. (back to text)
43.Ibid.; Thompson Interview, 22; Penn Interview, 17; see also E. L. Branch Interview, 21. (back to text)
44.McCoy Interview, 33; “Minutes of New Bethel Baptist Church, 4210 Hastings Street, December 5, 1950, held at Sacred Cross Baptist Church,” typescript, n.p., CLFP. (back to text)
45.Michigan Chronicle, October 13 and 20, 1951; October 10, 1953. (back to text)
46.Joshua 14:6-15 (KJV). (back to text)
47.Michigan Chronicle, October 20, 1951. (back to text)
48.For a recording of this sermon from the late 1950s, see CLF, Give Me This Mountain. (back to text)
6. THOUGHTS OF LIBERATION
1.New York Times, February 26, 27, 28, 29, 1952; House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings: Communism in the Detroit Area, pt. 1, 2877-78, 2892; Kochman, Rappin’ and Stylin’ Out, 234-35; Gale Group, Inc., “George W. Crockett, Jr., 1909-1997”; interview with George W. Crockett in Mast, Detroit Lives, 168-69. The most complete discussion of the Rosenberg case, which argues convincingly that Julius Rosenberg was in fact guilty as charged and that the trial judge violated numerous constitutional rights, is Radosh and Milton, The Rosenberg File. (back to text)
2.House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings: Communism in the Detroit Area, pt. 1, 2878-79, 2880-82, 2885, 2886. (back to text)
3.Ibid., 2884-85. (back to text)
4.Ibid., 2887. (back to text)
5.For the testimony of Turner, president of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, see ibid., 2811-17; for the testimony of Tappes, an international representative of the UAW, see ibid., pt. 2, 3117-44. (back to text)
6.Kincaid Interview, 1-4, 13, 29, 31. (back to text)
7.Interview with Marc Stepp by author, June 2, 1999, 12, 40-41 (hereafter cited as Stepp Interview (1999)); interview with Marc Stepp by author, April 12, 2000, 12-14 (hereafter cited as Stepp Interview (2000)); Boggs, Living for Change, 86, 96. (back to text)
8.Boggs, Living for Change, 86. (back to text)
9.Interview with Margaret Branch by author, 1, 27, 29-30 (hereafter cited as Margaret Branch Interview). Muddy Waters is quoted in McKee and Chisenhall, Beale Black and Blue, 236. (back to text)
10.On the growth in population see Stovall, The Growth of Black Elected Officials in the City of Detroit, 6; Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 23. On black-police relations in Detroit into the 1930s, see Wilson, Toast of the Town, 114; Dancy, Sand against the Wind, 291; Stovall, The Growth of Black Elected Officials in the City of Detroit, 47-48; Robert W. Bagnall, “Michigan—The Land of Many Waters” (1926), in Lutz and Ashton, These “Colored” United States, 163-64; Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It, 164-66, 229-35; Young, Hard Stuff, 36; Boykin, A Handbook on the Detroit Negro, 23; Dillard, “From the Reverend Charles A. Hill to the Reverend Albert B. Cleage, Jr.,” 102-4. On white southerners in Detroit see Hartigan, Racial Situations. For an extraordinary fictional account of small-town white Midwestern migration into Detroit, see Oates, them. (back to text)
11.Interview with Arthur Johnson by author, 4-5 (hereafter cited as Johnson Interview). (back to text)
12.See Capeci, Race Relations in Wartime Detroit, chaps. 5-7; McGreevy, Parish Boundaries, 72-76, 77; Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 73-75; Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 23-26; Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It, 143-48. Djiuk is quoted in McGreevy, Parish Boundaries, 75. For a sensitive discussion of the use of religious faith in defense of racism, see Marsh, God’s Long Summer, chaps. 2, 3. (back to text)
13.On hate strikes see Capeci and Wilkerson, Layered Violence, 184-85; Meier and Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW, 162-74. On the 1943 riot see Capeci and Wilkerson, Layered Violence, passim; Lee and Daymond, Race Riot, 74 and passim; Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It, 166-72. (back to text)
14.Capeci and Wilkerson, Layered Violence, esp. chap. 4; Hartigan, Racial Situations, 50-69, 88-107; McGreevy, Parish Boundaries, passim; Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 76-77, 193-94, 245-46. (back to text)
15.For black responses see Meier and Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW, passim; Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It, chap. 7. (back to text)
16.See Lenore Wilson, “Three Angry Men Led Bloodless Revolution,” Michigan Chronicle, February 25, 1956; Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It, 257-70; Elizabeth L. Gulley to Nannie Helen Burroughs, October 24, 1925, Detroit, Box 9, NHB; Stepp Interview (1999), 36-37; Stovall, The Growth of Black Elected Officials in the City of Detroit, 8-9, 70-73; Bunche, The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR, 590, 591; Boykin, A Handbook on the Detroit Negro, 87, 90. (back to text)
17.Michigan Chronicle, January 20, February 3, and March 10, 1945; Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 77-81. On the 1945 primary campaign see Michigan Chronicle, March 31, June 2, July 28, and August 4, 1945; Stovall, The Growth of Black Elected Officials in the City of Detroit, 110-16; Dillard, “From the Reverend Charles A. Hill to the Reverend Albert B. Cleage, Jr.,” 175-82. On Hill’s career see Michigan Chronicle, November 3, 1945; November 11, 1947; November 14, 1959, November 18, 1967. (back to text)
18.See Michigan Chronicle, August 11 and 18 and November 3, 1945; June 7, August 30, September 13, October 4 and 11 and No
vember 8, 1947; August 21 and September 4, 1948; Ebony, August 1969, 118; Young, Hard Stuff, 90, 91, 106-7; Stovall, The Growth of Black Elected Officials in the City of Detroit, 120-22; Jacoby, Someone Else’s House, 235; Frank A. Nolan, Chairman [Wallace rally Committee] to “Dear Friend,” May 25, 1947, Detroit, reel 3, SEC. (back to text)
19.For Wartman’s articles see Michigan Chronicle, November 17 and 24, 1951. (back to text)
20.Stepp Interview (2000), 25. (back to text)
21.Michigan Chronicle, November 2, 1946. On the employment conditions for blacks in both city government and among major employers, see Fransic [sic] A. Kornegay, “Employment Survey of Negroes in City Departments as of February 15, 1946” (typescript), Box 4, folder 132, FAK; Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 91-123. For an illuminating analysis of Detroit’s black elite, see the anonymous three-part series on black society in the Michigan Chronicle, January 12 and 19 and February 2, 1952; see also Dancy, Sand against the Wind, passim. (back to text)
22.For a different analysis of the black church and politics from a more recent perspective, see Reed, The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon. (back to text)
23.On New Bethel’s membership see Michigan Chronicle, October 10, 1953. Even allowing for exaggeration, it is clear the church’s membership grew significantly. For discussions of the social composition of New Bethel, see interview with Hicken Perry by author, 4, 43 (hereafter cited as Perry Interview); Todd Interview, 6, 32; interview with Ralph Williams by author, 21 (hereafter cited as Ralph Williams Interview); Stepp Interview (1999), 42; Perkins Interview, 4, 55; Margaret Branch Interview, 33; interview with Wallace Malone by author, 8, 9, 14 (hereafter cited as Malone Interview); Thompson Interview, 20; McCoy Interview, 5, 6; interview with Cneri Jenkins by author, 4 (hereafter cited as Jenkins Interview); EF Interview, 12-13. (back to text)
24.Penn Interview, 44. Penn’s recollection was confirmed in independent interviews with Patricia Rodgers, a former church secretary at New Bethel, and longtime church member and activist Myra Perkins. See interview with Patricia Rodgers by author, 8 (hereafter cited as Rodgers Interview): Perkins Interview, 13. (back to text)
25.Exodus 14:15-16 (KJV); CLF, Moses at the Red Sea. (back to text)
26.Lewis Interview, 7-8; see also B. T. Moore Interview, 26-27. (back to text)
27.For discussion of the text and the ideas in the sermon, see Laymon, The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, 47-48; Lischer, The Preacher King, 56-57, 127; Roberts, The Prophethood of Black Believers, 37-38; Spillers, “Fabrics of History,” 169 ff. On the concept of providence in African American theology, see Mitchell, Black Belief, 132-35. (back to text)
28.Jasper Williams Interview, 14; Thompson Interview, 24-25; Kincaid Interview, 28-29, 31; interview with Reverend Jerome Kirby by author, 5-6 (hereafter cited as Kirby Interview). Harry Kincaid’s son gave a moving confirmation of his father’s views at a celebration of Franklin’s career held at New Bethel on July 29, 2001 (author’s notes). (back to text)
29.Michigan Chronicle, December 1, 1951. For his early experience on Detroit radio see Michigan Chronicle, July 23, 1955, and May 22, 1965; CLF Interview, October 14, 1977, 64-65; Todd Interview, 10-11. (back to text)
30.On WJLB and Leroy White see Michigan Chronicle, May 24, 1952; Bjorn, Before Motown, 90; Franklin, Aretha, 50; CLF Interview, October 14, 1977, 64-65; CLF Interview, November 2, 1977, 122; CLF Interview, November 30, 1977, 193; Kyles Interview, 18, 19-20, 51; Hooks Interview, 22-23; interview with Claud Young by author, 2-3 (transcript in possession of author; hereafter cited as Young Interview); Todd Interview, 3-4, 11. On Wynona Carr at New Bethel see Boyer, How Sweet the Sound, 130-32; CLF, The Barren Fig Tree. (back to text)
31.Ward-Royster, How I Got Over, 118; Todd Interview, 3-4. On the evening program and Wynona Carr see Lee Hildenbrand and Opal Nations, liner notes to Carr, Dragnet for Jesus. (back to text)
32.Hooks Interview, 22-23; Ralph Williams Interview, 56; interview with James Holley by author, 2, 16 (hereafter cited as Holley Interview); Kyles Interview, 18; CLF Interview, November 2, 1977, 108-9; CLF Interview, May 10, 1978, 225-26. (back to text)
33.CLF Interview, October 14, 1977, 64-65; Todd Interview, 10-11; Penn Interview, 31. (back to text)
34.CLF Interview, October 12, 1977, 48; Oliver, Songsters and Saints, 145; Young, Woke Me Up This Morning, 191-94. (back to text)
35.Interview with Marsha L. Mickens in Moon, Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes, 361-62; Smith, Dancing in the Street, 42. (back to text)
36.Kathryn Curry, “Memories,” n.p., CLFP; “Evelyn,” photo and inscription, CLFP; Penn Interview, 13. (back to text)
37.Three Baptist ministers discussed this ministerial critique of their friend’s preaching style; see Jasper Williams Interview, 5-6; E. L. Branch Interview, 12-13; interview with Reverend Bernard Lafayette by author, 23 (hereafter cited as Lafayette Interview). See also “The Preacher with the Golden Voice,” 41. (back to text)
38.CLF, Dry Bones in the Valley. (back to text)
39.See Michigan Chronicle, June 18, 1955; for a brief discussion of the Jones-CLF relation, see Todd Interview, 12. On Jones’s career in Detroit before this see Michigan Chronicle, July 12, 1947; November 19, 1949; December 9, 1950; July 16, 1966; and the unsigned interpretative series which appeared on January 17, 24 and 31 and February 7, 1953; Ebony, April 1950, 67-69. (back to text)
40.CLF Interview, October 14, 1977, 81. For an insightful analysis of this sermon see Taylor, How Shall They Preach, 54-55; also of interest is Thomas, Biblical Faith and the Black American, 82. On CLF’s version of this sermon see Lafayette Interview, 17-18. For a contemporary, critical view of this suffering motif in the African American tradition, see Pinn, Why, Lord? Albert J. Raboteau’s analysis, however, remains compelling; see Raboteau, A Fire in the Bones. (back to text)
41.I have benefited greatly from Horace A. Porter’s reflections on CLF’s version of this sermon, which he compares and contrasts with Ralph Ellison’s fictional Reverend A. Z. Hickman’s preaching of the same sermon. See Porter, Jazz Country, esp. 115-18; Ellison, Juneteenth, esp. 125-28. (back to text)
42.Buck Interview, 1-2, 37, 39; Franklin, Aretha, 31; Kirby Interview, 1-3, 5-6, 27, 38; Kincaid Interview, 31. (back to text)
43.Kirby Interview, 5; Kincaid Interview, 27-28. On Reuben Gayden see St. Paul’s Missionary Church, “A Century with Christ,” 1; National Baptist Voice, June 1972, 7; Michigan Chronicle, August 21, 1954; Georgia L. Gayden to Nannie Helen Burroughs, December 27, 1947; June 16, 1948; February 2 and May 9, 1952; February 11 and August 24, 1955; November 16, 1956, Box 10, NHB; CLF Interview, October 14, 1977, 68; CLF Interview, November 2, 1977, 108-9; interview with Reverend David Matthews by author, 5-6, 13-18 (hereafter cited as Matthews Interview); B. T. Moore Interview, 15, 23; Hooks Interview, 14; Holley Interview, 9-10, 18-19; Young Interview, 7-9; interview with Reverend S. L. Jones by author, 11 (hereafter cited as Jones Interview); Thompson Interview, 7-8; Corbett Interview, 26-27; EF Interview, 27. At least once CLF asked for specific help when preparing a major sermon; see R. B. Gayden to “Dear Dr. Franklin,” August 20, 1964, Greenwood, MS, CLFP. Occasionally CLF noted in his sermons readings that provided material for his narrative, ranging from Robert Ingersoll, the nineteenth-century American freethinker, to the “great Protestant magazine” the Christian Century, to Time magazine and various Christian writers. See the following CLF sermons: The Twenty-third Psalm; The Barren Fig Tree; Silver and Gold I Have None; All Things Work Together for Good to Them That Love God; Why Are Ye So Afraid, O Ye of So Little Faith?; The Rich Man and the Beggar; Fret Not Thyself. (back to text)
44.Jasper Williams Interview, 8; Young Interview, 9; Kyles Interview, 30-31; E. L. Branch Interview, 14-16; Penn Interview, 27-28; “Featured Minister of the Month,” 5. (back to text)
45.CLF, Without a Song; Psalm 137 (KJV). Verses 5-9 of this psalm exhibit an intensely nationalistic and militaristic urging of Israel to destroy her
enemies, even to dashing “thy little ones against the stones.” CLF never referred publicly to them. (back to text)
46.On the meaning of song in the slave experience, see Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness; Raboteau, Slave Religion; Raboteau, “African-Americans, Exodus, and the American Israel,” 8-9; Long, “Perspectives for a Study of Afro-American Religion in the United States,” 59-60. (back to text)
47.Thurman, With Head and Heart, 18; Raboteau, “‘The Blood of the Martyrs Is the Seed of Faith,’” 33-34; Mitchell, Black Preaching, 15-16; Cone, “The Servant Church,” 73; Paris, The Social Teaching of the Black Churches, xi-xv. (back to text)
48.For discussions of the relationship between faith and social action, see Smith, Social Crisis Preaching, 3, 17; Proctor, The Substance of Things Hoped For, 12-13; Fluker, “The Failure of Ethical Leadership and the Challenge of Hope,” 6, 11-12; Fauntroy, “Black Religion and Politics,” 49; Roberts, The Prophethood of Black Believers, 22-23; Lewis Interview, 11-12. A particularly compelling analysis can be found in Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited. (back to text)
49.Perry Interview, 10. (back to text)
50.For further development of his critique of Israel’s nationalism, see CLF, “Behold, I Send You Like Sheep Into a Pack of Wolves” and What Think Ye of Jesus?; CLF Interview, November 1, 1977, 99-101. (back to text)
51.Raboteau, “African-Americans, Exodus, and the American Israel,” passim, esp. 9, 13-15; Raboteau, “‘The Blood of the Martyrs Is the Seed of Faith,’” 32; Mabee, “African Americans and American Biblical Hermeneutics,” 104; Bennett, “Black Experience and the Bible,” 129 ff. On the Rastafarian use of Psalm 137 see Werner, A Change Is Gonna Come, 233; Davis, Bob Marley, 63-64; Stephens, On Racial Frontiers, 213. One of the leading Rastafarian singers, Bob Marley, was tagged as “the psalmist of Jamaican reggae;” quoted in Davis, Bob Marley, 192. Performances of this psalm in this reggae-Rastafarian tradition include The Melodians, “Rivers of Babylon,” on Cliff, The Harder They Come, and Steel Pulse, “Worth His Weight in Gold (Rally Round),” on their album True Democracy. The psalm was also used in relation to Italian unification in the late nineteenth century; see Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Nabucco. Clearly not all African Americans agreed with CLF; for different approaches see Reed, The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon, and Michael C. Dawson’s analysis in Black Visions. (back to text)
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