The passing of the “Queen of Soul,” Aretha Franklin, today has been the spark of much remembrance of the great singer’s career. However, what many African American commentators have taken great pains to point out is how Franklin’s own personal history intersects with the momentous social, cultural, and political movements that reshaped the relationship between African Americans and the United States. Indeed, her own family history is a testament to how many prominent African Americans felt a need to get involved in Civil Rights activism. C.L. Franklin, Aretha’s father, was a renowned minister based in Detroit, Michigan, whose sermons have even been added to the Library of Congress.
I mention this because it should push us as intellectual historians to think about the ways in which the figures we study interact with popular cultural figures—often in surprising ways. Aretha Franklin offered to post bail for Angela Davis. I admit to initially being surprised when reading the story. I had never heard it before. Yet, it should serve as a reminder that our use of demarcation points between the Civil Rights and Black Power eras is a mistake. More historians are moving away from this, as it becomes harder to understand the 1960s and 1970s without admitting that many activists involved at the grassroots level—not to mention numerous intellectuals—did not see such a clear dividing line between the two eras or the philosophies being both of them.
Also keep in mind that C.L. Franklin was born in Mississippi. For Aretha Franklin, the problems in the South were never far away. Nor did the Franklin family ignore the discrimination and racism in Detroit, Aretha’s hometown and a place that became the symbol of both heightened expectations and dashed dreams for thousands of African Americans moving northward during the Great Migration. Indeed, Aretha Franklin’s ties to African American history are extraordinary because they represent the full scope of the last 60 years. She performed in Detroit in June of 1963 as part of the city’s “Walk to Freedom”—a landmark moment in the Civil Rights Movement overshadowed by the March on Washington later that same year. Franklin performed at the funeral for Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968. Her performance at Barack Obama’s 2009 Inauguration serves, in retrospect, as the perfect cap to both her singing career and her involvement in the African American freedom struggle.
I hope you take time out of you day to sample Aretha Franklin’s music—whether you’re already familiar with it or not. The fact that she was able to seamlessly move from gospel to more popular music is symbolic of African American culture’s ability to blend the profound and the profane within musical genres. Franklin’s presence will be greatly missed, but we will never stop feeling it.
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