The Old Ship Of Zion - Rev C.L Franklin
Clarence LaVaughn Franklin (often billed as Bishop C. L. Franklin) (January 22, 1915 РJuly 27, 1984), was an American Baptist preacher, a civil rights activist, and father of the legendary soul and gospel singer Aretha Franklin. He was born Clarence LaVaughn Walker in Sunflower County, Mississippi, to sharecroppers Willie Walker and Rachel Walker n̩e Pittman. C.L. would recall that the only thing his father did for him was to teach him to salute when he returned from service in World War I in 1919. Willie Walker abandoned the family shortly thereafter (Clarence was only four years old), and the next year Rachel married Henry Franklin, whose surname the family adopted. At age 16, he became a preacher, initially working the Black itinerant preaching circuit, before settling at New Salem Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, where he remained until May 1944. From there he moved to the pulpit of the Friendship Baptist Church in Buffalo, New York, where he served until June 1946 when h...