Aretha Franklin dedicates Park named for Father, Rev. C.L. Franklin

Jet, Sept 12, 2005

Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin performed for adoring fans during a recent ceremony in Detroit honoring her father, whose name is now on a city park near her childhood home.

The City Council passed a resolution changing the name of LaSalle Park to C.L. Franklin Park, named after the prominent minister and civil rights leader from the South who moved to Detroit and converted a 2,200-seat theater into a church powerhouse.

"He was the greatest," said Ms. Franklin after singing a vibrant gospel-tinged classical Italian piece, accompanying herself on a grand piano set up on stage in the park. "He really was great." Dr. Claud Young, a family friend, recalled at the ceremony: "He became a person that, politicians always came by sooner or later to see him."

The Rev. C.L. Franklin died in 1984 after many years as a well-known minister and active campaigner with civil rights groups such as the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and National Urban League. He helped Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. organize a march in Detroit in 1963 as a precursor to the even larger march in Washington, D.C., that year.

Rev. Franklin recorded more than 76 albums of sermons and music.