| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Nick Salvatore. Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America. New York: Little, Brown. 2005. Pp. xii, 419. $27.95.
Nick Salvatore has set a high standard as a lucid and engaging biographer of vitally important if at times lesser-known figures in American history—beginning with his well-known Bancroft-prize winning study of Eugene V. Debs and then his unjustly neglected work on the nineteenth-century black labor figure Amos Webber. This time, Salvatore has chosen a distinctly twentieth-century figure: the Reverend C. L. (Clarence LaVaughn) Franklin. Nowadays Franklin would be recognized, if at all, as the father of Aretha Franklin. Unfortunately, as Salvatore tells us in the acknowledgements, Aretha did not (would not?) sit for an interview. This leaves holes in some parts of the book that are regrettable, even if the author cannot be blamed. Aretha's older sister, Erma, however, evidently befriended Salvatore, and judging by the footnotes she provided a wealth of insight into the family.	1
Salvatore's mastery of biographical narrative provides a rich and enduring portrait of the African American experience from South to North through the twentieth century. As well, Salvatore's supremely assured writing on African American religious culture and politics is most impressive; this book is, incidentally, one of the most compelling works now existing on twentieth-century African American religion. My only quarrel is with the title. This volume best shows C. L. Franklin's role in the "transformation of the black church," not so much the transformation of America, for C. L. was preeminently a man of the church, even when he entered the secular world.	. . .

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