A Book for the President

The call came from Fannie Taylor, Aretha Franklin's assistant.

She asked Nick Salvatore to inscribe, sign and quickly send her his book, "Singing in a Strange Land:  C.L Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America."

"Miss Franklin," Taylor said, referring to the woman who is known to many as the Queen of Soul, would be giving the book to Barack Obama.

Salvatore, ILR's Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Founders Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and also an American Studies professor at Cornell, wrote a message to Obama in the book and sent it to Detroit via overnight delivery. 

Two hours after it arrived, it was aboard Franklin's private bus, headed for Washington, D.C.  There, Franklin sang "My Country 'Tis of Thee" at the Inauguration and gave the president Salvatore's 2005 biography of her father, Clarence LaVaughn Franklin. The book's title references the 137th Psalm, which asks "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"

For eight years, Salvatore researched the life of C.L. Franklin, a charismatic Mississippi-born preacher who helped shape the civil rights movement. 

Franklin was pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit when he helped organize the 1963 March on Washington.  At the march, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" address.

Franklin, who died in 1984, was also known for his oratory.  It urged his listeners, Salvatore said, "… to lift their voices and express their songs … to lay claim to this land in the face of the very hostility that made it so strange."

Seventy-five of Franklin's sermons were recorded live and sold commercially into the 1970s.

Franklin's public voice, said Salvatore said in the preface of "Singing in a Strange Land,"  "… was part of a multigenerational struggle by African Americans to reinterpret the meaning of American democracy."

Obama has contributed to that effort, Salvatore said, perhaps most notably in his 2008 Philadelphia speech.

Many consider the speech a benchmark of American racial history.

Obama, in the speech, said, "… working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union."

Salvatore said the president "has built on many who went before him to get to a point where he is singing at the top of his voice." 

As a result, Salvatore said, "America is no longer as strange a land as it was, not just for blacks, but for all of us."

That, Salvatore said, is the essence of his inscription in the book Obama received from Franklin.

The personal message to the president will remain private, Salvatore said.

More information about "Singing in a Strange Land" and other books and work by Salvatore, can be seen at www.nicksalvatore.com.