As only an admiring peon, I had no invitation to attend the homegoing of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. My only hope of getting into the Greater Grace Temple, a magnificent palatial edifice on Detroit’s western borders, was to get to the church early and join a gaggle of worshipful commoners, all hoping they would be among the chosen thousand or two to get a white wrist band and march off to the upper regions of the vast temple.
I arrived at Seven Mile Road and Telegraph from downtown Detroit to discover the road was blocked, and if your name wasn’t on the manifest toted by the marshals who approached your car, you were told to turn off the street and find a parking space and walk back to where other people were already jostling for positions. I parked about a quarter mile from the church and began my march back when someone called my name. It was Marsha Philpot or Marsha Music, a cultural griot of Detroit whose father Joe Von Battle owned a record store on Hastings Street in Black Bottom, a historic district in the city.
Photos by McArthur Stuckey
Von Battle also owned a record company, JVB, and in his makeshift studio he produced the first records by the Rev. C.L. Franklin, the Queen’s father. The Queen made her recording debut “Songs of Faith” on his label. Marsha has done a splendid job of keeping her father’s legacy alive as well as establishing her own enviable reputation.
She summoned me to her car where I was surprised to see her behind the wheel of a huge sedan. Walking back from where I was parked, I recalled seeing an empty space and I quickly guided her to it, and then helped her maneuver into the tight space. With that accomplished we began our trek to the church. Her plan was to meet somebody connected to the City Council who would facilitate her entry. Since I had no invitation she told me to hurry along because she was a very slow walker.
After leaving her and hurrying down Seven Mile beyond the barriers I saw one pink car after another pulling in. Most of them were Cadillacs and only later I would learn they were there courtesy of employees of Mary Kay, a name tag on the rear of each car. Nearly all of them were driven by white women and by the license plates I could see they were from all over the country.
When I reached the church I was told that the crowd waiting to get in was down the block at Shiawassee Street. The crowd hadn’t reached a critical mass yet, but even so it was large and comprised hundreds of well-dressed men and women—and a few children. Now began a long an interminable wait as the heat of the day began to intensify. My wife and I arrived on Thursday from New York City and went almost immediately to New Bethel Baptist Church, the third location where the Queen rested in splendor. We stood in a slow but steadily moving line of hopefuls for about an hour in the sun and heat that was, to some extent, lessened by VeraWisp fans spitting out crystals of cool vapors and a volunteer
dispensing bottled water.
There were no fans or water distributed at Shiawassee and the only shade to be found was under an occasional umbrella held aloft by a few good thinking men and women. One of them was tall enough to provide a bit of shade for me along with her enormous black hat that almost matched the one that the eminent actress Cicely Tyson wore. “My oh my,” the shading woman sighed at one point, “look up there…not a cloud in the sky. What a lovely day. Thank you, Jesus.”
These were about the only encouraging words heard from a crowd that was increasingly restless and frustrated by the long wait and the commands of the police for them to step back from the curb and later to form a single file. I arrived at eight and two hours later the megapod of a crowd finally began to move toward the church. Each person was given a white band, not like the black ones worn by the invitees. Once inside the church we were led to our section, almost like attending a baseball game and confined to the bleachers.
But after standing in the hot sun for hours, a seat anywhere inside was a pleasure and I took it gladly and hiked up to the last row and settled down in a sanctuary that would eventually hold more than 4,000 spectators and participants. Soon we were greeted by another long delay and the pianist played chorus after chorus of a spiritual, probably to accompany the endless line of family members as they made their way to their pews.
I thought the Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony’s church, Fellowship Chapel, was vast and spectacular, but I could see why the Temple was chosen for the Queen’s farewell as well as other notables such as Rosa Parks. Equally impressive was the fleet of white limousines and the 1940 LaSalle hearse from Swanson’s Funeral Home. The place, the cars, and the assembly of dignitaries were perfectly fitting and necessary for the Queen, and before the long service was concluded—and it would take more than seven hours for speakers and performers to extol her magnificence and the variety of ways in which she enriched our lives—practically every superlative had been expressed.
When you are seated an eighth of a mile from the stage and the screens, you have to wait for a reaction from the crowd to indicate the arrival of an important personality or wait until the word reaches you minutes later that Bill and Hillary Clinton had arrived.
At Chene Park, where a concert was staged in tribute to the Queen, the spotlight on the canvas ceiling often told you who the music and dance performers were at this venue, which later would be renamed the Aretha Franklin Park. These performances compared favorably with those delivered at the Temple, though the intent was obviously different.
A more descriptive and detailed account of what occurred at the Temple will come from our reporter who was much closer to the action and thereby able to give you the scoop on some the highlights of the event.
But if the sendoff for the Queen at the Temple was the fulcrum, no matter where you turned in the city there was some vestige of her, most lovingly up or down Livernois, the Avenue of Fashion, where an array of signs was a backdrop to the Queen’s cortege as it passed. A countless number of people lined the sidewalks holding up photos or waving the numerous T-shirts bearing her image. In fact, the Queen, like James Brown, Michael Jackson, and Prince, created a veritable industry of keepsakes and gave squadrons of vendors’ bountiful opportunities. And according to attorney Gregory Reed of Detroit, who counseled her in the signing of her last contract with Clive Davis of Arista Records, she was once being considered the only living person to have her visage on a U.S. stamp.
U.S. postage or not, the Queen put her stamp on the American spirit, her expressive voice dominating practically every musical genre. At the Temple and Chene Park it took an ensemble of vocalists from Angie Stone to Fantasia to Stevie Wonder and a multitude of others to replicate her highness’ heavenly sound.
The regal Queen evoked words like love, God and respect, and when the Rev. Al Sharpton in his retort to Trump’s tweet about the Queen working for him, the right reverend let it be known to a thunderous response that “she performed for you, but she worked for us.” And the African American predicament, especially for her commoners never had a more faithful and devoted worker for our spiritual uplift and our quest for self-determination, never a more relentless voice of protest and comfort than the Queen’s. Her physical form may have expired but we will hear her melismatic, melodious anthems of peace and harmony from here to eternity.