His music is always & # 39; a source of joy & # 39; said AFP Jesse Jackson, figure of the civil rights movement. Aretha Franklin "used his rank for other things than the only number," he says from Chicago.
"Some singers agree to sit on their dignity as a woman or African American to make hits," he continues. Not Aretha Franklin. His music has always been optimistic, so people are getting higher & # 39 ;.
"Respect" in public in France
The father of Aretha Franklin, a predecessor activist for the rights of blacks
Jesse Jackson met Aretha Franklin-teenager. And on Wednesday, the day before his disappearance, he visited the "queen of the soul & # 39; to pray at his side. The shepherd remembers "the warmth of his hand": "It was very difficult to say goodbye to him."
Aretha Franklin was born in a secluded south in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 25, 1942. Her family moved to Detroit in the north. His father, CL Franklin, was a Baptist pastor and a Black American rights activist who helped Martin Luther King organize the Freedom march through downtown Detroit in June 1963, just two months before his historic speech "I Have a Dream" in Washington.
The civil rights icon was a close friend of Aretha Franklin's father and occasionally came to Detroit to spend time in the parental home or in the New Bethel Baptist Church, the church where CL Franklin performed. in 1999 the singer sang on NPR radio
She sang during the funeral of Martin Luther King and the inauguration of Barack Obama
"Once, when we struggled to raise money because of the anti-war stances of Dr King sang them for free and gave the recipe for the matter, "continues Jesse Jackson.
"One evening in Houston, Texas, she was on stage and threw tear gas into the ventilation," he says. "She kept on singing, she stayed on."
Aretha had sung at the funeral of Martin Luther King. Forty years later, she gave voice to the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first black president in the history of the US
"In his voice we could read our history, in its entirety and in all its nuances: our strength and our worries , our dark side and our light, our search for salvation and respect, deserved with difficulty, "Barack Obama said after
She gave money and advice to the militants
The NAACP, the big civil rights organization, awarded Aretha Franklin a prize for his action in 2008. "Nobody can talk about the civil rights movement or the music without honoring the Queen of the soul," said NAACP President Leon Russell.
The legend of the soul gave money and advice to American civil rights activists.
In 1990 she sang at a meeting in her hometown in honor of the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. On stage, Mandela told me how much he liked to listen to the sound of Detroit & # 39; when he was locked up.
"When she sang, she embodied what we fought for and her music strengthened us, it strengthened us", remembers congressman John Lewis, another historical figure in the movement. "She was like a muse whose songs gave us the strength to continue, her music gave us a greater sense of determination never to give up or surrender and to keep the faith."
A model for women [19459010ForgenerationswomenwithmanyfromAfrican-Americanswasaniconeandinspirationandthatshouldnotbequestionedforfightingforequalitiesforfacingthatcreality
For the church of his father on the night of his death, a worker who grew up in the neighborhood, the 53-year-old Maurice Black said that his mother from Alabama would come in a convoy with two cars to attend the funeral. Aretha Franklin.
"You have to understand that she was civil rights, so all people in the South will be here in Detroit," he says. "You can believe me."
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