Clarence LaVaughn Franklin (né Walker; January 22, 1915 – July 27, 1984) was an American Baptist minister and civil rights activist.

[2] Known as the man with the "Million-Dollar Voice", Franklin served as the pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit from 1946 until he was shot and wounded in 1979.

[5] Franklin became a preacher at age 16, initially working the black itinerant preaching circuit before settling at New Salem Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, where he remained until May 1944.

[11] Selected sermons and his life history in his own words are published in a volume edited by Jeff Todd Titon for the University of Illinois Press.

[12] Franklin was also known for his singing voice and for mastery of a style of musical preaching traditional in the Black Baptist church called "whooping".

In the 1950s and 1960s, Franklin became involved in the civil rights movement,[2] and worked to end discriminatory practices against black United Auto Workers members in Detroit.

[15] Shortly after midnight on Sunday, June 10, 1979, Franklin was shot twice at point-blank range during what was believed to have been an attempted robbery at his home on Detroit's West Side.

[8] The Franklin children moved him back to his house six months after the shooting; he received 24-hour nursing care and remained at home until the middle of 1984.

On October 16, 1934, Franklin married his first wife, Alene Gaines, at the age of 18 and though that marriage had ended by early 1936, the form of dissolution is unconfirmed.