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DETROIT (AP) — Mourners began pouring into Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History on Tuesday to pay their final respects to Aretha Franklin.

WATCH THE LIVE STREAM OF THE VIEWING HERE.

They approached her gold-plated casket to the sounds of her gospel recordings. She was in repose, dressed in red from head to high-heeled shoes, legs crossed at the ankles. Aretha Franklin’s niece says she and others who helped plan a public viewing in Detroit wanted to give the Queen of Soul a send-off that “would match her legacy.”

Sabrina Owens told The Associated Press on Tuesday the roses surrounding Franklin’s gold-plated casket at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History reflect her love for the flower and her propensity to send arrangements “in grand fashion.”

Franklin was dressed in red to symbolize her membership in the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

To Owens, the dress — with its ornamental elements and sheer netting fabric — looks like something Franklin would wear onstage and “something she would have selected for herself.”

For all the formality, however, Owens says the viewings are intended to be welcoming and accessible for her legions of fans.

The funeral home providing services for Aretha Franklin says the legendary singer paid the expenses of many families who could not afford to bury their loved ones.

Linda Swanson, executive vice president of Swanson Funeral Home in Detroit, said Tuesday her family has long been close with the Franklin family. She says it was nothing for Franklin to call the funeral home and take care of families in financial need  “usually in full without being asked or prompted to do so.”

Swanson says many people attending Franklin’s two-day public viewing at a Detroit museum “are here because they were blessed by her big heart and her desire to reach beyond the boundaries of her own success and touch others.”

Sixty-four-year Detroit resident Cheryl Matthews attended the viewing and says it was “fit for a Queen.” She says while she never met Franklin, it felt like she could be a sister or an aunt because “she’s always been here.”

Tammy Gibson of Chicago says she lined up outside about 5:30 a.m. She came alone but made fast friends with others who sang and reminisced.

As they approached, people who came from as far away as Las Vegas and Miami cried, crossed themselves, bowed their heads or blew kisses.

(AP Photo/Paul Sancya, Pool)

Museum board member Kelly Major Green said the goal was to create a dignified and respectful environment akin to a church, the place where Franklin got her start.

“What we wanted to do is be reflective of the Queen,” Green said. “It’s beautiful. She’s beautiful.”

With her legs crossed at the ankles, Green said Franklin communicates both power and comfort, as she did in life.

The shoes, in particular, show “The Queen of Soul is diva to the end,” Green said.

(AP Photo/Paul Sancya, Pool)

Tammy Gibson, 49, of Chicago said she arrived about 5:30 a.m. She came alone but made fast friends with others who sang and reminisced.

Growing up, Gibson said she heard Franklin’s music “playing all the time” by her parents, who “told me to go to bed — it’s an adult party.”

Outside the museum, she said: “I know people are sad, but it’s just celebrating — people dancing and singing her music.”

Franklin has been a constant in her life.

“I saw the gold-plated casket — it dawned on me: She’s gone, but her legacy and her music will live on forever.”

The setting for the two days of public viewings could not be more fitting, according to Paula Marie Seniors, an associate professor of Africana studies at Virginia Tech.

“I think it’s incredibly significant — she is being honored almost like a queen at one of the most important black museums in the United States,” said Seniors, who visited the museum several years ago when she was in Detroit doing research.

The Queen of Soul, Seniors said, was “a singer of the universe.” Yet she added that Franklin, who died Aug. 16 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 76, also was “so unapologetically black — she was so proud of being a black woman.”

To be sure, Franklin did not consider herself a catalyst for the women’s movement or on the front lines of the fight for civil rights. But she represented and pushed for both in ways big and small — none, perhaps, more prominently or simultaneously as her mold-breaking take on the Otis Redding song, “Respect.” She later said that with her interpretation — which even Redding acknowledged became the standard — sought to convey a message about the need to respect women, people of color, children and all people.

The museum, which had been the largest black museum in the U.S. until the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in Washington, D.C., in 2016, also hosted similar viewings for civil rights icon Rosa Parks after her 2005 death. In further symbolic symmetry, Franklin sang at Parks’ funeral, which was held at the same Detroit church as Franklin’s, and the singer will be entombed in the same cemetery as Parks.

The women came to their activism from different places and used different techniques, but “in the long run, they were both fighting for the same cause, which is freedom,” Seniors said.

Seniors said if she could attend the viewings, she would bring her 8-year-old daughter, Shakeila, who has sung along with Franklin’s videos.

“I want my daughter to know anything and everything about African-American culture and history,” said Seniors, whose father, Clarence Henry Seniors, was roommates at Morehouse College with Franklin’s brother, Cecil. “I would want my daughter to know of the people like Aretha Franklin — to be able to listen to that voice … and hear that there is something special about it.”

Aretha Franklin In Detroit: Pictures Of The Queen Of Soul In Her Hometown
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