The Queen of Soul and lifelong civil-rights activist Aretha Franklin will be buried next to her preacher dad, brother and two sisters in her beloved hometown of Detroit following a celebration of her life.

Franklin, who was born in Memphis in 1942, had a career that spanned seven decades. She died of pancreatic cancer on August 14 at the age of 76.

A private funeral service will be held on August 31 at the Greater Grace Temple, before she is laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery, where her father, Rev. C. L. Franklin, sisters Carolyn and Erma, brother Cecil and nephew Thomas are also resting.

A young Aretha was subjected to racism at an early age, which forced her to stand up for her rights. She decreed in her contracts that she would never play to segregated audiences and lived by that rule even when little gigs were coming in.

The second of five children, her family moved to Buffalo, N.Y., and then Detroit, where her parents divorced. Her mother died when she was 10, and because of her father’s travels, she was reared by her grandmother.

As a teen, Franklin was a soloist in her father’s church and began recording gospel songs. She dropped out of high school and toured the gospel circuit, singing in churches around the country. It was a hard life during which she learned firsthand about racism while traveling the back roads of the South.

Her talents led her winning 18 Grammy Awards selected from 112 charted singles on Billboard; including 77 Hot 100 entries, 17 top-ten pop singles, 100 Rhythm and Blues entries and 20 number-one R&B singles.

The accolades led to her becoming the first female artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Along the way she influenced countless singers including Whitney Houston, Patti LaBelle, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Mariah Carey, Luther Vandross, Jennifer Hudson and Fantasia.

She at one time famously brought tears to the eyes of former U.S. President Barack Obama in one of the renditions of her hits, which included: “Respect, Think, I Say A Little Prayer and Chain Of Fools.”

Franklin was there when times were tough and Blacks in the U.S. were enslaved by racism. She used her talents and funds to help Black causes and for racial equality.

She was beside the coffin of family friend King Jr., where her touching rendition of his favourite “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” left many weeping at his packed 1968 funeral services following his assassination.

Franklin also performed at the funeral services of civil-rights icon Rosa Parks, who in 1955 refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. It led to a city-wide bus boycott by Blacks in that city.

She also sang at the 1972 funeral services of fellow activist and gospel great Mahalia Jackson, who recorded more than 30 albums and had a dozen million-sellers.

A few weeks after the King funeral, Franklin became only the second African-American woman to appear on the cover of Time magazine.

By then she had collaborated with Ray Charles, covered Simon & Garfunkel and the Beatles, revisited jazz on “Soul ’69,” and recorded the gospel album “Amazing Grace.” It was during this period that she would appear in African garb, a woman consciously representing her community, gender and beliefs with empowering self-confidence that resonated with generations of oppressed minorities.

Her career was derailed by the onset of the disco era in the ’70s and then by the shooting of her father in an attempted robbery in 1979. He spent five years in a coma before dying.

However, it was a cameo with Canadian comedians Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in the “The Blues Brothers” movie, which resurrected her career with a top single and album “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.”

Even with her enormous talents and millions of records sold, Franklin was never able to earn the huge sums paid to female white entertainers as Barbra Streisand, Madonna or even Adele, according to Forbes magazine.

The singers’ lesser income was partially due to Franklin’s fear of travelling by airplane and that she performed at smaller North American venues that were accessible by bus.

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