Aretha Franklin was the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. For 40 years, she held the record for the most songs on the Billboard Hot 100, dethroned by Nicki Minaj in 2017. When Rolling Stone ranked the 100 greatest singers of all time, Franklin, “a gift from God,” was No. 1.

But Franklin, who died in her Detroit home Thursday morning at the age of 76, didn’t limit her role in history to her own accomplishments. Coming of age in Detroit in the 50s, Franklin was surrounded by civil-rights activists from a young age, and spent her trailblazing career supporting those who fought for equality—and setting an example herself as an American success.

Franklin, whose mother died when Aretha was 10, was raised primarily by her father, C.L. Franklin, a Baptist minister and a civil-rights activist that organized the 1963 Detroit Walk to Freedom, which was the largest civil-rights demonstration in U.S. history until the March on Washington displaced it two months later. Martin Luther King Jr., a friend of C.L. Franklin’s, delivered an early version of his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Detroit march.

“He had his vision, and yes it was under his control,” Aretha Franklin said of her father’s role in the march in a 2013 interview. “It was his vision of what he wanted to be, and of course . . . it set the stage for the march (on Washington).”

Aretha, who was living in New York and under contract with Columbia Records, didn’t attend the march. But she used her years of performing in front of crowds to dispute the official crowd-size number of 100,000.

”You couldn’t tell me there were not a million, million and a half people on Woodward that day,” she said in 2013. ”I’m accustomed to appraising numbers of people simply because of my concerts. I'm looking at the miles it covered. You had people everywhere in every corner and on every side and that went on for a very, very long way down Woodward. That was a lot more than 100,000 people.”

Franklin spent the turbulent 60s building her career, and in 1967 released her most famous song, and one that became inextricably linked to the civil rights and feminist movements of the time. “Respect” was originally released in 1965 by Otis Redding; Franklin’s cover of the song came out in 1967, and soon became the most popular version.

“I was stunned when it went to No. 1,” Franklin told Elle in 2016, “and it stayed No. 1 for a couple weeks. It was the right song at the right time.”

Franklin, who Elle noted had it written into her contract in the 60s that she would never perform for a segregated audience, was glad that the song became linked to feminist and civil-rights movements. She added that the line “you know I’ve got it” has a direct feminist theme.

“As women, we do have it,” she says. “We have the power. We are very resourceful. Women absolutely deserve respect. I think women and children and older people are the three least-respected groups in our society.”

Though Franklin didn't participate in civil disobedience herself, she lent very public support to at least one person who did. In 1970, famous feminist activist, scholar, and a then-avowed member of the Communist Party Angela Davis was arrested at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in Midtown Manhattan and incarcerated for 16 months for what were found to be wrongful kidnapping and murder charges. Jet magazine reported that she was ready to cover Davis’s bond, “whether it was $100,000 or $250,000.” Davis was released on bail and cleared of her charges in 1972; dairy farmer Roger McAfee ended up offering his property as collateral for her bail.

Even still, Franklin was firm in her offer, as David Ritz relayed in Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin:

“My daddy says I don’t know what I’m doing. Well, I respect him, of course, but I’m going to stick to my >beliefs. Angela Davis must go free. Black people must be free. . . . Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to set her >free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black >woman and she wants freedom for Black people. I have the money; I got it from Black people—they’ve >made me financially able to have it—and I want to use it in ways that will help our people.”

Franklin’s iconic status in the country may have been most clearly cemented by her performance at Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009. While singing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” in her famous soulful vibrato, the Queen of Soul captured the crowd of 1.8 million people gathered at the Capitol. Though she later told Larry King that she was not happy with her performance, Franklin recognized the historic moment as something even larger.

“I was delighted and thrilled to be there,” she said. “That was the most important thing, not so much the performance, but just to be there and to see this great man go into office—the promise of tomorrow coming to pass.”