For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.

Detroit Churchmen Hanged In Effigy

DETROIT (AP) – Archbishop John F. Dearden, the Rev. Albert Cleage, Milton Henry and Richard Lobenthal were found hanged in effigy Thursday in Detroit’s Kennedy Square.
The name-carded, stuffed-clothing figures were cut down quickly by police.
Archbishop Dearden heads the Detroit archiocese of the Roman Catholic Church. The Rev. Albert Cleage and Milton Henry, are leaders among “Black Power” advocates, and Lobenthal is Michigan director of the Jewish Antidefamation League.
Police said they did not know who hanged the four in effigy, but suspected “right wingers who have created similar incidents in recent months.” They did not name the “right wingers.”
The figures were strung up on the superstructure of a new underground parking garage in the square.

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Oddly enough, although I was 21, I don’t remember anything about this event. I wonder if it was not printed in the Detroit papers. I found this article in an Ann Arbor paper. Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. is my father.

My friend, historian Paul Lee, put this short clip of an interview with my father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. by Chet Huntley on YouTube. It is from late 1967 or early 1968, not long after the 1967 Detroit riot.

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1300 Lafaytte – Apartment for Security 1968 – A post about my father’s life during that time