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.

NAACP Chief to Open Detroit Member Drive
Roy Wilkins, administrator of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, will be the principal speaker at a public rally opening the 1953 membership drive of the Detroit branch NAACP at 3:30 p. m. April 19 at Ebenezer AME Church, Brush and Willis.
A parade from the Art Institute to the church will precede the rally. The Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., is chairman of the drive.
L. Pearl Mitchell, special secretary of the NAACP, will direct the Detroit drive which seeks 7,500 members.
Attorney Edward Turner is president of the Detroit NAACP branch, and Arthur L. Johnson is executive secretary.
In April 1953 my father had just been dismissed from St. Mark’s United Presbyterian Community Church, where he had been pastor for several years, in a dispute with the governing Presbyterian body. Over 300 members resigned, leaving about 35 members in the congregation.
CHURCH MEMBERS QUIT IN SQUABBLE
Protest Dismissal of Young Detroit Pastor
Detroit – Rev. Albert B. Cleage, jr., was dismissed as pastor of St. Mark’s United Presbyterian Community church, here this week by the Committee of Missions of the Detroit Presbytery, the United Presbyterian church.
Members of the congregation protested the action by a wholesale resignation.
Dismissal of Reverend Cleage was the result of protests lodged with the committee by five church members, including Henry W. Cleage, the pastor’s uncle, following their resignation from the church in January.
OBJECT TO PROGRAM
The group objected to the young minister’s program of cultural and social activities, which, they said, interfered with the spiritual functions of the church.
Explaining their action the committee said problems of church discipline were also involved.
The charges against Reverend Cleage generally accused him of ignoring the authority of the committee and failure to program church activities in conformance with views of the committee.
MEMBERS NOT ASKED
Members of the congregation protested they had not been consulted in the dismissal. They had no word of the committee’s action until it was announced by the pastor.
Congregation members protested the dismissal without investigation and resigned from the church en masse.
At last reports they were organizing a new church with Reverend Cleage as pastor.
REPLACEMENT UNKNOWN
A replacement for St. Marks’ has not been announced. Approximately 35 members of the congregation remain.
One member said he did not resign because “two wrongs do not make a right.” He said that he objected to the dismissal but could not agree with the mass resignations.
The resigning members of the congregation said the Presbytery’s failure to consult or consider them in the matter made “it impossible for us to continue as members of this church.”
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A related post -> A Church and Two Brothers – Two Splits 1953