Category Archives: Biography

How I Met Nikki Giovanni

December 11, 2024Biography, Cleages, DetroitKristin

Portrait of Nikki Giovanni by w:Elsa Dorfman circa 1980?

The first time I ever heard of Nikki Giovanni, I was on a chartered bus headed down to Cincinnati to fellowship with another church. Nikki was going to read her poems for us and I wondered who this Italian poet was? It was May 20, 1967. I was 20 years old, a junior at Wayne State University. Nikki was 23. My sister Pearl was 18, a freshman at Howard University. She was not there because she was in DC.

I remember that the program took place in the church basement and that they fed us. I remember the feeling of camaraderie between the churches. Nikki read her poems and I was relieved to find out she was not an Italian guy. I don’t remember meeting her personally or talking with her one on one.

Excerpt from sermon given on Sunday, May 21, 1967. The day after the trip.

“I’m just looking around to see how many of you went to Cincinnati that didn’t get here this morning. Some of you didn’t quite make it. Most of you are here. We had a good time yesterday. We went to Cincinnati. We had two buses, about 70 people. We ate all the way there and all the way back. And it was a little different than our trip to Kalamazoo because when we got there we found brothers and sisters. We were in agreement. We had a good time. They were nice to be with, and we were all trying to do the same thing, and it was nice to know that the Nation is not just limited to the four walls here: that there are people out there that want to be a part of what we’re doing, so we took them into the Nation. I want you all to know. The Nation is growing every time we take a trip. We are going to take another one pretty soon, so you all can be getting your bus fare together and putting it aside.

It was a good trip. We were very happy that we were able to take some of our young people from the student organization. We just took them. We had a few extra seats there. We are going to let you help pay for those extra seats a little later on, but it was a good trip, and we think that these trips are very important. We had a message in Cincinnati and we think we made friends.

Central United Church of Christ, now Shrine of the Black Madonna, Detroit

Most of them are coming back to the Black Arts Conference that’s going to be held here, sponsored by Forum, 66, here at the church, of course, people are coming from all over the United States to the Black Arts Conference. I hope when your friends from out of town call you up or write and ask you about it, you will know what they’re talking about. Black Arts Conference is going to be sponsored by Forum ’66, held here at the church, the last two days of June and the first two days of July. Young people are coming from almost all of the colleges and universities around the country. People who are beginning to understand what the Nation is are coming from everywhere, so when your friends ask you about it, and they are going to be asking you because a lot of them are coming, looking for some place to stay when they get here.

So help Forum ’66 and help us because this a real contribution. It helps to establish Detroit as a place where whatever is going on as far as black people might be concerned, is taking place. We are at the center. The Black Arts Conference is one symbol of that fact and so for that reason, if for no other, it’s important. See what they’re thinking and let them know what we’re thinking and for that reason it’s also important.”

From a sermon delivered May 21, 1967, by Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. Later Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman.

-2 –

The 2nd Black Arts Conference took place from Thursday, June 29 to Sunday July 2 , at our church. Nikki Giovanni spent one night at our house during the Conference. At the end of the first day, someone, (my father?), suggested she stay with me at my mother’s house. I remember it was dark out and asking Jim to gave us a ride home. I rode in the front, Nikki rode in the back. Later, Nikki asked if Jim was my boyfriend. I said he had been but he was with someone else now. She said there still seemed to be something between us. There was and we got back together, but that’s the only conversation I remember us having. The rest of the time she stayed somewhere else. Once again, Pearl was elsewhere. I am sure of that because Nikki slept in her empty room.

The last time I saw Nikki was during the 1990s. I lived in Idlewild, Michigan with my husband Jim and six children. One evening Mable Williams, wife of Robert Williams (advocate for self defense), and I went to hear Nikki read her poetry at Ferris State University, half an hour away. After the reading Mable asked if I wanted to stay and say hello to Nikki. I looked at all the students milling around trying to get a word with her and said no. So we just left.

L – LOTS of Hair

April 14, 2023A-Z Challenge 2023, BiographyKristin

This is my tenth A to Z Challenge. My first was in 2013, but I missed 2021. This April I am going through the alphabet using snippets about my family through the generations. I first published a version of this post ten years ago.

Click to enlarge. From babyhood until today, my hair.

I was born with a head full of black hair that could be pulled up into a little top pony tail. It soon fell out leaving me practically bald with a bit of blond hair. It slowly grew in sandy and kinky like my father’s and grandfather’s rather than wavy/straight like my mother’s and grandmother’s.

From a letter written to her in-laws by my mother, March 18, 1947. I was six and a half months old:
Kris (with her 2 teeth) says any time for you all laughing at her bald head – I fear it’ll be covered all too soon with first one thing and then another.
Doris

When Pearl and I were little, my mother didn’t wash our hair often. Once every two weeks? Once a month? Not very often. She used Breck shampoo, put a little olive oil in the sink full of warm water and poured it over for the final rinse. After and between washings she’d part our hair and put “Three Flowers” grease on our scalp. I remember that sometimes, when I was in elementary school, she would roll it up on tissue curlers and let me wear it “down” for one day after she washed it. I enjoyed the change from braids but it wasn’t really “down”.

Aunt Abbie, my maternal great grandmother’s sister, lived with my grandparents. She assured my mother that is was all right that Pearl and I didn’t have “good” hair because we had blue eyes. She assured my Aunt Mary V. it was okay her daughter’s didn’t have light hair or eyes because they had “good” hair. The sister’s shook their heads about it.

When I was in sixth grade, a classmate asked me during art class if I had ever had my hair straightened. I had not. She hadn’t either. Ironically, that afternoon after school, my sister and I went to the beauty shop on 12th street near Calvert recommended by Aunt Mary V. and had our hair straightened for the first time. We got pony tails in back and a pony tail down the side. Going to the beauty shop always gave me a headache. I remember listening to my beautician talking to the other women about how hot it was and how her husband was going to have to sleep on the couch because it was too hot to be all up in the bed with another hot, sweaty body.

Eventually I stopped going to the beauty shop, although my sister continued for years. There were the beauty shop headaches, plus I started taking swimming in junior high and high school. Those horrible bathing caps didn’t keep out the water and my hair soon took back it’s natural form.

My mother still straightened my hair for special occasions. She heated the comb on the stove and there were the inevitable burns on the ears. Other times I wore my hair in what a classmate described as a “shredded wheat biscuit”. Sometimes I borrowed some of my father’s Murray’s Pomade and after brushing the stiff, yellowish stuff in, it did lay down and had small waves.

During the summers when I was about nine to thirteen, I spent a week at the mostly white Camp Talahi. Some of the girl campers would ask me “Why is your hair like that?”. At first I would say because that’s the way it grows. Eventually I just responded with “Why is your hair like that?” They would look puzzled.

My last semester of high school I didn’t take swimming and discovered that if I rolled my hair up on those hard, pink curlers I could wear it in a sort of curly side wave on the side and pull the back into a barrette for a low pony tail. Sometimes I even wore it down, somewhat like those hairdos in elementary school. Once Pearl and I braided it all up into lots and lots of little braids, which reminded us of the paintings in Egyptian tombs. We thought it was great, and I would have been way ahead of the times, however my father hated it and I never wore it like that anywhere.

While visiting Pearl at Howard for Thanksgiving of 1966, I let one of her roommates straighten my hair. My mother complimented me and thought it looked lovely. When I went down to Wayne, I met Jim in the Montieth Center. He was aghast that I had straightened my hair. I went into the restroom and washed it out in the sink and that was the last time I straightened my hair. I was 20.

At one point in our lives, Pearl and I complained to each other that we had inherited our father’s kinky hair instead of our mother’s wavy hair. We reasoned that boys were supposed to get their mother’s hair so if he had gotten his mother’s wavy hair, we would have inherited that because girls (in our theory) inherited their father’s hair. Later, when natural hair came in we were so glad we had the hair we did. We didn’t have to do anything but wash and wear to have afros.

The next summer, 1967, we had the Detroit riot/rebellion. My cousins, Janis and Greta, came to visit us for the first time from Athens, TN. They were the same age as Pearl and I. Somehow, it came up that I wanted to cut my hair for an afro. Greta volunteered to do it for me and she did. It was great! I loved it. The only scary part was going to my Grandmother Cleages for the first time afterwards. We were afraid she might say something negative or even mention it during mealtime prayers, but she didn’t. I was one of the first to wear an afro on Wayne’s campus. That fall, in Miriam’s Jeffries student apartment, I cut several people’s hair for their first afros. I remember Kathy Gamble was sad to see her long hair fall on the floor. I cut Martha Prescod’s and can’t remember who else. I hadn’t cut anybody’s hair before, although I cut my own when it got too long.

I wore an afro until about 1988 when I decided to let my hair grow out and see what happened. I let it grow until 2004 or so when I cut it all off again and kept it cut until 2014 when I decided to let it grow out. It was more trouble to trim it than it would be to grow it out and have it longer. Lately a lot comes out when I comb it. Luckily I started with a LOT of hair. What’s left grows faster and strangely straighter.

The Snake

February 17, 2023Biography, Cleages, Photographs#Henry Cleage, #me, #Old PlankKristin

I used to like making small places outside. The first one I remember was under the back porch when we lived in a two family flat on Calver t in Detroit. The porch above wasn’t high enough up for me to stand up, but it wasn’t so low I had to crawl in. I found bricks around and built a two or three brick high wall around two sides. I don’t remember doing much out there after I got it together. I was about nine years old at that time. My sister remembers playing marbles there. I did make a nice, smooth dirt floor.

Me beside my quilt tent, held up on the former chicken house with bricks.

In Poppy’s and Nanny’s yard we made tents out of quilts. We would use them for the duration of whatever game we were playing. My Quilt Tent – 1958

Later when we lived on Oregon, I built a snow house against the garage one winter. Again, I don’t remember hanging around in it. After all it was winter in the 1950s when winter was freezing and snowy for months. I also cleaned up the garage and fixed it up as a place I could go. But it was a garage and I remember the smell wasn’t that pleasant. Rats around the garbage cans? I never saw any, but I gave that one up.

At Old Plank, I made a stick frame and wove large leaves into it. As you can see I even built a campfire circle of stones and had a fire going at least once.

Enjoying a campfire in front of the hut.

Henry holding the long snake found in the hut

One morning I came out and found a snake curled comfortably inside. It was cool and the snake was sluggish. Henry did what he always did when coming upon a snake, he killed it. I don’t remember the particulars, did he beat it to death or did he shoot it? What sort of snake was it? Above he is holding it up for the photographer, probably my mother. I do remember an incident decades later in Idlewild when Henry did kill a snake at my Aunt Barbara’s with a blow as I tried to persuade him it was a harmless snake that ate mice. He paid me no mind.

Train Journal – 2001

January 21, 2023Biography, sepia saturdayKristin

In 2001 I drove from Idlewild, Michigan down to Atlanta and across to Oceanside California with my oldest daughter and her two toddlers. I took a train up to Seattle to visit my second daughter and then took the train back to Michigan. This is an account of that last part of the trip from my journal.

Train ride through the Rockies. Photo by Kristin Cleage

Thursday June 28

leaving Seattle. Sat around with Ife and Mike waiting for 3:30 to leave for the train station. Ate leftover chili for breakfast. Watched a “thriller.” We went up on the roof for the first time and took photos of park, skyline and water. Sun got so bright we went down. Mike went and got water and tooth paste for me. Ife was nervous all day in case I missed the train. Took cab to station. Mariners game.

At the train station a girl with her mother was across from us. She was watching us. We were watching her.

Sleeper is small. – two seats, table window. Makes into lower and upper bunk. Much comfier than couch! Bathroom down hall and down stairs. Dinner – salmon, wild rice, potato, apple juice, apple crisp, veggies.

Scenery – very different on western half of Cascades, lush, green, moss and ferns, much dryer and more barren on East side. Fruit tree area on barren side. Trees must be irrigated. Food supply for U.S. long term NOT looking good! Puget sound – people clamming? Tide out. Water, water. Beautiful. This land is your land, this land is my land.

June 29, Friday

Woke up in Montana. Isolated cabins on the sides of wooded mountains. Mountain, rushing streams, line of parked cars in the middle of no where, a deer on the side of the tracks, pine trees, poplar or is it aspen? “Big Sky” low clods.

The Chinese American steward had a laugh this morning with the Irish woman across the aisle. He’d thought she’d be Chinese. Robert E. Lee wasn’t Chinese,” she pointed out, a bit peevishly. I woke around 7:30 (6:30 Seattle time) Yawn. Could have slept longer.

Mountains and feather pines. So close together. The highway right below. A stream leads up up up the mountains to a meadow. “I knew the mountains would make you well.”

Breakfast of yogurt parfait.

On closer view what appears to be meadow may be bushes. At least that’s what the one we passed was. Going through open covered tunnels? Bridges? Better then the dark holes.

Rock is gray, slate like layers, dirt was mauve this morning. Began taking photos. Why didn’t I do that all along??? what a waste Oh well. Jilo and Ife have both expressed an interest in cross country travel.

Down the corridor a couple discuss their vacations and train trips. The rocks do look like the earths bones. Are we lower or higher? Trees are smaller, fewer, more grass. Gods golf course out there?

Montana high plains. Rutted dirt roads come out of fields to the track. Several piles of dumped household trash. Irrigation. Houses, small alone. A man with orange flags. Clouds so low I could reach out the window and touch them.

Sage brush again everywhere.

June 30,2001 Saturday

We’re in the Minniapolis/St. Paul station. Midway on the N/S axis of earth.

Arrived in Chicago. Walking from the train to the waiting room passed a man hollaring a train was leaving for Grand Rapids! Asked and found it was my train. Got loaded on.

Four teachers returning from a conference in Grand Rapids. Two white and two black. Back and forth about conference.

Family of Grandma, two grown daughters and three or four kids (little) got on. The kids were tired. One little girl broke out crying, she wanted to put her pjs on right then. After awhile they put them on her. Brother fell asleep.

Almost got stuck in the bathroom. Couldn’t figure how to get it unlocked at first. When train stopped, everyone moved to the exit but the train wasn’t really ready to unload us. I sat back down and another lady sat down too. She had come on the same train I had but just from Minnesota. She was going to visit her grandkids.

Jim was waiting at the station with the van full of groceries when I got there. It was very hot and muggy. It sprinkled a little on the way, but no real rain. We cooked and ate when we got home.

I was glad to be home, but not this particular house and location.

Mug Shot, Surveillance And a Warning

January 8, 2023Biography, Detroit, sepia saturday#black conscience library, #James E. WilliamsKristin

IN 1972 James Edward Williams was arrested for driving without a license in Detroit, in March of 1972. This mugshot was included in his ‘red file’ which included local police files and FBI information from the 1970s. He was regularly arrested for driving without a license or minor traffic infractions in those days. Although he didn’t spend time in jail, there would be bail and fines to pay. Don’t ask why he didn’t keep up with his license considering he kept getting stopped. Some 50 years later, he just shakes his head when asked.

Below is a record of the police surveillance of James Williams on October 29, 1971. It happened about a year before the mugshot above was taken.

N?M = Negro Male. Most names are blacked out.

At 10:33, J. Williams and that could be my name blocked out as we went to my apartment in Brewster Projects and didn’t exit. I didn’t know they were following us, sitting down there in the parking lot in the fog, watching and waiting.

Why would they go to all this trouble. Because he was a black activist. Here is a letter sent to the Atlanta police department in 1972 as we were relocating from Detroit to Atlanta.

We got this information by sending for my husband’s Red Squad File. You can find more information at the link below.

Red Squad File Reveals Rabid Radical ?

“Editor’s Note: For more than 30 years (1944-1974), the Detroit Police Red Squad, a secret arm of the Detroit Police Department, was tracking citizens to “root out” and “expose” subversives. Their targets were political activists, Vietnam War opponents, Black nationalists, labor unionists, civil liberties advocates and many others engaged in social, cultural and other dissent activities.

Names of approximately 1.5 million people and organizations who either lived in or visited Detroit appear in secret files kept by the Detroit Police Department’s Red Squad. The Detroit files were also made available to the Michigan State Police and much of the Red Squad’s surveillance was coordinated with federal agencies, other state and local agencies and private organizations.

The Red Squad files are now being released to the public as a result of court orders issued in a lawsuit begun in 1974 by plaintiffs who argued that they were subjects of illegal political surveillance.

The case was finally resolved on April 23, 1990, when the Detroit City Council agreed to a $750,000 settlement which would cover costs to notify and deliver copies of retrievable information to those individuals and organizations who were under surveillance.”

Red Squad: Political Surveillance –

Mugshots 3-17-72 A former post using the mug shot for a Sepia Saturday prompt.

W is for Wilkins Street About living in Brewster Projects

“G” is for Grand River Avenue About the Black Conscience Library

A Buggy, A Visitor and a Mystery – 1950

September 17, 2022Biography, sepia saturday, Springfield, MA#me, #Pearl CleageKristin

The Boston Globe, Boston, Massachusetts
Nov 04, 1947 · Page 13

We were living in Springfield, Massachusetts where my father was the pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church.

One cool day in 1950 my little sister Pearl and I were playing with our dolls and buggy in the back yard. Perhaps it was one of those in the advertisement to the left.

I was four. Pearl was about 18 months. An older girl appears on the scene. I do not remember who she was. A neighbor? The child of a church member? No idea.

The guest looks suspicious while I explain things and Pearl looks on.

Pearl is pointing at something in the guest’s hand. Are my fists balled up? My doll watches

For more posts about me and my family in 1950 go to this link- My family in 1950

For more Sepia Saturday posts, click picture

Riding the Clairmount Bus – 1969

September 8, 2022Biography, Detroit, sepia saturday#meKristin

Oddly enough, I do not have any personal photographs of buses. I do have an ancient journal entry chronicling a very bizarre bus ride I took in Detroit down Joy Road on the Clairmount bus in 1969. I had just graduated from Wayne State in December of 1968 and I was enjoying my freedom. I was living in my own apartment and working at the Black Star Clothing Factory. My cousin Barbara was living in New York City, the East Village. at the time and I was plotting and planning a visit with her. I did make it later that summer. I turned 23 that August.

Kristin and Barbara 1969, at her sister Dee Dee’s house.

I didn’t capitalize anything in the journal so I just left it like that.

journal entry

June 25, 1969

I don’t know what is going on, it isn’t good though. i was leaving friday for new york, but i don’t think so soon. i need a bit more time (for what?) i been listening to new leonard cohen record. two days over and over at first it was tired, but now i really like it, after the old revolution, i liked best the partisan song about coming out the shadows. i am so sleepy .

everybody is mad/crazy, and i really don’t understand at all. i need pearl’s youth card so that I can leave, go to NYC.

yesterday on the way to a photo show, I was on the clairmont bus on joy rd. the driver was crazy, he acted like he was taking a pregnant woman to the hospital, he was weaving the bus in and out between cars. that was bad enough – old ladies rocking, weaving and falling, when suddenly a red light backs up traffic, or just stops it. he pulls belligerently into the lane of oncoming traffic (which lucky for us was empty at the time) and raced two blocks in the wrong lane to pull and bully his way in front of some poor car when the light changed. I was cracking up. the people weren’t, just me. I couldn’t control myself laughing, mouth open etc. they probably thought I was crazy or something. so ridiculous, can’t even imagine a regular car doing that shit. I just don’t know, I really don’t. some lunatic jehovah’s witness knocked on the door to give me a bible study tract. says god’s kingdom is eminent. we should be so lucky.

Susan Richardson Abbott – Part 1 – 1829-1866

July 31, 2021African-American Genealogy & Slave Ancestry Research, Biography, Investigations, SlaveryGeorgia, Susan Richardson AbbottKristin

Earlier this year my daughter shared this photograph of Susan Richardson Abbott and her obituary from a newspaper in 1909. I decided to see what I could learn about her in addition to the stereotypical “good old mammy” obituary. This is what I found.

Click any image to enlarge in another window.

Susan Richardson Abbott 1830-1909
©Hambidge Center for the Arts

Obituary

ABBOTT, Susan
The Brunswick Journal; Monday 18 January 1909

SUDDEN DEATH OF OLD SERVANT—For Many Years a Faithful Servant in Family of Judge Crovatt.
There will be genuine sorrow expressed by a very large number of white people when they learn of the death of “Mammy Sue,” who has been faithful servant in the family of Judge A.J. Crovatt for the past thirty years.
Everybody knew “Mammy Sue”; she had been so identified with the family of “her people” as to be one of them.
Born in Charleston, a slave, Susan Abbot [sic], as she was known, was brought to St. Simons Island and was the servant of the Hazzard family there.
At the close of the war, Susan became a member of the family of Col. C.L. Schlatter, the father of Mrs. A.J. Crovatt. After the marriage of Miss Mary Lee Schlatter to Mr. A.J. Crovatt, “Mammy Sue” went with her young mistress and was the nurse of three children of Judge and Mrs. Crovatt.
As the widow of a soldier in the Federal Army during the war, Mammy Sue was awarded a pension by the government. Though her husband fought on the Federal side, Mammy Sue staid [sic] with her “own people.”
Famous as a cook, devoted to the interests of those with whom she had been so many years, the death of Mammy Sue removes another of the rare ante-bellum negroes.
Her illness was of only a few hours duration; the young daughter of the house, Mary Lee Crovatt, had gone to see the old woman at ten o’clock to give her a cup of tea; Mammy did not complain of being ill, and had been about her usual duties all day yesterday. Though eighty years of age, Mammy Sue was remarkably active, and was in full control of all her faculties. At one o’clock another of the servants heard the old woman calling, and Miss Crovatt and her brother went to the room in the servant’s house. When the door was opened, Mammy Sue was unconscious and died with(in) a few minutes.
Four children survive, Thomas and Joseph Abbot and Eliza Cuyler, all of whom live on St. Simons. Another son, Randolph Abbot, being in Charleston (note: no Randolph found). The body will be carried to St. Simons where it will be interred tomorrow.

FUNERAL OF MAMMY SUE HELD ON ST. SIMONS
The body of Susan Abbott, or “Mammy Sue” the aged servant of Judge A.J. Crovatt, was carried to St. Simons this morning for interment.
Services were held last night in the First African Baptist Church, of which church, Mammy Sue had long been a member. The Brunswick Journal; Tuesday 19 January 1909; pg. 1

______________________________

Almost two hundred years ago Susan Richardson Abbot was born into slavery on the plantation of Thomas Boone in Charleston, SC. After Boone died 28 October, 1831, his wife began selling off land and people.

*The Charleston Mercury Charleston, South Carolina* 16 Dec 1831, Fri • Page 1

On 13 December, 1831, Mary Boone sold eleven people, including Susan, her mother Chloe and her brother Richard, from her husband’s estate in Charleston S. C. to William W. & Mary Hazzard.

On the right page is the bill of sale for eleven enslaved people, including Susan, her mother Chloe and her brother Richard. Mary S. Boone, widow of Thomas Boone sold them to William Wigg Hazzard and his wife Mary Hazzard.

State of South Carolina

KNOW ALL MEN by these Presents, that Mary S Boone executrix of Thomas Boone for and in consideration of the sum of three thousand three hundred and eighty dollars to me in hand paid, at and before the sealing and delivery of these Presents by John Halsett & Corro B Lining trustees of Wm W Hazard & Mary Blake Hazard his wife (the receipt whereof do hereby acknowledge) have bargained and sold and by these Presents, do bargain, sell and deliver to the said Mr. Hazlett and Corro B Lining trustees aforesaid the following negro slaves – viz Sue – Chloe, Richard, Sue, Margaret, Maria, Hannah, Limas, Celia, Cyrus, Abe, Mily & Venus

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD, THE SAID above named negro slaves with the future issue and increase of the said females-unto the said John Haslett & Corro B Lining trustees aforesaid them…

In Witness thereof, have herunto set my Hand and Seal
Dated at Charleston – on the twenty sixth day of February in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty three and in the fifty seventh year of the Independence of the United States of America.

Signed, sealed and delivered in the presence of J. H. Peters, South Carolina

Mary J Boone executrix of Thomas Boone by her atty H A Devaussure

Recorded 26 Feb 1833.

West Point (on the left side of the map) was the name of William Wigg Hazzard’s plantation.

___________

Ruins of tabby houses in the slave quarters. on William Wigg Hazzard’s West Point plantation.

William Wigg Hazzard was one of fourteen large slave holders on St. Simons Island. The much prized Sea Island Cotton, was grown on their plantations. Long staple-cotton had a different culture than the cotton grown inland. It required more hand work. In 1810 Hazzard enslaved 53 people. By 1860, he enslaved 93. They were housed in 16 slave dwellings, making a little over 5 people per dwelling.

The housing was built using tabby, composed of the lime from burned oyster shells mixed with sand, water, ash, and other shells. The buildings, about 18 ft x 18 ft, consisted of one room. A fireplace at one end, was used for cooking and heat in cool weather.

Furnishings would have been minimal. Blankets were given out once every few years. Food and clothing rations were sparingly distributed. They may have been supplemented by gardening, hunting and fishing in the time not taken up by work.

Susan Richardson Abbott’s husband, Randolph Abbott, was enslaved on the plantation of Captain Charles Stephens, located next to the Hazzard’s plantations. Stevens made his money through shipping.

Randolph and Susan’s oldest child, was born in 1855, She was named Betsy. Over the next eight years five more children were born. Daughter Eliza was born in 1857. Son Bristol was born in 1858. Son Lewis was born in 1859. Son Thomas in 1861.

Susan Abbott and her husband were probably among the founders of the First African Baptist Church which was organized by enslaved people in their quarters below is the description From the church website.

The First African Baptist Church was organized at Pike’s Bluff Plantation in the year 1859. Members of this African American congregation traveled from all around the island to attend worship services every Sunday. The early pioneers worshiped in a little tabby church located near their quarters at West Point Plantation…

In December 1862, Susan Abbot’s husband, Randolph Abbott, joined the United States Colored Troops on St. Simon’s Island. At that time she was pregnant with the sixth child. Joseph, who was born in January of 1863, the same month his father was mustered into the USCT. He served for three years. On January 31, 1866 he was mustered out in Charleston, SC.

Records from Randolph Abbott’s Military File

Civil War and Beyond

from the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

“The Escaped Slave in the Union Army,” Harper’s Weekly, July 2, 1864, p. 428. (Courtesy of the House Divided Project)

The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 put a sudden end to St. Simons’s lucrative plantation era. In January of that year, Confederate troops were stationed at the south end of the island to guard the entrance to Brunswick Harbor. Slaves from Retreat Plantation, owned by Thomas Butler King, built earthworks and batteries. Plantation residents were scattered—the men joined the Confederate army and their families moved to the mainland. Cannon fire was heard on the island in December 1861, and Confederate troops retreated in February 1862, after dynamiting the lighthouse to keep its beacon from aiding Union troops. Soon thereafter, Union troops occupied the island, which was used as a camp for the formerly enslaved. By August 1862 more than 500 former slaves lived on St. Simons, including Susie King Taylor, who organized a school for freed slave children. But in November the ex-slaves were taken to Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Fernandina, Florida, leaving the island abandoned. After the Civil War the island never returned to its status as an agricultural community. The plantations lay dormant because there were no slaves to work the fields. After Union general William T. Sherman’s January 1865 Special Field Order No. 15 —a demand that former plantations be divided and distributed to former slaves—was overturned by U.S. president Andrew Johnson less than a year later, freedmen and women were forced to work as sharecroppers on the small farms that dotted the land previously occupied by the sprawling plantations.

Part 2 Susan Richardson Abbott 1867-1909

Beginning To Home School – Idlewild 1990

August 25, 2020Biography, NewslettersKristin

Tulani, Ayanna and James , soon after we started homeschooling. Tulani was 11, Ayanna was 13 and James was 7 when we began. This is the story as I wrote it for a newsletter I once published. Click on the pages below to enlarge.

garden produce — James, Tulani, Ayanna and Cabral holding flowers and produce from our garden.

Memories of Hair

August 24, 2020Biography#hair, #meKristin

From a letter written to her in-laws by my mother, written March 18, 1947.

Kris (with her 2 teeth) says any time for you all laughing at her bald head – I fear it’ll be covered all too soon with first one thing and then another.

Doris

When Pearl and I were little, my mother didn’t wash our hair often. Once every two weeks? Once a month? Not very often. She used Breck shampoo, put a little olive oil in the sink full of warm water and poured it over for the final rinse. After and between washings she’d part our hair and put “Three Flowers” grease on our scalp. I remember that sometimes, when I was in elementary school, she would roll it up on kleenix curlers and let me wear it “down” for one day after she washed it. I enjoyed the change from braids but it wasn’t really “down”.

Eventually I stopped going to the beauty shop, although my sister continued for years. There were the beauty shop headaches and I started taking swimming in junior high and high school. Those horrible bathing caps didn’t keep out the water and my hair soon took back it’s natural form.

My mother still straightened my hair for special occasions. She heated the comb on the stove and there were the inevitable burning of the ear. Other times I wore my hair in what a classmate described as a “shredded wheat biscuit”. Sometimes I borrowed some of my father’s Murray’s Pomade and after brushing the stiff, yellowish stuff in, it did lay down and had small waves.

The next summer, 1967, we had the Detroit riot/rebellion. My cousins, Janis and Greta, came to visit us for the first time from Athens, TN. They were the same age as Pearl and I. Somehow, it came up that I wanted to cut my hair for an afro. Greta volunteered to do it for me and she did. It was great! I loved it. The only scary part was going to my Grandmother Cleages for the first time afterwards. We were afraid she might say something negative or even mention it during mealtime prayers, but she didn’t. I was one of the first to wear an afro on Wayne’s campus. That fall, in Miriam’s Jeffries project student apartment, I cut several people’s hair for their first afros. I remember Kathy Gamble was sad to see her long hair fall on the floor. I cut Martha Prescod’s and can’t remember who else. I hadn’t cut anybody’s hair before, although I cut my own when it got too long.

I wore an afro until about 1988 when I decided to let my hair grow out and see what happened. I let it grow until 2004 or so when I cut it all off again and have kept it cut ever since.

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Until 2014 when I decided to let it grow out. It was more trouble to trim it than it would be to grow it out and have it longer.

Finding Eliza