The night I left. Waiting for time to go catch the bus.
I graduated with a BFA in December of 1968 and caught the Greyhound bus out of town right after Christmas. At the time, it was the only way I could figure out to leave home. My true love was living with someone else. My parents would not look kindly on me moving to my own place in Detroit, so I hit the road. I first went to San Francisco. Stayed about a week. The person I knew out there had returned to Mississippi. Decided to head to Washington D.C. where my sister was a student at Howard. I hadn’t enjoyed the 5 day bus ride out so I caught the train east. I stayed in my sister’s dorm room for a week or two, until one of her play writing teachers hooked me up with a friend of his in New York City, a woman from Belgium who taught French at Columbia University.
I caught the train to NYC and took a cab from Grand Central Station to her apartment on Riverside Drive. I remember looking out of the apartment window one evening, listening to Joni Mitchell singing “I’ve looked at Clouds” coming from another apartment. I stayed with her a week or two, got a job doing clerical work. Met some of her friends. Tried hash. Whoa. Moved to the YWCA when her mother came for a visit. Went through the blizzard of 1969. Got a letter from Jim and decided to go back to Detroit. I took a plane.
Sewing factory.
Some first thoughts on arriving back were that Detroit was the dirtiest place I’d been. Gray and dirty. I moved back in my mother’s and got a job at the newly opened Church sewing factory. It was just the sort of job I wanted. I didn’t have to give it any thought so I could devote my mind to planning and plotting other things. There were only about 4 of us working there, sewing African print “mod” clothes. I felt a connection to my seamstress ancestors while working there.
Several weeks later, I moved out, much to the consternation of my parents, especially my mother, who would have rather I discussed it with her first instead of the late night call I made telling her I wouldn’t be coming home. After staying in the Black Conscience Library for a few days (there was a living quarters), I found an apartment and discovered it wasn’t that hard to move out and be on my own. I felt a great weight off of my mind, being on my own. I worked there sewing for almost a year before leaving to become a revolutionary librarian and have my first daughter. I was 22.
Pregnant revolutionary librarian – making “Revolution Begins in the Mind” posters or something.
This photograph was taken in the alley beside my grandparent’s house on Theodore in Detroit in 1937. My grandfather, Mershell, was 47. He stands here with his daughters dressed for church. He worked at the Ford Rouge Plant, taking the street car to work everyday and saving the car for going to church and other weekend activities. Mary Virginia, my mother’s older sister, was 17 and a senior at Eastern High School, on East Grand Blvd within walking distance of the house. She graduated in June and in September went to Business College where she excelled in typing. My mother was 14. She graduated from Barbour Intermediate School that year and joined her sister at Eastern High School. Here are their report cards from that year.
Meanwhile, a lot going on in the world in 1937. The montage below contains photographs of some. The Memorial Day Massacre when Chicago police shot and beat union marchers who were organizing at Republic Steel Plant. Ten workers died. Amelia Earhart flew off and disappeared. The German Luftwaffe bombed Guernica, Spain during the Spanish Civil War in support of Franco and inspired the painting of the same name by Picasso . The Japanese invaded China, killing and raping thousands. Roosevelt was re-elected. The Hobbit was published. Gone With the Wind won the Pulitzer prize for Margaret Mitchell. The first animated full length film, Snow White came out. An anti-lynching law was passed. The Golden Gate Bridge was completed and opened with a day for pedestrians to walk across. Buchenwald concentration camp was build. The Hindenburg exploded and burned. King George VI’s coronation took place. Auto workers in Flint, Michigan won recognition for the UAW after a prolonged sit down strike. The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers flooded leaving devastation and death behind. Ethiopia was now in the hands of fascist Italy.
What was going on in 1937
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When I was in the second grade I became a Brownie for a few months. At the time my father had left St. Marks Presbyterian Church with 300 members and founded a new church, Central Congregational church. We met at Crossman School on Sunday and held all other church activities at 2254 Chicago Blvd. We also lived there. It was a huge house. That was my sister and my bedroom window on the upper right. Perfect casement windows for Peter Pan to fly through.
Central Congregational Parsonage at 2254 Chicago Blvd, Detroit.
The scout troops met in the basement recreation room where all of the youth activities were held. We wore the usual Brownie uniform and used the usual Brownie handbook. I remember only one event, a jamboree held at Roosevelt Elementary School in a small gym, up a short flight of stairs above the 2nd floor. There were various stations set up and we went to different ones and did different things. After several months I quit because I was bored. I wish I had a photo of me in my Brownie outfit, but I don’t.
At some point I was in the kitchen, which we shared with the church, while my mother was making dinner. One of the Brownie leaders came in to prepare a snack and asked where I’d been. I told her I wasn’t coming any more. That was my experience as a Brownie. One more thing I remember. A little girl at school, which was majority Jewish at that point, said there couldn’t be any brown Brownies. I don’t remember who she was telling this to but I told her, yes you could be because I was a brown Brownie.
That was the uniform I had on the right.
This was our scout handbook.
Input from Benjamin Smith, one of the scouts pictured below:
“Between Scouts and Youth Fellowship, I spent a lot of years in the parsonage basement. It was a different time. The side door was unlocked until your father went to bed.”
“I am the taller kid in the rear. All of us in that picture went through Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Explorers. Sadly, I am the only one still here. John Curry, standing, left front. Ligens Moore, seated front. Norman Cassells, seated front right. Harrison Stewart, standing with rope, front right. Benjamin Smith rear left. Longworth Quinn rear left. Ligens had a pilot’s license at 12 yrs old. Longworth’s father published the Michigan Chronicle for many years.
“The girl scouts from left to right, are Andrea Keneau, Ann Page, unknown, Laura Mosley and Janice Mosley, deceased (and Laura’s older sister.)
I remember Longworth. In 1969-1971 we both worked with the Black Conscience Library. He was in Law School at the time. Such a long, long time ago.
Times were different but I remember that someone tried to break into the house one night when my father wasn’t home. My mother rapped on the upstairs window with her ring – they were in the backyard trying to break in through the french doors of the conservatory – and they fled. Pearl and I were asleep. When she called the police they said she shouldn’t have knocked on the window, but she was so mad at the nerve of them. They would have been so angry if they had gotten inside and found nothing worth stealing.
My youngest son joined the Boy scouts. He was an active member of a troop in Baldwin, Michigan for some years. They did all the scout things, camped out, went on hikes, earned badges, went to Jubilee at Mackinaw Island. He earned the Sharp Shooter, Swimming, Water Skiing and the Polar Bear badge to name a few. To earn the Polar Bear Badge he had to camp out two nights in a row in weather below freezing, preparing all their meals at the campsite. As I remember it was in the 20 degree range. My husband became the troop treasurer and continued in that capacity long after my son lost interest. He also camped out in the 20 degree weather. They were a pretty free-spirited group and never wore uniforms so I have no photos of him in scout gear. My older children were in 4-H clubs.
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My mother, Doris Graham, was in the news quite a bit during her years at Eastern High School in Detroit. Some were from the school paper, “The Indian”. Some were from “The Detroit Tribune”, a weekly black newspaper published by my mother’s cousins, James McCall and his wife Margaret. I have other articles “starring” my mother but I am just using those from 1937 – 1940. The others will appear later. The articles were saved by my grandmother Fannie, Doris’ mother. The writing on them is hers.
An article written my mother for the Eastern High School paper, “The Indian”.
My mother sitting alone on the right front of the picture. From Eastern High Yearbook, “The Arrow”.
The same photograph was used from her Junior High graduation article.
From “The Detroit Tribune.”
From the Eastern High paper “The Indian.”
1 Year Scholarships to Wayne State University – from one of the Detroit daily papers.
Doris Graham Cleage in her classroom at Roosevelt Elementary School – 1959. 36 years old.
My mother was 36 years old and had been teaching for six years at Roosevelt Elementary school when it was taken. My sister and I attended Roosevelt. I had my mother for a Social Studies teacher when she first began teaching. We pretty much read the book, “Someday Soon.” and answered questions. It was not very interesting. She improved a LOT as she went through twenty years of teaching.
With class at Duffield Elementary School. Distar on the board. September 1969.
Her last teaching assignment was at Duffield Elementary school, where she taught reading using the Distar method. She loved it and taught it to me and I used it to teach all of my children to read.
I found the writing below in one of my mother’s notebooks. It isn’t dated and I don’t know if she wrote it after retirement or before or what she was planning to do with it.
Each year when school begins I see again the many ways in which my children are alike. I am equally impressed with their differences. Close on the heels of these feelings comes the realization that once more I must try to build with each child the kind of relationships that will make it possible for me to teach him.
Children ask themselves many questions about a new adult. Is she friendly? does she smile often? Does she really mean what she says? What does she expect of me? Too much? Too little? Can I be myself with her? Or must I pretend to be what she has already decided I must be? Will she listen when I am happy or in trouble or need help? Or will she always be too busy?
Satisfactory answers to these questions will mean satisfactory learning experiences for a child. Unsatisfactory answers will mean no learning – or even worse the learning of things that must later be unlearned.
It was a warm afternoon. The sounds of children at play came in through our open windows along with the good smell of newly cut grass.
My forty odd second-graders, (who come to me for two distressingly brief forty minute periods each week), were eagerly writing with crayons on small pieces of lined paper. Rough desks and clumsy crayons made writing difficult, but they settled to their pleasant task of writing for me their first and second choice for group work. We had been studying transportation as groups. Now according to our plan, we were dividing ourselves into groups of seven or eight to paint, draw write plays, poems, or stories, or create in clay about airplanes, boats, subways, cars or trains – whatever appealed the most to us. We had decided to use crayons instead of pencils because it took less time to pass crayons from a large box than it took to pass each one his own pencil.
As I walked among the crowded seats helping when I could, I came upon a small boy in a front seat. His paper was empty. His small fists were clenched on his desk. Leaning down to keep from disturbing others I asked, May I help you Julie?”
His close-set blue eyes were intense and unblinking as he raised them to me and said between clenched teeth, “I can’t do it.”
Thinking that he wanted a neat paper and knew that this was well-nigh impossible with crayon and rough desks, I said reassuringly, “Don’t worry about how it looks this time. Do the best you can.”
His hands did not move as he stared as his paper.
“I’ll never help him on the playground if he is in a fight – I don’t care if he is getting beaten, I’ll never help him.”
Work had stopped and forty pairs of eyes watched us unwaveringly.
“Who is it that you won’t help, Julie?”
He pointed silently to the boy who had passed a crayon to each child from a box of assorted colors. Julie’s jaw was set – his face moist, “I hate purple. He gave me a purple crayon I can’t stand it.”
Here was a child who brought to school a brilliant mind (At 7 he could read on a fifth-grade level) burdened by countless problems at home – over-worked parents building a small business, a senile grandmother, constant competition for recognition and affection with her as well as with older and younger brothers.
I stooped beside his desk. “We didn’t know that you don’t like purple. What color would you like to have?”
“I don’t care – but not this one! He opened his fist and showed a purple crayon moist from a small hand’s clenching.
All eyes were fixed on me as I rose from Julie’s desk. Their tension now was almost as great as his. I walked to the cupboard and returned with a green crayon. “Will this one do?”
He took it without a word and began to write his choices.
I looked over his head at the children. They smiled gently and I smiled back. We had taken another step on the road to good learning.
When I saw the theme for this weeks Sepia Saturday was film, I wanted to post a photo from a movie I remember wandering into one evening when I was about 4. We lived in St. John’s Congregational Church parsonage/community house in Springfield, Massachusetts where my father was pastor. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the movie. I remember waking up from my nap and going down the hall to a big room where the movie was being shown. There I saw a larger then life, green genie coming horrifyingly out of a bottle. Perhaps it was “The Thief of Bagdad“, released in 1940. By 1950 it could have been available for showing in darkened rooms full of folding chairs to community groups. I did not stick around after the Genie started coming out of the bottle.
However, this movie is not sepia and it’s not from my family photo stash, so I kept looking. Finally I remembered finding an envelope of negatives (film) of me, my bear, Beatrice, and my grandfather, Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr. They were taken in the Summer of 1948 in our backyard.
Click to enlarge
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Week 46. Politics. What are your childhood memories of politics? Were your parents active in politics? What political events and elections do you remember from your youth?
My sister and I – 1952
My first memory of politics is the 1952 presidential campaign. My parents supported Adlai Stevenson and I remember waking up the day after the election and asking who won. I was quite disappointed when I found it was not Stevenson.
As soon as I saw this weeks prompt for Sepia Saturday, I thought of this photograph. I decided to revisit an old post from Henry’s journal, written during several months of 1936, where he mentions playing the bass at a club.
January 11
Awoke to find that I had lost 2 dollars very depressed. Wrote on theme. Played tonight at Quinn’s Lone Pine with Duke Conte, played bass, terrible night. Fingers sore. Noticed how good-looking Lene is… Ought to throw a line – Police stopped us at about 1:00AM. No permit to play until two. I was glad. Very animal acting bunch in River Rouge. Most of them seem friendly though.
January 12
Played matinee dance at Elks rest with Heckes, Toddy and Bill – Dracee’s band came in and sat in awhile (no trouble) Kenneth was there. Too tired and sleepy to study history. Get up early tomorrow (no English) Toddy is going downtown to get some books is supposed to get me ‘American Tragedy” and ‘Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations”
January 13
Haliver Greene died this morning -spinal meningitis. Didn’t get up early to study History, however there was no class – lecture tomorrow so I won’t slide, tonight. Toddy bought back two books about lives of Educators (putrid!!) only 25 cents a piece though – awfully windy out today-not so cold thought – like March. I would like to have been in the country, wrapped up good, walking into the wind at the Meadows, down the road towards the sand pile or over the hill to the creek – zest, spice, life, health, clear eye, firm step and all that sort of thing.
January 14
Cold out this morning although it became somewhat spring like after school. Went to show after school. Another big fight this morning, I think they think I skip classes because I am sleepy, nonsense. Bought ‘Bartlett’s Quotations” $1.53. Seems worthwhile. Read one of dictator books – Good – tonight as I was going to the store the weather brought memories of spring. Roller-skating in street, if not roller skating then walking. Everybody walking and friendly. The crowd at Krueger’s and the tent. Perhaps riding through Belle isle – water, boats.
George Reed was my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage’s oldest brother. He gave his birth date as January 10, 1867, in Lebanon, Marion County, Kentucky. He never married and had no children but as the oldest in a home without a man, he became the man of the house. He never learned to read or write and earned his living as a laborer. We have no photographs of him.
George is found in the 1870 through 1910 Census with his mother Anna Reed and various siblings. After Anna died and Pearl married I haven’t found him in any census but I did find him in the Indianapolis City Directory again in 1930. Turned out, George was not listed in the 1920 or the 1930 census due to the census taker stopping at the end of the 2800 block of Kenwood (both times). George does appear in the 1930 and 1940 Indianapolis City Directory at 2730 Kenwood Avenue. Pearl married in 1910 and mother Anna died in 1911, which means that George lived at 2730 Kenwood, alone, for over thirty years. Today the 2700 block of Kenwood is a parking lot.
George is listed as 3 in the 1870 census and 13 in the 1880 census. This would make him born in 1867. George is listed as 28 in the 1900 which would make him born in 1872, same as on his death certificate. Clearly there is a five year discrepancy in his age as reported on various documents.
According to my aunt, George migrated to Indianapolis as a young man of 15 to work at the Van Camp Canneries in 1887. Since there are two colored George Reed’s in Indianapolis during the 1880s we need to be careful here. Our George is listed in 1891 at 11 Willard Ave. There is a George E in 1889 and a George in 1888 in the City Directory that also may have been him. I believe that George did arrive in Indianapolis in 1887, however he would have been twenty years old and not fifteen at that time. During the next several years the whole family followed George to Indianapolis.
My Aunt Anna told me that a friend of her parents called them from Indianapolis in 1945 to tell them that George had been found wandering around disorientated. My grandparents went and got him and he stayed with them in Detroit where he died later that year. He died on May 28, 1945. His body was sent back to Indianapolis by train and he was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery. There is a simple marble slab with his name and dates on it. I visited once. You can see it here.
Click to enlarge
George Reed Funeral
“Funeral services for George Reed, 73, colored, who died Monday at the home of Dr. and Mrs. A. B. Cleage, Detroit, were held today at the C. M. C. Willis mortuary, with the Rev. J. A. Alexander, pastor of Bethel A. M. E. church, officiating. Burial was in Crown Hill. the body was accompanied here by Dr. and Mrs. Cleage and Henry Cleage, Detroit. Mr. Reed became ill here a year and a half ago and was taken to Detroit where he had lived with his sister, Mrs. Cleage. Survivors, besides Mrs. Cleage, are two other sisters, Mrs. Sara Busby, Benton Harbor, Mich; and Mrs. Minnie Mullins, Detroit; and two brothers, Clarence Reed, Chicago, and Hugh Reed, who has lived in the West several years.”
According to the Administrator’s Final Report there was $18,462.91 (Worth $243,814.95 in today’s dollars.) on deposit at the Railroad Men’s Building and Loan Association. He had a dividend on a savings account for $193.50 in 1945 and another $195.24 for 1946. Royalty from Rubber Stock came to $3.00, which brought his assets to $18,854.65. He also owned a single home at 2730 Kenwood, Ave. Included in the $1,025 costs for the administration of the Estate are $9.65 railroad fare to carry his remains back to Indianapolis and $75 to the Hoosier Monument Company.
A cartoon from the 1919 July 26 issue of The Montgomery Emancipator. It was edited by James McCall who we saw here as a young, blind poet. He continued to write poetry and became a publisher of several newspapers, both in Montgomery and Detroit. Below is part of an essay written by his daughter, Margaret McCall Thomas Ward.
Pioneer Journalists: James Edward McCall and Margaret Walker McCall
by Margaret McCall Thomas Ward (their daughter)
James Edward McCall’s destiny was to become a pioneer African American journalist and Newspaper publisher. He began his life as a mixed race colored boy in the deep south, one generation away from slavery. His parents, Edward McCall and Mary Allen McCall, were emancipated slaves. They were the offspring of white masters. Edward was a skilled carpenter and Mary was a talented dressmaker.
The couple placed great stress on education and they used their resources to educate their five children to college level. James, the oldest of the five children, graduated from Alabama State Normal College in Montgomery, Alabama. He left Alabama for Washington, D.C. to enroll in Howard University Medical School. At that time, he was recognized in Montgomery literary circles as a gifted poet, however, he dreamed of following in the path of his paternal grandfather who was a physician. Fate intervened. At the end of his first year at Howard, he contracted typhoid fever which damaged his optic nerve. Gradually, his vision diminished and for the rest of his life he was totally blind.
He returned home to Alabama, broken hearted. After he accepted the shock of knowing that he would never see again, he decided to look for another career. He enrolled in Albion College in Albion, Michigan, and he graduated in 1907. This time, he returned to Alabama with the determination to help people by using his gift and skills as a writer. Even though he was unable to see, he had the advantage of a trained mind and a superior education. He embarked on a crusade against injustices African Americans endured, not only in the south but throughout the United States.
In 1910, his destiny as a compelling voice for racial equality began in Montgomery Alabama. He published a magazine dedicated to relieving the problems of domestic servants in the south by organizing and training this important work force. He named the magazine The Colored Servant Girl, and he wrote of the dignity of this occupation in an editorial entitled “What a Blind Man Sees in Passing.” Also, he wrote articles about the activities of the Black community, and he published the articles in the white daily newspaper. The articles were very widely read. The success which he enjoyed with the publication of the magazine and articles motivated him to publish his own newspaper, the Emancipator.
Now begins the story of James McCall and Margaret Walker McCall, which is a romantic saga of ambition, faith, and love which lasted fifty years. Margaret Walker, a lovely, ambitious graduate of Hampton Institute in Virginia and Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, fell in love with the blind newspaper man. In 1914, they married and became a team in publishing the Emancipator. Margaret worked in the capacity of Office Manager in their businesses. She was the “eyes” of the union. In 1929, when the Ku Klux Klan was most powerful in Montgomery, Alabama, the life of the outspoken editor was threatened. The McCalls decided to migrate to Detroit, Michigan. In a safer environment for themselves and their two daughters, they continued their newspaper careers. For several years, James, with Margaret at his side, edited the Detroit Independent, a Negro weekly that flourished through the 1920s.
By 1935, McCall was editor and owner of the Detroit Tribune, which at that time was the only Negro weekly newspaper edited and published by and for Negroes in Michigan. He called himself a “race man”. Quite often, he used his poetic skill to write poems such as “The New Negro.” which was published in many anthologies. He used the Detroit Tribune to crusade for better and more jobs for Negroes, better education for Negroes, promotion of Negroes in the Police and Fire Departments, and increased voter registration. His paper was the first to wage a fight against police brutality in Detroit. He campaigned for Black judges in the courts, for the right of labor to organize and for Negroes to join labor unions.
Due to advancing years, the McCalls sold the Detroit Tribune in 1946 and retired. In 1963 James Edward McCall died.
This is a shortened version of that published, in full, in “Our Untold Stories A Collection of Family History Narratives” Compiled and written by members of the Fred Hart Williams Genealogical Society of Detroit, Michigan You learn more about the book, which includes 64 African American family history stories, here Fred Hart Williams Genealogy Society. It’s available on ebay also.
