Category Archives: Cleages

Mystery Class photo

Cleages, Detroit
Students at Norvell School 1940s. I noticed the strip of airplanes above the students and wondered about that. There is a story below about a Xmas drive for the pilots at an air force base.

A few years ago one of my cousins sent me the above photograph. They didn’t know anything about it. Unfortunately my aunt Gladys Cleage Evans, who was an art teacher from 1944 to 1948 is no longer with us to identify. I’m assuming that this was one of her classes during that time. She taught at Norvell elementary school on Detroit’s East side in the old Black Bottom neighborhood, since urban renewed out of existence.

My maternal grandfather lived in Black Bottom when he first arrived in Detroit from Montgomery, Alabama in 1917. It was the ghetto where the vast majority of black people in Detroit lived and where all the people he knew that had gone to Detroit from Montgomery before him, lived. Anyway, back to the photo.

My cousin Dee Dee with her younger sister Barbara. Dee Dee was a Student at Smith Elementary School.
My aunt Gladys Cleage, art teacher at Novell School

Then I remembered that my cousin Dee Dee on my mother’s side had lived in the Norvell neighborhood at that time and I wondered if she had attended Norvell. She didn’t, she attended Smith Elementary, a few blocks away in a different direction. On the map below you can see both schools, plus where Dee Dee lived. Gladys lived with her parents over on the Old West Side of Detroit.

The neighborhood. Norvell Elementary School up on the left. Click to enlarge.

Students Set Fine Example in Goodwill

Oscoda Fliers Will Get 450 Box Presents

The Michigan Chronicle
Saturday October 30, 1943

The children of the Norvell school are attempting something rather unique this year as a Christmas project. They decided that it would be a nice thing and entirely in keeping with the Christian spirit of the Yuletide season to devote their entire efforts to packing Christmas boxes for the fliers of the Oscoda Air Base.

David Blair, captain of the Safety Patrol and Sophie Smith, captain of the Service Girls’ club, head a committee of fifteen students who are doing all of the work within the school. It is planned that 450 boxes or, one for each two children in the school, will be the result of this project.

Extensive Program

The children are writing up their own publicity, drawing posters to be displayed in the halls and conducting speaking programs in the various rooms to stimulate interest in this activity.

It is hoped that officiers from the Oscoda Air Base will visit the school while the project is in being, and give the children first-hand information about life in the United States Army Air Corp.

A board of directors has been selected to supervise the buying of materials for the Christmas boxes, and generally oversee the project. This board is composed of: Miss Carolyn Dunbar, teacher, Norvell school; Mrs. Fannie Goodgame, director, Nursery School, Gleiss Memorial Center; Mrs. Laura Ford, a parent, 2916 Jos. Campau; Owen F. Stemmelen, principal, Norvell school.

The philosophy of the staff at the Norvell school is molded around the theory that, the enthusiasm and activity of children, if guided into well directed channels, will furnish much needed power, and that busy hands have no time for mischief.

The students who are working on the committee with Sophie and David are: James Finley, Elbert Foster, Herman Parks, Helen Johnson, Betty Matthews, Mildren Remsing, Albert Grimaldi. Charles Hollins, Eileen Brown, Helen Taylor, Frank Lauria, Mary Bologna, Delores Berry, Calvin Montgomery, Leroy Dennard, Robert Ketelhut, Alphonse Stafford, Joan McAlpin and Dora Davis.

Quizdown

I stumbled across Quizdown while investigating the Smith and Norvell schools. Quizdown was held every Saturday morning at Detroit Institute of Arts and broadcast on the radio. Sponsored by The Detroit Free Press and featured teams from two local schools competing against each other by answering general knowledge questions provided by other Detroit area students. Various famous people appeared on the show and interacted with the students.

Other School photo stories

Eighth Grade Graduating Class – Wingert Elementary School Detroit, 1922

The Afram River and Freedom School – 1964

Leaping at the Meadows

Cleages, ,

There seem to have been at least two photographers taking pictures of the event. Louis Cleage, laying on the ground in the background, is seen taking photos at one point. Someone was also taking them from the front. Who that was, I don’t know. Maybe Henry.

Click on any image to enlarge in a different window.

Hugh Cleage running to jump. Unknown youth watches, becomes inspired.
Hugh’s flying leap. Louis watches.
Hugh Lands.
Unknown youth taking a running leap. Louis Cleage taking a photo
Flying
Landing

Memories of the Meadows from my Aunt Gladys via FB message and her daughter Jan in 2010:
“Albert Senior and a bunch of fellow doctors bought it. It was to be a place where everyone could get away and the kids could meet and play.. big house on the property with a porch that wrapped around 2/3 of the house… (Plum Nelly was the conscientious objector farm) … dances on the porches… near Capac Michigan… Apparently they sold it later. she kind of remembers parties on the porch… a get-a-way other than the Boule or Idlewild. Mom remembers the boys spending a couple weeks at the meadows during the summer and Louis packing the provisions.”

For more Sepia Saturday Posts, Click photo

Other posts about the Meadows

Hugh Fishing At the Meadows
‘Rocco, Smitty – Getting a ticket for fishing!
D – DIARY Entry – Henry 1936
Henry’s Diary Part 2 – 1936 with photos from the Black Album
Follow up on Henry’s Diary
The Meadows 1940s
More About The Mystery Couple
My parents about 1943

Evans’ in the 1950 Census

1950 Census, Cleages,
Warren Cleage Evans
Head nurse, Mrs. Turner and Dr. Eddie Evans 1952
Gladys holding baby Warren on a trip home. Sister Barbara stooping down.

In the 1950 Census Eddie and Gladys (Cleage) Evans and their one year old son Warren, were living in Tuskegee, Alabama on the campus of the Tuskegee Institute. The U.S. Army Air Corps had established a training program at Tuskegee in 1941. That is where the Tuskegee Airmen were trained.

All three were identified as Negro. Eddie and Gladys were both 27 years old. Eddie Evans had been born in Alabama and had worked 70 hours the previous week as a resident doctor of internal medicine at the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Hospital. This hospital opened in 1923 and was the first and only staffed by Black professionals.

Glady Cleage Evans was born in Michigan. She had not worked outside of the home in the past weeks and was listed as “H” – being home. Her hours of work in the home were not counted. She was also listed as having an occupation as an art teacher in an elementary school, even though she was not at present engaged in it.

There was a note concerning their address, which was given as “8th house on right”. The note said: 2) Line 28, items 3, 8th House on right from Lincoln Gates on Franklin Road was omitted to meet schedule given the serial number 47. It was later discovered this house had 5 dwellings units. These units were given the lowest unused serial number beginning with 58 to 61 inclusive, with no. 62 given to unit 50 – last available no.

Lincoln Gate is the main gate into Tuskegee Institute. Franklin road goes around the edge.

The housing was somewhere along the Franklin arrows. Could not find exact location.
The Lincoln gate, Tuskegee Institute, Ala 1906. The New York Public Library Digital Collections

Warren Cleage Evans was one of the numbers that were enlarged upon at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, since he was only one year old, he did not really have any information to enlarge upon.

Memories of the Tuskegee hospitals here -> I Remember The Hospitals

Extended Family Gathering – Memorial Day 1922

Cleages, Detroit
“Daddy, Grammom, Uncle Jake. The whole bunch” Written on the back.

Memorial Day in 1922 was on a Sunday. The temperatures were in the 70s. My paternal grandparents with their five children joined the extended Cleage family at a picnic. There are several photographs from the day. Unfortunately both group photos are damaged – the one above has pieces missing and the one below is very blurry. Both group photos are hard to identify because people are so jumbled up instead of standing in easy to see straight lines.

Starting from the left of the first photograph from the outing are two headless women and I don’t know who they are, although the second one is wearing an identical coat (click link to see it) to the one Uncle Henry’s wife wore the next year. The little girl is my Aunt Barbara, next to her is my Uncle Hugh, Uncle Louis, Uncle Henry, Theodore Page (who looks like he has a double). My great uncle Henry’s little daughter, Ruth, who is holding the same ball the catcher is holding in the action shot. Behind her is my grandfather Albert B. Cleage Sr., with a cigar and a flag stuck in the ground in front of him. In back of them are, an unknown man, my great grandmother Celia Rice Cleage Sherman, her son Jacob, my father Albert “Toddy”, three people I don’t know them.

Another photo from the day is a very blurry group photo. 

Above is a very blurry group photo.  My grandmother Pearl on the far left. Looking over her shoulder is Aunt Gertrude (Theodore’s aunt). Next to my grandmother is a woman I don’t know, next is my great uncle Jake (Gertrude’s husband.)

with little Barbara in front of her. ,   Hugh is next to Barbara,  My father is in the front row center, next to him is my great grandmother, Celia Rice Cleage Sherman, a little kid, probably my uncle Louis is next.  Behind Louis we see Theodore Page.  My grandfather is on the end holding a flag.

“Theodore Page and Toddy”

My father’s cousin, Theodore Page, is ready at the bat while my father, “Toddy” seems oblivious to the fact that he could have his head knocked off when Theodore goes to hit the ball. 

My uncle Henry loved baseball and often described the game in terms that made it seem like a work of art or a piece of music. My mother’s mother used to listen to games on the radio. I never liked playing the game – I could not hit the ball. I didn’t like watching it, compared to basketball, baseball games seem so long and slow moving.

More about Theodore Page, the batter above, from The Church Calendar in 1960

Mr. Theodore Page was a charter member of Central Congregational Church. He was Deacon-Trustee of the church from it’s organization until the time of his death. He was a member of the Men’s Club, the Usher Board, Area Group III and was co-chairman of the Stewardship Committee. He accomplished an effective job in evangelism.

Mr. Page loved three things, his church, Masonic Lodge and his music. He was a very active Mason, a musician and a conscientious church worker.

(unreadable) minister, one of four children and born in Helena, Arkansas, Aug. 24, 1902. At the time of his death, he was working as a Final Inspector in the Automotive Department for the U. S. Government. His wife and daughter, Ann, will always remember him as a dedicated husband and father. Mr. Page succumbed May 22, 1959.

My paternal grandparents. Dr. Albert B. Cleage with a flag and a cigar . Pearl Reed Cleage pregnant with their sixth child, Gladys.
Clifton, Mary V, Lewis, Mershell Graham. 1922 Brighton Gardens, Michigan

Meanwhile, my mother’s family was celebrating at Brighton Gardens, a black resort about 45 minutes from Detroit. My mother wasn’t born until the following year.

A clipping from the same Memorial Day outing above that comes from my maternal grandmother’s scrap book.
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Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church – 1909

Cleages, Indianapolis, sepia saturday
Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church Congregation 1909 Indianapolis, Indiana

This is a photograph of the congregation of Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, IN in 1909, two years after they organized. This photograph is from the personal collection of my cousin Vivian Vaughn McDonald.  My grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage is the third person on the top right. My grandfather, Albert Cleage is next to her.  They wouldn’t be married for two more years. Next to Albert is his brother Jacob and next to him is their brother Henry.  Directly in front of my grandfather Albert is Jacob’s wife, Gertrude.

I was told that my grandfather’s sister Josephine, also a church member, was not there for the photograph, but was home pregnant with Hattie Ruth, the youngest of her five children. Her husband, James Cleage  stands four people to the left of Henry.  James Cleage was from a different branch of Cleages.  In the second row, second from the right, is Henrietta Cleage, oldest daughter of James and Josephine.

In the 1909 Indianapolis City Directory Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church is listed as located in Realty Hall with Rev. David White as Pastor.  I wonder if he is in this photograph and if so, which one he is?

From “History of the American Negro Virginia Edition” published 1921

I finally found a photograph of Rev. David French White! He was older, but I think he is the man in the front row holding two boys on his knees, seventh from the left. What do you think?

The history below was from the Witherspoon web page, however they  have taken the history section down. My grandparents, Albert Cleage and Pearl Reed, are both listed as founders.

On April 30, 1907 the Presbytery of Indiana of the United Presbyterian Church held a called meeting at Realty Hall in response to a petition signed by 31 persons asking to be organized into a United Presbyterian congregation.

Begins With 31 Members

Prof. David Graham of Rushville was moderator and Rev. W. W. McCall of Greensburg was secretary. Other members present were Rev. Fred W. Schmuch of Milroy, Rev. N. B. McClung of Vevay, Rev. Mr. McDill of Madison, and Dr. Cowan of Indianapolis.

The petition was discussed at some length. By unanimous vote an organization was decided upon. The 31 members who signed the petition were as follows: Henry W. Cleage, Mrs. Carrie Perkins, Mrs. Emma Moore, A. T. Roney, Mrs. Cora Donann, Mrs. Cathern Crenshaw, Mrs. Daisy L. Brabham, Albert Cleage, Mrs. Gertrude Cleage, James Myers, Mrs. A. L. McElrath, O. F. Dennis, Mrs. Hattie  Mitchell, H. M. Mitchell, Mrs. Theresa Finley, Othello Finley, Miss Edith Finley, Miss Luell E. Hibbett, Mrs. Mary Peterson, Mrs. Anna Bowman, John T. Fox, Miss Pearl Reed, Thomas H. Bransford, Mrs. O. F. Dennis, Miss Alice Mathews, Miss Hilda Reeder, W. J. Perkins, Henry Moore and H. L. Hummons.

W – Flyin’ WEST

A-Z Challenge 2023, Cleages

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.

Pearl Cleage is my sister and I remember seeing this play when it was first produced in Atlanta. I believe I tried to warn the actors at one point to beware the villian. Of course they ignored me, but he got his come-up-ins. Below is part of an interview with Pearl by Arts Atl talking about how she was visited by Miss Leah while driving and came to write Flyin’ West. You can read the full interview at the link.

ArtsATL: In the program notes for the 20th-anniversary production of “Flyin’ West,” you write that the origin of the play was hearing the voice of the character “Miss Leah” speak to you. Could you talk about that moment?

Pearl Cleage: Well, I’d never really had that kind of experience before. I’m not a mystical kind of writer where I go someplace and the voices of my characters speak to me. I was driving down the freeway, and I heard a woman’s voice talking and it sounded like she was sitting in the back seat of my car. She was talking about having had 10 children in slavery, and they were all sold away. She was talking so clearly that I actually turned around to see if someone had gotten into my car while it was parked. And of course there was no one there. I was trying to write down what she said and drive on the freeway, which was not a good idea. I got off the freeway at Piedmont and International Boulevard and pulled into a little parking lot and just wrote down what I remembered she had said, and it made its way into the play almost exactly as I’d heard it.

It was amazing to me, because I’d never had that experience before and because I had not had an interest in these settlements or that part of American history. I had known something about the settlements but hadn’t really been trying to dig into that part of history. But I was like, “I’m enough of a mystic to know a sign when I see one.”

#AtoZChallenge 2023 letter W

U- ULTIMATE Eggnog

A-Z Challenge 2023, Cleages, Detroit, ,

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.

eggnog
Pearl with an eggnog mustache, my mother, me posing with our goblets of eggnog about 1963.
eggnog recipe
.Detroit Free Press, 18 Dec 1977, Sun  •  Page 73 I can’t believe we used all that sugar!

This was the eggnog we drank during the Christmas/New Year holidays. I got the recipe from my mother. When I found it in the Newspaper, it is dated 1977. We were drinking it during the 1960s. I looked in my mother’s Women’s Home Companion Cookbook and found …

This recipe is what we must be drinking in these photos! There was no whisky or cognac brandy added.

Women’s Home Companion Cook Book page 95
My mother and me playing Stratego and drinking eggnog.
#AtoZChallenge 2023 letter U

T – TRAIN TRIP Revisited

Cleages, sepia saturday, ,

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.

Several years ago, I wrote about a trip to the west that my grandparents, Albert and Pearl Cleage made by train from Detroit to California. They were traveling with a group. I wasn’t sure when or where they went, aside from starting in Detroit. Since then I have found photographs that show they visited The Garden of the Gods in Colorado, the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and a beach with Oil derricks in the distance which may be Venice, California. They also visited an old west set and a mission bell, which I have so far been unable to locate.

I also decided that a photo of the grown children still living at home, eating dinner with my parents, dates the photo between 1951 and 1953 when we lived in that house.

Waiting for the train. My grandmother Pearl Cleage on the far right.
Garden of Gods-outside Colorado Springs.
By Ahodges7 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8776166
Garden of the Gods . My grandfather Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr.
By Dicklyon – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109743047
Southwest Mission Bell
A stagecoach on a movie set.
My stylish grandparents – Albert and Pearl Cleage. He is wearing the rakish white hat and she is wearing the stylish black hat, with a feather.
My grandmother holding her hat on.

Looking out over the vista. My grandparents are on the far right.

A beach with derricks. Venice Southern California? Venice is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California.
Venice California oil derricks. Venice is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California.
Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, California.
Hollywood bowl
The Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, California
At a train station

We moved back to Detroit in 1951 and lived down the street from my grandparents who lived on Atkinson. At that time my aunts and uncles in the photo below lived with my grandparents.

My mother seems to be on her way to the kitchen, perhaps to refill a serving dish. From the left, we have my uncle Louis, my mother, Uncle Hugh and part of Aunt Anna and my father. I believe that this dinner took place when my grandparents took the trip. I can think of no other reason that they would all be crowding around the dinner table. The photographer must be my uncle Henry, who doesn’t appear in the photo. Where were my sister and I? Perhaps sitting at a different table. Perhaps it was after dark and we were in bed.

dinner atkinson
Around the table
#AtoZChallenge 2023 letter T

S – SEMINARY

A-Z Challenge 2023, Cleages, Detroit

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.

Transcribed from the sermon “On the Origins of Christianity”, December 8, 1967, by my father Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr. You can listen to this excerpt below.

Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. about 1950 Springfield, MA

I can remember Christianity never meant a whole lot to me when I was a child. I went to ordinary Negro churches where not too much was being said and not much of anything was being done. My experience with black Christian churches in my childhood was a very disillusioning experience. I wondered why anybody wasted time Sunday after Sunday going into the building and sitting there listening to utter nonsense that had no relationship at all to the lives of the people who were sitting there. It seemed there had to be some tremendous traditional hold upon people to make them continue to go in.

The church I went to was a Presbyterian church here in the city and they had a series of preachers, as I can understand, it was not too prosperous a church at that time, and I can’t remember a one, not a one out of a whole series, a whole childhood that ever had anything to say on a Sunday morning that would make black people come in and listen, that had any message for the world in which they lived. That had anything to do with the problems that they faced. And yet it’s important that we realize that we tend to accept this kind of thing, this is the church. We don’t expect, really, as black people, we don’t expect the church to say anything. We don’t really expect the church to mean anything. We don’t really expect the church to be anything. When we come into church, we expect to get the warm feeling of tradition. Maybe it calls to mind a church down home some place where we used to be young and have friends. It calls it to mind and this gives us a sort of a warm glow which bathes the innocuousness of the minister and the off-beat of the choir into something that we think is pleasant, but it has very little to do with what we are actually getting in the church. It’s some ancient memory that we bring to the experience of worshiping Christ in church today.

Now it’s important, I think, that we realize this. I know during my childhood Christianity had very little meaning. My mother talked about it all the time. Obviously for her it had meaning and obviously it was painful that for me it had no meaning. For most of her children it had no meaning. And she couldn’t see that the church we were going to had anything to do with it. We were supposed to believe. Now that had nothing to do with the church, just you were supposed to believe. Everybody’s supposed to believe. It’s the only way you get to Heaven.

I remember the first time I began to have any conviction that the church could in any way be meaningful, was when one evening I just happened to stumble into the Plymouth Congregational Church when the Rev. Horace White was preaching. And he was the first minister I had ever heard who made the slightest effort to make sense. I was amazed to sit in a congregation and hear a minister who was trying to say something. He didn’t always succeed, but he was always trying to say something. And for him Christianity had to have some relationship with the world. And so, I listened to him. And I said Christianity really isn’t as empty and meaningless as people everywhere would lead children to think. It is possible for an individual to take the Bible and try and apply it to the world. To try and see in the Bible a revelation, an epiphany to see God revealed in the Bible. It’s possible. And I only came to believe it because I saw a man trying to do it. Now he fell far short of understanding how the Bible really relates to the lives of Black people because he was at the beginning of a long process. I mean, much has happened since he tried to preach sense to a black congregation. And we’ve gone through a lot of experiences since then. We are different now than we were ten, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago when he was trying to preach sense basing it upon the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. But I think back now how many things he didn’t understand, that I didn’t understand. I decided at Plymouth church to enter the ministry and I went to a seminary. 

++++++++

You can hear the whole sermon and see his sermon notes in this post – On The Origins of Christianity.

#AtoZChallenge 2023 letter S

R – RACING

A-Z Challenge 2023, Cleages, Detroit, ,

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.

Michigan Chronicle, February 8, 1947. Front page

“Hugh, Gladys and Anna Cleage of Scotten took their share of places in the annual city ice skating meet which was held at Belle Isle last Sunday afternoon.  Anna won first place and a gold medal in the Senior girls’ novice; Gladys, third in the same event and  a gold medal.  Hugh competed in the men’s 220 and two-mile events.”

Years later, my aunt Anna told me that the story was wrong. She actually came in third and Gladys won the race.  She remembered taking an early lead in the race but soon falling behind as Gladys easily over took her.  One reason might have been that Anna kept looking over her shoulder to see Gladys smiling as she gained on her. They learned to skate at the  Northwestern High School skating rink, which was a few blocks from their home on Scotten Avenue. Years later, my sister and I also learned to skate there.

The Michigan Chronicle, February 8, 1947

After being asked how two gold medals were given, I looked for more news articles that would set the record straight. Unfortunately, I found none. I can only suppose that the Chronicle got it wrong and only 1st place winner, Gladys Cleage got a gold medal. Third place winner Anna Cleage should have received a bronze metal.

I did find two articles, one tells that there was a meet. The other mentions a Northwestern High School student who won an earlier national meet.

Detroit Free Press, Sun, Feb 02, 1947 · Page 1
The Detroit Tribune, Sat, Feb 01, 1947 · Page 10

John James, Junior, of Northwestern High School, became the first Negro ever to win a championship in a North American or nation meet when he won the Intermediate two-mile event in the DETROIT NEWS sponsored North American Meet at Belle Isle on Sunday. James, a 16-year-old Northwestern Junior, is also a bike racer of local repute.

#AtoZChallenge 2023 letter S