Taken at Old Plank about 1963. Me with my cousins, Blair, Jan and Dale. They seem to be trying to pose for the photographer while I am about to cause trouble with that ball. I was a senior at Northwestern High School in Detroit. Old Plank was 30 minutes outside of Detroit near Wixom. We had 2 acres with a big house and although there was talk of moving there, we didn’t. We went for weekends to get out of the city until 1967, after the riot when the printing business lost the businesses that burned or left. At the same time, a man bought the barn and let his chickens and hogs run lose. Before he and Henry came to blows, they sold him the house.
There were two more photographs taken that same day. I think they were taken in the order shown below. My uncle Henry took the photos and developed them at the print shop that he and Hugh ran at the time – Cleage Printers.
The Black Messiah was published in 1968. It was taken from sermons that my father made about black power and the black Jesus. I have all of those sermons am thinking about putting them online in the coming year.
I remember taking my copy with me when I went on my cross country bus/train/plane trip after graduating from Wayne State University. At the train station in San Francisco, as I waited to catch a train to D.C., a young white guy came up and started talking to me. He asked about the book but mainly he wanted to talk about waiting for his girl friend (or a woman he hoped would be his girl friend) coming in on the next train.
I also remember lending my mother-in-law my copy when she was visiting us in Simpson County, Mississippi. She didn’t finish reading it before she was scheduled to take a flight back to St. Louis. She carefully covered the book with a brown paper bag cover because she didn’t want anybody to see the cover.
Below, Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., interviewed by Scott Morrison, Mutual News (New York: Radio Station WOR-AM, November 1968)
The original stained glass window before the Black Madonna mural was added in 1967. It was a picture of the Pilgrims landing in America. Brewster Pilgrim Congregational Church owned the building before they sold it to us. At one point, as I remember, they wanted to take the window with them but did not want to pay to remove and replace it. It is still under the present mural of the Black Madonna.
The Advent sermon below was preached on the first Sunday of Advent, November 27, 1966 by my father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr., who was later known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman.
The original Northwestern High School stood on the corner of Grand River and West Grand Blvd in Detroit. It was built in 1911.
When I finished writing up this post, I googled Northwestern High School and found the following statement in an online article from 2011 about school closures in Detroit:
“The academic program at Northwestern High School will close and the Detroit Collegiate Preparatory High School program will relocate from the east wing of Northwestern into the main academic part of the facility. Because of the importance of the Northwestern name to DPS and the community, this new program will be called Detroit Collegiate Preparatory High School at Northwestern.”
So, like so many other places of importance in my early life in Detroit, Northwestern High is no more. The original building was replaced in 1980 and the school was closed in 2011. So many of my family attended high school at Northwestern, some just for a year or two. Here is something about those who graduated, starting with Alberta Cleage in 1927 and ending with my sister Pearl in 1966.
Click on any image to enlarge.
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Cousin Alberta Cleage, my grandfather’s brother Edward’s daughter, came up from Athens Tennessee to stay with her Uncle Albert and his family and graduated from Northwestern High School in 1927.
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My uncle Louis Cleage graduated Cum Laude in 1931 and appeared in a picture of the physics lab, right there lower right, first desk. Advertisements for his medical practice appeared in the Norwester in 1941 and 1942.
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Henry Cleage appears in a photograph of the orchestra in 1933 and as a graduating senior in 1934. He is in the back row, 4th from the left with his cello.
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My uncle Hugh Cleage graduated in 1936, unfortunately that yearbook is missing.
Hugh Cleage
My aunt Barbara Cleage graduated in summer school in August of 1938
Barbara Cleage
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My aunt Gladys Cleage graduated in 1939. In the photo on the right Gladys is standing in front of the back steps. You can see Henry over her right shoulder. Not sure who the other two are but my grandmother Pearl is looking through the screen door.
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My cousin Geraldine Cleage, Uncle Henry Cleage’s daughter graduated in 1940. They lived a few blocks from my grandparent’s house on Scotten.
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Anna Cleage graduated from Northwestern in 1942 and appeared in the Norwester and in 1947 in the yearbook when she graduated from Wayne State University.
Anna’s Wayne State University graduation photograph from 1947.
I, Kristin Cleage, graduated from Northwestern in 1964.
That is me in the middle, 2nd row. I pretty much looked like that throughout my high school career. I did not take a senior photo and didn’t plan to go to my graduation, but did end up going. Do not remember a thing about it.
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Pearl Michelle Cleage 1966 graduate
My sister Pearl Cleage graduated from Northwestern in 1966.
Pearl gave the valedictorian speech at her graduation. Jim advised her to speak out against the war in Vietnam. She was horrified at the thought and regrets now that she did not do it.
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Several family members attended Northwestern for part of their four year high school career and then transferred to other schools. Some were Ruth Cleage, Shelton Hill, Ernest Martin and Betty Floyd.
The new Northwestern High School, dedicated in 1980, stood down the street from the old site on West Grand Blvd.
My father, Albert B. Cleage Jr is on the left end of the row and my Uncle Louis Cleage is on the right end. The two in the middle are unknown to me. Were they on their way to or from Wingert school around the corner?
My sister Pearl, My father Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr and me, Kristin
Several weeks ago I was contacted for permission to use my photograph on a poster for a presentation at the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice University College Dublin. Here is a copy of the poster. The photograph first appeared in the post – Then and Now – Atkinson About 1953.
In 2011 a genealogy friend of mine, Megan Heyl of Hunting Down History, was helping me find the death date and place for my great grandfather, Louis Cleage. She wrote to the Indianapolis Public Library and asked librarian Mike Perkins if he could tell us anything. At the time, he could not. However, on October 6, 2015, he sent a copy of Louis Cleage’s death notice from the Indianapolis Star. That is 4 years later!
I wondered what was happening on the day he died. Using Newspapers.com, I was able to locate the full issue of The Indianapolis Star for February 7, 1918 and find out. The first thing I noticed when looking at the full list of deaths for that day, was that 6 of the 11 people that died, died of pneumonia. Below is a collage made from articles and advertisements in that day’s issue of The Indianapolis Star.
