Cleages – Page 38 – Finding Eliza

A Church and Two Brothers – Two Splits

In March of 1953, a disagreement between my father, then known as Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr., pastor of St. Mark’s Community, United Presbyterian Church and a group of members who were not happy with the direction he was was taking the church, came to a head. My father and 300 members of the congregation resigned and founded St. Mark’s Community Church, which several months later became Central Congregational Church and in the 1960s became the Shrine of the Black Madonna.

The split within the church also precipitated a family split. The ties between my grandfather, Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr. and his brother Henry Cleage were broken. The close relationship they shared throughout their lives, was gone. My sister didn’t know she had a cousin Shelton Hill (Uncle Henry’s grandson) until he introduced himself when they were classmates at McMichael Junior High School.

Left to right: Albert, Josephine, Edward. Back L Henry, back R Jacob — The Cleage siblings: left to right front; Albert, Josephine, Edward. Back left Henry. Back right Jacob

My grandfather Albert B. Cleage Sr. was the youngest of five siblings. He and his brother Henry were always close. They helped organize Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis and worked together to open the black YMCA there. During the 1930s and 1940s, they lived several blocks from each other on Detroit’s old West Side and saw each other almost daily.

After my father, Albert B. Cleage Jr. (later known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) was ordained in 1943, he served as pastor of churches in Lexington, KY, San Francisco, CA and Springfield, MA. During those years he often wrote home asking his family to help him find a church in Detroit. More than once he mentioned getting his Uncle Henry to help.

In 1951 a group representing the United Presbyterian Church, including Albert Sr. and his brother Henry, organized St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church. It was located on 12th Street near Atkinson. My father was called to be the pastor. They started with 90 members and increased to over 300 during the following two years.

Uncle Henry and my father were both strong minded men. By the spring of 1953, they had reached an impasse over who was in charge and whether the focus of the church should be on its own members or on the larger community. An emotional church meeting in March 1953 caused a split between both the church members and the brothers, Albert Sr. and Henry.

In 1956 my grandfather Albert was very sick with cancer when the family heard that Uncle Henry was quite ill and in the hospital. Soon after they heard that Uncle Henry had died. They wondered if they should tell their father. He was so sick and they didn’t know how it would affect him. In the end, they didn’t have to. My grandfather was lying in bed and said “Henry died, didn’t he?” They said he had. Grandfather said, “I thought so.” They never figured out how he knew.

My grandfather was too sick to go to the funeral. Afterwards, Uncle Henry’s family had the funeral procession drive by my grandparent’s house on Atkinson. The cars drove past very slowly. It was a gesture toward the healing of a rift that began with the church fight in 1953.

Henry William Cleage died April 10, 1956. My grandfather Albert Buford Cleage Sr. died a year later on April 4, 1957. Both are buried in Detroit Memorial Cemetery in McComb County, Michigan.

The Freedom Now Party 1964

Today’s post is about the Michigan Freedom Now Party. My photographs were taken during the first convention, which took place in Detroit in September 1964. It was held at Central Congregational Church, now the Shrine of the Black Madonna. To read an interview with Henry Cleage about organizing the party and what happened during the election, click this link – Freedom Now Party,.

fnp_central_church_group — Freedom Now Party Convention.

On the far left, back of my sister’s head and the back of my head. Standing in the checked shirt is Oscar Hand. Behind Mr. Hand, in the white shirt, is Richard Henry (later Imari Obadele) Writing on the wall is Leontine Smith. Against the wall in the white dress is Annabelle Washington. I cannot name the others.

Henry Cleage reading platform. Grace Lee Boggs in left corner.

majority report of platform — Preamble to the Freedom Now Party Platform

Freedom Now party candidates — Four of the many candidates on the Michigan Freedom Now Party slate. From left to right: Loy Cohen, secretary of state; James Jackson, lieutenant governor ; Albert Cleage (later Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman), govenor and Milton Henry (later Gaide Abiodun Obadele), representative of the 14th Congressional District.

For more about my family and elections go to these posts: More From Elections of Yesteryear and Wordless Wednesday – Elections Past.

2013.02W.49 — To see more posts about crowds and more – click this link!

Grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage’s Birthday

Today would be my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage’s 127th birthday. She was born in 1886 in Lebanon, KY and died in 1982 at the age of 96 in Idlewild, Michigan. Here is a photograph taken in 1929, on the side of the house on Scotten Ave. in Detroit. My grandmother was 43. Anna was 5 and Gladys was 7.

1929_annamamagladys — Anna, Pearl and Gladys Cleage – 1929

Moving Day Springfield to Detroit 1951, Revisited

Back in November of 2011 I wrote Moving – Springfield to Detroit 1951 for Sepia Saturday 102. I mentioned that I remembered the little girls in the photograph, but I couldn’t remember their names. Well, I found them!

movingday02 — Moving day (note the boxed up stuff behind me) L to R: Kristin (me), Lynn, Sherrie, Pearl and in the back is Mrs. Johnson. I still have the rocking chair back there.

movingday — Left to right – Kristin (me), Lynn, Sherrie and Pearl

During February, I was working on a post about turtles I have owned, when I came across the photograph below.

Funds_us_1952 — Mr. and Mrs. Funn with me (Kristin) in front and my mother in the middle holding sister Pearl.

I recognized them as the Funns and realized that the other man’s name that I remembered from Springfield, “Lindsey”,must be the name of the father of the girls in the photographs. How could I find the last name? I decided to Google “Lindsey St. John’s Congregational Church, Springfield, MA”. The first item that came up gave me his last name, Johnson. I Googled “Lindsey Johnson, Springfield, MA” and came up with several articles. This was them! Sherrie was the oldest daughter, the one who poured milk in my dinner on that day so long ago. Below are some of the articles I found and some photographs of the Johnsons and also an article about Mr. Funn. Goggle and newspapers – it’s hard to beat them sometimes.

Lindsey_Johnson_collage — Articles about Lindsey Johnson and family. The house they talk about is the one I visited with my father in the winter 1968. Click to enlarge and read.

2013.02W.24 — To see more posts about boxes and other things, click!

My Parents Time in San Francisco – January to July 1, 1944

This is the 23rd post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. The photograph for today is of a corner of the living room in my parents apartment in San Francisco. It was 1944.

San Francisco Desk — My father’s desk in the San Francisco apartment. Photos of his sisters, Gladys and Barbara on the desk and one of my mother on the bookcase. This desk looks like one that I have from my mother, but it’s not. I think the apartment was furnished. Surprised the typewriter isn’t visible.

My parents, Albert B. Cleage Jr and Doris Graham, were married in Detroit on November 17, 1943. They left immediately after the ceremony for Lexington, Kentucky, where my father had accepted a call from Chandler Memorial Congregational Church. They were there only two months when he accepted an interim pastorship at the new, experimental San Francisco Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. He served from January of 1944 through June of the same year. The captions under the photographs are taken from what my parents wrote on the back when they sent the pictures back home to their families.

church & house San Francisco — The Church – on the corner. We live upstairs – rear – behind the jungle. (Rubber, Magnolia – Olive, etc.)

doris_2_kids — This is Romeo and Patrick and me – fat jaws and all. June 1944

landscape_mountains — Mountains! Taken out our front window – over the housetops across the street.

downhill — This is Post Street looking toward the Ocean. Looks like you could follow it right on up to Heaven, doesn’t it? June 1944

down_street — Looking down at the “Fillmore slum” from our front window. The lady who bakes cakes for us lives over there –

toddy — Guess who this gangster looking talent is. June 1944.

hanging_clothes_SF_1944 — Birds eye view of my mother hanging up clothes in the backyard.

Following is an excerpt from a biography of my father, about his time in San Francisco. I wish I had the box of letters I know existed from those six months.

“Cleage does not remember his work with the famous Fellowship Church of All Peoples with any fondness. The new congregation, which had about fifty members when he was there, was a contrived, artificial affair, he says. ‘An Interracial church is a monstrosity and an impossibility,’ he said. ‘The whites who came, came as sort of missionaries. They wanted to do something meaningful, but this was not really their church. The blacks regarded it as experimental too, or were brainwashed to think that it was something superior.’ He called his white counterpart, Dr. Fisk, ‘well-meaning,’ and said Fisk thought he (Fisk) was doing a great work, but had no understanding of tension and power. He felt the Lord looked in favor on this work, and any whites that joined him were headed for glory. He hated to have problems mentioned. Problems included the property left deteriorating after the Japanese were moved out, and the boilermakers’ union ‘which set up separate auxiliary units for black so they could discontinue the units after the war.’ Cleage joined in with NAACP efforts to get at these injustices. He was told he could stay at the Fellowship of All Peoples if he wanted to, and he said ‘they were nice people, but it did not seem to me it was a significant ministry.’ About Fisk, he said, ‘He talked about the glorious fellowship washed in the blood of the Lamb; I talked about hell on the alternate Sundays. He felt upset about my preaching, but he didn’t want to raise racial tension in his heaven.'”

From Hiley Ward, Prophet of the Black Nation. (Piladelphis: Pilgrim Press, 1969), p. 55.

________________________

You can see a newspaper clipping of my parents and a very short post about their time in San Francisco here Newspaper Clipping of My Parents. Soon after July 1, my parents moved to Los Angeles, where my father studied film making for a year before he was called to pastor St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1300 Lafaytte – 1968

19681300lafayette — Pearl standing, me seated, my father. The photographer told us to look in that direction.

This is the 17th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. The next four posts will be about some of the places that I lived that I didn’t cover in the Alphabet Challenge last year. Today I am going to remember 1300 Layfette, Detroit. My father, who was still using his name, Rev. A.B. Cleage lived here for a year during 1968-1969. I was a senior at Wayne State University.

In the aftermath of the 1967 riots my father had received many crazy letters, including death threats. Several people involved in the movement had been beaten or shot during this time period. There were also the more well known assassinations that took place. I remember one sermon when my father announced that he had heard there was a price on his head and plans to kidnap him and hold him for ransom. He told the congregation that if he was kidnapped, give them nothing for his return. Strangely, I don’t remember worrying about this.

The flat on the left was the one my father lived in. The 12th floor is about half way up.

It was during this time that it was decided that he would move out of his first floor flat on Calvert, that had no security measures, and into the an apartment on the 12th floor of the very secure 1300 Lafayette apartments.

Here is a description written by Hiley H. Ward in his 1969 biography of my father, Prophet of the Black Nation, about the apartment and the atmosphere of the times.

“…He has continued to live alone, until recently in a twelfth-floor panoramic apartment ($360 a month, two bed-room) in the exclusive downtown eastside Lafayette Park overlooking the river, Detroit and Windsor, Canada. His church described his moving there as a security measure… in his immaculate apartment two of three paintings remain unhung after a number of months – not a sign of particular interest in the place.”

Several things I remember:

aluminum_lump — All that remained of the tea kettle.

My father leaving my sister and me standing out in the hall while he went through the apartment with a drawn gun to make sure nobody was there.
The picture above being taken by a Detroit Free Press photographer for an article they were doing about my sister Pearl’s poetry for the Sunday magazine, Parade.
The time I spent a week with him while my mother and Henry went out of town. He went over to his mother’s house on Atkinson for dinner every night. I decided to just fix myself dinner. I did, but I left the tea kettle on and forgot about it. It melted on the burner. I still have a lump of the remains. During this visit I was instructed to give no one the phone number or the address.

I was trying to reconstruct the layout of the apartment from memory when I decided to look online. Currently the same apartments are in use as co-op apartments and I was able to find the layout and placement at the website for the current cooperative apartments.

At the same time that my father was living here, The Black Star Co-op being developed.

Poor Pete and PJ

This is the 16th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. Today’s prompt includes a ~~turtle~~ tortoise. None the less, I am going to write about my experience with turtles. My sister and I owned several turtles when we were growing up. We always named them PJ and Pete and they always got soft shells and died. They lived in a little plastic turtle scape much like this one. We added small, colorful rocks to the bottom.

Their bowl sat on top of our bookcase in the bedroom. The room was bright but there wasn’t any direct sunshine there. The turtles were fed a diet of dried food that came in an orange little container. Sometimes we supplemented it with a fly we caught, or some lettuce. As the shells began to go soft, we would try to get them to drink some cod liver oil and moved their island home into the sunlight. All to no avail. They all died. I don’t remember any turtle funerals but there might have been at least one. Perhaps my sister will remember. Pearl says, yes we did bury some of them. I don’t remember being upset, or even minding, when they died.

Our mother didn’t want any ~~real~~ large pets, like cats or dogs, because nobody was home during the day. Maybe because both of her childhood dogs died rather sad deaths too. She was happy to buy us fish and turtles. I think the turtles replaced the fish because it was easier to keep their habitat clean. Once my sister and I took them out on the porch for a walk with strings tied around their shells. Not a big success.

I have since learned that turtles are salmonella carriers. Luckily we never had that problem. My children never had turtles for pets but my husband used to find turtles trying to cross the road and bring them home for them to see before releasing them into the nearby woods or lake. After writing this, I have to wonder if they were disoriented from being moved like this. In fact, this whole thing sounds like the torture of turtles.

Pearl and Kristin pretending to race on the upper front porch. Notice the well kept houses in the background. — My sister Pearl and I pretending to race on the upper front porch of the flat on Calvert. This was the house and the ages we were when we had turtles.

2013.01W.74 — To see more turtles and other stuff, CLICK!

To read more about living on Calvert go to “C” Is For Calvert.

What happened to cousin Dale?

This is the 15th post in the February Photo Collage Festival, and the last post of five that will answer the question someone asked when I posted this photograph (follow the link to see it) – What happened to these kids? Today is the turn of cousin Dale Evans. This is the hardest of the five posts to write because I really don’t know what happened to Dale. I know that for some years he was out in California acting on TV, in the soaps I think. I’ve heard that he did promotions for events, like beauty contests and talent shows. He was making and selling crafts for awhile. He has a tendency to show up once in awhile and then disappear again for years at a time. I hope all is well with him.

This post ends the series on cousins then and now. I decided not to include myself since you can read many posts on this blog and find out my story.

Whatever Happened to Cousin Ernest?

This is the 14th post in the February Photo Collage Festival, and the fourth post of six that will answer the question someone asked when I posted this photograph (follow the link to see it) – What happened to these kids? Today is the turn of my cousin Ernest Cleage Martin.

Ernest graduated from Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1986. He had his residency training of Psychiatry at Wayne State University – Detroit Medical Center and Psychiatry at Detroit Psychiatric Institute. Today he practices Psychiatry, in Anderson, South Carolina with a specialization in Forensic Psychiatry. When I learned he was practicing Forensic Psychiatry I wondered how he analyzed dead people. Of course that wasn’t what he was doing. It means that he specializing in psychiatry as it relates to the criminal justice system.

If someone had asked me at that birthday party in 1958 if Ernest would become a doctor, I would have thought they were kidding. He thought everything was funny, including the kid down the block falling off of his bike. His grades weren’t very good. Sometime during his college career he became friends with someone who made him part of their study group and he learned how to study. At the same time he must have realized that there was a point to it and here he is today, a successful doctor. Following in the footsteps of our uncle Louis and grandfather Cleage. You just never know how life will turn out. Ernest is still practicing today. He and his wife have raised two fabulous children and he still has that sense of humor.

What Happened to Jan Evans?

This is the 12th post in the February Photo Collage Festival, and the third post of six that will answer the question someone asked when I posted this photograph (follow the link to see it) – What happened to these kids? Today is the turn of my cousin Jan Evans Peterson. You probably think I am going to tell you she went on to have an illustrious career with the Alvin Ailey dance troupe, but no, she did not. I asked her how long she danced and she replied “let’s see, started around 13, stopped around 25. I danced somewhat with Shashu born and a teeny bit after Kamau.”

I believe there was also some modeling and transcribing of court sessions. Jan eventually moved to Canada and, along with Leonard, raised 4 wonderful, smart and talented children. She has 4 grandchildren. Jan now spends her time doing what needs to be done. This includes, but is not limited to, keeping up with her far flung family, copying and sending me family photos via email, posting inspiring quotes on fb and moving to a higher plane in a spiritual sense. She still wears her magnificent collection of bangles.