My mother Doris Sewing in August 1944. Unfortunately no photo of her knitting.
In 1943, my mother was 20 years old. Excited about her first niece or nephew being born that year, she took a knitting class in college where she made some little outfits. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of my mother knitting, so I am sharing one of her sewing.
The Detroit Tribune Detroit, Michigan • Sat, Jun 19, 1943 Page 5
Have You Heard?
That Doris Graham is so thrilled over the prospects of becoming an aunt in the summer, that she, and not the prospective mama (Merry Vee Graham Elkins) is doing the knitting? Doris took a special course in knitting at Wayne last semester and is incorporating her learnings in an array of the dantiest, laciest tiny garments one could wish for.
May 1943 Detroit. Mershell Graham, Bud Elkins, Fannie Graham, Mary Vee Graham Elkins
“Dad – Bud – Mother – ? M Vee” “May 1943”
1943 Carrying D Dee
May 1943. “DD” on the way born 9/7/1943. Same date as Howard – his 9/7/28
Fannie Turner Graham, my grandmother, wrote this on the back of the photograph. Howard was her youngest child. He was born on the same day but 15 years earlier, as her first grandchild, Dee Dee. Howard died when he was only three. You can read about him here -> N – NINETEEN TWENTY EIGHT Howard Graham was born
From Doris Diane 1943 Xmas
I think Dee Dee is wearing a little knitted top here. Maybe from her Aunt Doris.
Click to enlarge photos from that day. Photos by my uncle Henry Cleage.My grandfather cutting the turkey. Seventeen year old me on the left. My mother on the right.
It was Thanksgiving at my Graham Grandparents house in 1963, East side Detroit. My grandfather cuts the turkey. My mother sits on the right. I am on the left, my sister next to me. I wonder where my Aunt Mary Vee and my cousins were? Usually there were four more around the table. How we all fit I do not know, but we did. The house is gone now. Everybody in this photo except my sister and I are dead. We are older than my grandparents were.
Four generations gathered around dining room table in 1963 for Thanksgiving dinner. There was turkey with cornbread dressing cooked by my grandfather. There was white rice, cranberry jelly, green beans, corn pudding and sweet potatoes. There was my grandmother’s finely chopped green salad and her homemade biscuits with butter and with a relish plate holding olives, sweet pickles and carrot sticks.
One thing there wasn’t, was talk about the old days. My grandparents were born in 1888. My grandmother was born Fannie Turner in Lowndes County, Alabama. My grandfather was born Mershell Graham in Elmore County, Alabama. They met and married in Montgomery. My great great Aunt Abbie was born in 1877 in Montgomery, Alabama and was the second to youngest child of Dock and Eliza Allen.
Unfortunately, I can’t go back to 1963 and sit around the table and steer the conversation around to who was where and when and how and why. Did they celebrate Thanksgiving growing up? What did they have for dinner? Who was there? I’d ask Poppy, where he was in 1900? Where were his parents? and what happened to his older brothers? I wish I could hear them tell their stories tomorrow.
At the end of each summer my sister, cousins, mother, aunt and grandfather Poppy took a trip to the Detroit Zoo. We are looking at the Horace H. Rackham Memorial Fountain, located in the middle of the zoo. Every year we took photos there.
Marilyn in front. Me, Barbara, Pearl with camera, Dee Dee. Friend Connie and my mother in back.
In 1959 Dee Dee was almost 17 and too cool. I’m amazed she still accompanied us to the zoo. It must have been a very important part of our year. I was almost 13 and not at all cool. That expression on my face is one I recognize from other photos through the years, unfortunately. I would say the sun is in my eyes but it doesn’t seem to be bothering anybody else. And why am I wearing that skimpy outfit? Connie and my mother are wearing the hats my mother bought for Pearl and me. White sailor hats were the rage for awhile. Unfortunately, these were the cheap version and did not look like the popular ones. I don’t think we ever wore them. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have been squinting at the camera.
Poppy walking on that 1959 zoo trip.
That summer of 1959 we moved from our rented flat on Calvert into our very own house on Oregon. I turned 13 on August 30 and started 8th grade at McMichael Junior High School that fall.
I interviewed my husband, James E. Williams, about his memories of the Detroit riot of 1967. I edited out most of my questions in the transcription below for easier reading.
James Williams at the Inner City Voice Office 1967
Hello, this is Akbar Lee, James Williams sitting here July 24, 2017 talking about the rebellion in Detroit, 1967, July 23. I don’t exactly recall how I first heard about it. I remember it was a Sunday morning. What I do remember is being with the Inner City Voice Newspaper. We had just gotten press cards, press passes from the Detroit police and myself and another person from the newspaper, were out on the street. It must have been about 10 o’clock Sunday morning. I had my press card in my hand, showed it to a policeman, I was on 12th street, about Blaine, near where the riot began. I was telling the photographer to take pictures (of what?) of the people in the street and the police in the street. They were milling around. The police came driving around in cars there was maybe 4 police in each car, would drive up 12th street and turn on one of the side streets and turn around
They went around and then they went around again there were about 3 or 4 cars. There were about 12 or 16 police. About 75 people. They were everywhere. I don’t think anybody was throwing bottles at the police. Stores had been broken into. I just remember people, men and women. So, the cops, they stopped, they jumped out of their cars with their clubs drawn running fast and started beating people that were watching.
One policeman came up toward me and I showed him my press pass, police press pass and he knocked it out of my hand and chased me up on a porch on Blaine, as I recall. And Maybe he knocked it out of my hand on 12th street and I ran, yeah to get away. He hit me in the head and knocked it out of my hand. I showed it to him and he knocked it out of my hand, hit me upside the head. I ran off the street. As a matter of fact, he brought it up to me and said, “This is yours.” I don’t know if it was the same policeman. I just ran up on the porch, the police were like on the adjacent street. They were just beating people back off the street. They wanted people off the street I assume and that’s what they got.
That’s my first memory, being beat off the street with my police pass that was worth nothing. It was an eye opener, so to speak. I expected they would back right down since the police chief had signed it. It was 1967 so I would be 22.
I was with another person from the inner city voice. Kurt Slaughter. He was also working with the newspaper. The Inner City Voice was a newspaper that hadn’t come out with its first issue, but it was getting ready to. We were gathering news, we thought. I don’t recall Kurt being hit. He had a camera because I thought I was telling him to take this picture, take that picture.
(Did he get a photo of you getting hit?) I never saw it. Kurt got away. I don’t remember much more after that day. Maybe I had a concussion.
Jefferies Projects
Anyway, I was living at 1111 W. Canfield, Jefferies projects, in the student housing part of it. That was on the 23rd. I think that I was out on the street after getting hit in the head just observing people moving around. I don’t have much recollection of anything else, just the being beat in the head and my press card not being worth a damn.
Next thing I remember is the army coming, being in the streets. That was later in the week. And what I remember next is…. I think that what happened after being hit in the head I left the scene and didn’t go back. Went home, put ice on my head, tended my wound and had a fear of going back out there. However, what I can remember is, being a part… well, I had a feeling that this was something different, that people were fighting, that it was really going to be us against them, But it wasn’t real, my feeling. What I thought was us, the people rising up against the power of the police, was really the police using their power to push us back. There was burning, there was looting, but the police were still in control of the streets, so it seemed to me.
I remember at night laying in the bed thinking this is the revolution. I could hear gunshots tatatatatat it was quite an experience to live through. A lot of people didn’t make it through, 43 people were killed.
My fear was the police, getting shot, getting beat. I could hear those machine guns going at night. My neighbors didn’t have any machine guns. I must have been up and about during the daytime. The area where I lived on Wayne’s campus, I don’t remember a lot of police there. I had to go back up to 12th street, but the rioting was taking place in more places than just 12th street.
I remember somehow or another. I got the opportunity to go to Belle Isle where they had turned it into a temporary prison and interview some people that were being held. This was because I worked with a group of black social workers and they were going in to check the conditions of the people on Belle Isle because Belle Isle was not a prison but they had made it into a prison. We went inside buildings where the people were, in buildings. In my mind it was like a concentration camp, but I’m sure it wasn’t that bad, but for some reason, this was at night time too.
There was a curfew so I remember being in a police car driving down the street to wherever we were meeting, the meeting of the group of people they were going to select to go on Belle Isle and interview the people. (How did they pick you up? Were there other people in the car with you?) That’s not at all clear to me. I do remember being in a meeting with people and they were selecting us. And everybody didn’t get to go. They were asking questions like “What have you heard?” and some people were saying that people were being killed and they had been stuck in cages with monkeys and those people didn’t pick. Whoever those people were. I think it was the Justice Department but I’m not sure. I was caught up in the excitement of it all.
I don’t remember hardly anything because so much was happening, but anyway it went on for five days. It was almost like, they talked about after the soldiers got there, the army came, they were talking about going door to door to people’s houses and if they didn’t have recites for stuff in their house they were going be arrested and the stuff taken. It appeared there was nothing to stop the police from doing whatever they wanted. (Nobody keeps recites for everything). That’s true but it doesn’t matter if they come busting in your house and say this is looted. I know from my experience with my press pass. I do not believe that they did that and once they drank the bottle they felt pretty loose.
So, I lived on Canfield and Lodge Freeway. About the 3rd day I can remember going out to see what was happening. We were in the house trying to be protected from it. Not certain if Rosie was still there. Kathy would have been there. There were other people in the building that we knew, Edna, John Watson. Anyway, going out, I don’t really remember too clearly, just me going out. Milling in the crowd, a whole group of people taking stuff out of a store on Trumbull, which wasn’t very far. I can’t imagine this store that was selling this furniture but… The police were no place to be seen and people were just taking stuff and I got caught up in the moment and I got the table and put it in the front room and not really but probably in the back of my mind thinking of that beating. (Did you scratch it up?). No, no I probably polished it. The police never came. I never saw the police in the building.
Jim and the riot table 50 years later
The National Guard was there first and then the army came. They drove around everywhere. I don’t remember them going though the projects. Mostly I remember being out at night, going with observers. I don’t remember anything other then there was nobody out there but police. Whoever was the observers.
They had a zoo building on belle isle? And that’s where they were putting people. I don’t know what they did with those animals.
I don’t remember much else about the action part. Except for hearing the machine guns at night, hearing sirens all the time. I guess I wasn’t really out in it other than that first day when I got hit, and then when I got the table. I might have gone out one more day, but I think I was traumatized a bit about being out there with my police pass. So we just stayed in. I can’t really recall how I was communicating or who I was communicating with. The phones were working and I’m sure I was talking to people. The people I was working with on the newspaper, I eventually became pretty distant from them, but at the time we must have been going to the newspaper office which was on Warren, a little ways away, across the campus, to the other side of the campus. Once the newspaper became the organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the voice of today, it didn’t last long. Eventually the Algiers Motel Incident, but I think that came out after. What did happen, the inner city voice had worked out a speaking engagement for Rapp Brown with the local Friends of SNCC to bring Rapp Brown as a speaker, as a fundraiser for the newspaper. We had some problems with the location we ended up using the Dexter Theater, but I think we had tried to use some other spot first. How we ended up using the Dexter Theater. What I remember is that SNNC made off with the money, which they were known to do, I don’t know if the voice got any of that money. That probably happened a week later.
For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.
The Detroit Tribune Detroit, Michigan • Sat, Apr 22, 1939 Page 1
At Third Annual Youth Conference
A group of delegates who attended the third annual Conference at Plymouth Congregational church last week. Seated left to right are: Roger Canfield, Mary Virginia Graham (note: my mother’s sister), Alice Stanton, Ida Pettiford, and Mary Goodson. Standing left to right. Frank Elkins, Clarence Woods, and the Rev. Horace White, pastor of Plymouth.
The Michigan Chronicle Detroit, Michigan • Sat, Mar 18, 1939 Page 6
Local Youth Plan Spring Conference
Rev. Horace White On Planning Board
Plans are well under way for a Youth conference which is scheduled to be held early in April. The planning committee, consisting of: Theodore Crosby, Clarence Bradfield, Herbert Simms, Todd Cleage (note; my father. His nickname was Toddy), Oscar Hand, Porter Dillard, Pearl Walker, Gloster Current, Clarence Bradley, Flossie Williams, Edward Swan, Ida M. Pettiford, Louise Blackman, Florine Cage, Lawrence Green, chairman and others, met last Monday evening to discuss further already tentative plans. The theme of the meeting will be “The World We Live In.” Todd Cleage was appointed to submit plans for the conduct of sessions dealing with change in government.
Edward Swan was appointed chairman of projects. Louise Blackman is chairman of sessions dealing with personal and social philosophies; Porter Dillard, chairman of the student sessions, and Pearl Walker, chairman of publicity.
Sharecropper Here
Rev. Horace White announced at the last meeting that there was a possibility of securing as main speaker for meet the outstanding hero of the recent sharecropper dilemma occurring recently in southeastern Missouri, the Reverend Owen Whitfield.
It is expected that Langston Hughes will also appear as a main attraction. The next committee meeting will be held Monday evening at Plymouth Congregational Church at 9 p.m. All youth groups interested in participating are requested to contact Lawrence Green at Plymouth church..
‘Best Poetry, Not Books, But In Lives Of Men And Women’
“For want of a poet, the people perished,” is an old allegation. but last Sunday evening the people, many of them. lived and were inspired to dare new deeds and new dreams when Langston Hughes, dusky poet, traveler, playwright, lecturer and novelist, in convincingly courageous vein painted graphically, word pictures of the elements which contribute to the making of a virile, progressive race.
Poems of the People
Most of the numbers read by Mr. Hughes were as is characteristic of most of his poetry, poems of the people, their struggles and hardships. His appreciation for the realism therein expressed was emphasized, when In comment he said. “The best poetry is not written in books, but comes from the lives of men and women in the streets.” Representative of this belief were the poems “Elevator Boy” and “Porter.”
Mass Awareness Urged
Urging a comprehensive appreciation of the political structure within which we live, Hughes urged an awareness on the part of the masses of political trends indicating that out of Fascism come such enemies of Justice as unemployment, Jim crowism and economic oppression of millions. Specifically referred to were the recent Scottsboro case and the plight of millions of sharecroppers and tenant farmers throughout the south.
In the poems “Flight” and “Lynching Song” the poet revealed the dogged courage and determination of the Negro in the face of adversity and averred that “Poverty and lynching can kill a strong race.”
“Faith in life, self and the earth, helps a race, as it does an individual to live and to grow,” the poet contended. “It. has been said that no man lives alone and Negroes, to save and bring out the best in life for himself, must unite with other groups and classes whose problems are similar and whose solutions to problems lie in the same channel as the the Negro’s,” Hughes continued.
“The black man through correct evaluation of and reaction to his peculiar situation can teach other races what true Americanism is. The possibilities for resurrection from the dismal. abyss of inertia, the chilly tomb of oppression.’ according to the poet,. “are within the race.”
Closes Season
The presentation of Mr. Hughes marked the end of the successful mid-winter lecture season conducted by the lecture committee of Plymouth Congregational church of which Rev. Horace A. White is pastor. Mrs. Whitby is chairman of the committee..
Oh Freedom After While
________________
Out Yonder on the Road – long article about the sharecroppers demonstration in 1939. Includes photos, causes, methods and end result.
This is an extra post and not a part of the A to Z Challenge. I wanted to share this post for two reasons, there is a photograph of Dee Dee’s Godfather, Jack Franklin sitting in front on the left. And even more so because finally I found a news item describing a gathering at someone’s house and they told us what food was served! I found the recipe below in The Household Searchlight Recipe Book from 1931.
The Social Sixteen – 1937. Howard Tandy, Phyllis Lawson, Shirley Turner, John Roxbourough, Doris Graham, Bob Johnson, Christine Smoot, Bud Elkins, Gladys House, Bobby Douglas, Walter House, Lewis Graham, Connie Stowers, Burney Watkins, Jean Johnson, Barbara Cleage, Jack Franklin, Mary V. Graham.The Detroit Tribune, Detroit, Michigan • Sat, Dec 4, 1937 Page 5
SOCIAL SIXTEEN CLUB The Social Sixteen Club met at the home of Miss Barbara Cleage on Scotten avenue. All members were present and the meeting progressed with the president, Miss Doris Graham presiding. The minutes of the last meeting were read by the secretary, Miss Shirley Turner. Old business was called for and discussed. The new business dealt with the party that the club is planning to give in the near future. Jack Franklin, who is an amateur photographer and is one of the club’s members, took flood-light pictures of the members present. Refreshments, which consisted of tuna fish and cheese sandwiches and orange-gingerale drink, was served by the hostess. This repast was enjoyed by all present.
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I found this Sandwiches of History site where he actually makes this sandwich. I had to add it.
For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.
Roy Wilkins, administrator of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, will be the principal speaker at a public rally opening the 1953 membership drive of the Detroit branch NAACP at 3:30 p. m. April 19 at Ebenezer AME Church, Brush and Willis. A parade from the Art Institute to the church will precede the rally. The Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., is chairman of the drive. L. Pearl Mitchell, special secretary of the NAACP, will direct the Detroit drive which seeks 7,500 members. Attorney Edward Turner is president of the Detroit NAACP branch, and Arthur L. Johnson is executive secretary.
In April 1953 my father had just been dismissed from St. Mark’s United Presbyterian Community Church, where he had been pastor for several years, in a dispute with the governing Presbyterian body. Over 300 members resigned, leaving about 35 members in the congregation.
CHURCH MEMBERS QUIT IN SQUABBLE Protest Dismissal of Young Detroit Pastor
Detroit – Rev. Albert B. Cleage, jr., was dismissed as pastor of St. Mark’s United Presbyterian Community church, here this week by the Committee of Missions of the Detroit Presbytery, the United Presbyterian church. Members of the congregation protested the action by a wholesale resignation. Dismissal of Reverend Cleage was the result of protests lodged with the committee by five church members, including Henry W. Cleage, the pastor’s uncle, following their resignation from the church in January. OBJECT TO PROGRAM The group objected to the young minister’s program of cultural and social activities, which, they said, interfered with the spiritual functions of the church. Explaining their action the committee said problems of church discipline were also involved. The charges against Reverend Cleage generally accused him of ignoring the authority of the committee and failure to program church activities in conformance with views of the committee. MEMBERS NOT ASKED Members of the congregation protested they had not been consulted in the dismissal. They had no word of the committee’s action until it was announced by the pastor. Congregation members protested the dismissal without investigation and resigned from the church en masse. At last reports they were organizing a new church with Reverend Cleage as pastor. REPLACEMENT UNKNOWN A replacement for St. Marks’ has not been announced. Approximately 35 members of the congregation remain. One member said he did not resign because “two wrongs do not make a right.” He said that he objected to the dismissal but could not agree with the mass resignations. The resigning members of the congregation said the Presbytery’s failure to consult or consider them in the matter made “it impossible for us to continue as members of this church.”
For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.
*You don’t have to sign in to comment. You can do so anonymously and add your name in the comment. Or you can fill out the name section only.
Doris Diane Elkins in bonnet front left, cousin Mary Jane Roberts, right front. Their mothers, Mary Vee Graham Elkins and Elizabeth Elkins Roberts are behind them.The Detroit Tribune, Detroit, Michigan • Sat, April 22, 1944 Page 4
Sunday, four generations were represented at the christening of Doris Diane Elkins, the small daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Elkins, of McDougall. The ceremony took place at the home of the baby’s maternal great grand mother, Mrs. Jennie Turner, of Harding avenue. Her paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. M. C. Graham, aIso her paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Elkins, Sr.; her aunts. -Misses Daisy and Alice Turner, and Mrs. Elizabeth Roberts, all were present to witness the event. The baby’s godparents. Mr. and Mrs. Jack Franklin, of Oakland, Calif., sent their godchild a beautiful bonnet for the christening.
Paternal Aunt and paternal grandparents
Doris Diane with parents, Frank and Mary Vee ElkinsMaternal grandparents, Mershell and Fannie Graham.
Doris Diane Elkins is my first cousin. Our mothers, Mary V. and Doris Graham, were sisters. My sister wondered why our mother wasn’t there. The reason was because she was married and living in San Francisco where my father was co-pastor at Fellowship Church, non-denominational.
Eleven years ago in 2014, I published this photograph of my grandmother on the steps of her church with some friends. I decided to look on newspaper.com and see if anything was going on at Church that Sunday. There was! It was the 17th Anniversary of Plymouth Congregational Church.
Granmother Fannie Turner Graham on far right with friends.
Written on the back of the photograph by my grandmother Fannie:
“Mrs. C. L. Thompson, Miss Watt, Mrs. Martha Lee (Died July 1937), F. Graham. Taken as we talked on our Church steps 5/17/36 by Jim Dunbar”
______________
The Detroit Tribune Sat, May 16, 1936 · Page 3
PLYMOUTH CHURCH TO CELEBRATE 17TH ANNIVERSARY
REV. WHITE TO DELIVER SERMON
Plymouth Congregational Church, at Garfield and Beaubien, will celebrate its seventeenth anniversary,! Sunday, May 17 and during; the week following.
The minister, Rev. Horace White, will deliver the anniversary sermon, Sunday, May 17. Special music will be rendered by the choir.
Other features of the week’s program will include an address on “The Social Message of the Church,” by Rev. A. C. Williams, pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church, Tuesday, May 19. His Senior Choir will provide the music. Wednesday, May 20, at 7 p. m. the church’s annual birthday dinner will be held, and after the dinner, Dr. Harold M. Kingsley, of Chicago, will speak. Friday, May 22, will be observed as “Frolic Night.’’ The young people of the church will furnish the program. All members and friends of the church are invited to join Plymouth in celebrating the seventeenth anniversary of its work in Detroit.
Another photo from the same day. My Aunt Mary Virginia is circled in the back row. She was 16.
In 1936 the Grahams lived on THEODORE Street on the east side of Detroit. My grandfather Mershell worked at Ford’sRouge plant in the Electrical Stacks. He was 49 years old. He was one of the founders of Plymouth Church.
My grandmother Fannie was 47 years old. She didn’t work outside of the home. They kept chickens, had a large garden and several fruit trees. My grandfather rode the streetcar to work and they drove “Lizzie” to church. They had bought their first car, “Lizzie” two years earlier and kept it until the late 1950s.
My aunt Mary Virginia was 16 and my mother Doris was 13. Both were students at Eastern High School on East Grand Blvd and within walking distance of their house.
Mary Virginia, Fannie and Doris Graham. 1936. Lizzie in background
This photograph was taken the previous Sunday , Mother’s Day.
For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.
Henry, Albert Jr. (my father) Albert Sr, Gladys
Detroit Free Press April 18, 1924 page 15
Cleage family going to church.
Were there Easter baskets back in the 1920s? Yes there were. You could get fillers or buy a ready made basket. I remember my Grandmother Pearl Cleage gave us ready made Easter Baskets in the 1950s .
Hudson’s Department Store – Detroit Free Press Wednesday, April 02, 1924
One hundred years ago, it was Easter Sunday and my father and his family were ready for church. They were members of St. John’s Presbyterian church, in Detroit, Michigan. My grandparents Albert and Pearl Cleage were founding members. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about my Cleage family 100 years ago. You can read it at THE CLEAGES 100 YEARS AGO – 1925.
