“Sugar Island is a small island in the Detroit River between Grosse Ile and Boblo Island. Sugar Island is part of Grosse Ile Township, Wayne County, Michigan, USA, and lies about 0.5 miles (0.80 km) west of the border with Canada. Currently the island is uninhabited and was recently converted to wildlife refuge by the US Fish and Wildlife service (see below). The majority of the island is wooded and it is known for its white sandy beaches and easy access by boat.” From Wikepedia
In my maternal grandparents yard there was a metal pipe swing frame that my grandfather had attached to the apple tree. There was a big swing three or more people could sit in and there was a baby swing for one little person with a bar to hold them in, you can see it below to the right. And there were a pair of rings that my cousin Barbara was expert with. I don’t remember ever doing a flip or anything else.
In this photograph my Aunt Mary V. is helping her youngest daughter, my cousin Marilyn learn how to use the rings. Marilyn was the youngest of the five cousins by 6 years. She was often regulated to “go-ie wo-ie” during games.
For other posts featuring Poppy and Nanny’s yard –
The following article on accountability was written by the late Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, formerly the Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., the founder of the Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church, for his weekly column, “Message to the Black Nation.” It was published in the Oct. 14, 1967, issue of “The Michigan Chronicle,” Detroit’s oldest black newspaper.
His column began informally with two articles that he wrote in the wake of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion, which were published in the Aug. 12 and Aug. 19, 1967, issues. The first was headlined “The Message’/We Must Control Our Community” and the second was headlined “Transfer Power To End Violence.” The following week, on Aug. 26, his column formally began under the “Message to the Black Nation” title, but the “Black” was omitted in the Oct. 14 column, apparently due to a typographical error. It ran for the next two years, with only occasional breaks, such as when he vacationed in Mexico in December 1967. It was usually published on p. A-12, but sometimes on p. A-16.
In the beginning of this column, he refers to the Citywide Citizens Action Committee (CCAC), which was a broadly-based coalition of black organizations and individuals that was formed at a public meeting held in the 13th-floor auditorium of the former Detroit City-County Building, now the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, on Aug. 9, 1967. CCAC was disbanded the following year. — Paul Lee.
Explains Principle Of Accountability
By REV. ALBERT B. CLEAGE, JR.
Black people in the city of Detroit have a new kind of unity born out of the July [1967] rebellion. Our new unity is the unity born of conflict and confrontation. It is a unity that was made possible by our realization that in a moment of crisis the total white community came together in opposition to us in our struggle for freedom, justice and self-determination.
This is the first time in the city of Detroit that we have had this kind of unity and out of this unity has come a new kind of organization, the Citywide Citizens Action Committee (CCAC).
Historically black organizations have not been born out of conflict or the will to self-determination but rather out of a fruitless seeking after integration. Our old organizations expressed our conviction that it was possible for us to integrate into the white man’s society and that some day there would come a great getting-up morning on which black and white would walk hand in hand in love for one another.
That was the basic dream which brought all of our black organizations into existence. That was essentially the message of the black Christian church. Now we realize that it was this dream which thwarted and frustrated all our efforts to secure freedom and justice.
Today’s unity was born out of the realization that our survival means a continual conflict and confrontation which can only be restored through the transfer of power and self-determination for the black community.
What Self-Determination Means
Self-determination means black control of the black community. This is the purpose which has brought us together. Self-determination means control of the police department in our community. It means controls in our community. It means that we must control everything that touches the black community.
Self-determination is not something vague and abstract. It means that we must control all of the stores on all the streets in our community. It means control of the housing in our community. It means that we cannot tolerate one huge white real estate concern operating 60 percent of the apartment houses in our community.
As the days pass and we begin the complicated task of translating these objectives into concrete programs, there is going to be a lot of double-talk and confusion. Very few black people will publicly deny that they support self-determination even though many will refuse to do the things necessary to achieve it.
That is why we must have one citywide organization interpreting day in and day out the simple facts involved in black control of the black community. CCAC must help people understand what is involved.
We do NOT mean that we are going to turn the black community over to the self-seeking black capitalists. There would be no great improvement for us if individualistic black businessmen controlled the business in our community for their personal benefit. We are not exchanging one kind of economic slavery for another.
We are far beyond the days when we would proudly point to Brother So-and-So who had gotten rich from exploiting us and was driving around in a Cadillac. If a black businessman is going to operate in our community, he must contribute to it and be accountable to it.
This is the first principle of black control of the black community: the principle of accountability. Everyone who is going to do anything in the black community must be accountable to the black community.
This will be something entirely new for us. No black leader has ever considered himself accountable to the black community before — in politics, in business, in labor, in the church, or in education. So-called black leaders have considered themselves accountable only to the white man.
We were supposed to be happy and content because they were successful and could dress up and live in big houses and walk around acting like white men. Today, if a black man is exploiting the black community, he must be dealt with. We have no room for selfish individualists in politics, in business, in labor, in the church or in the professions.
That Slavery Softness Has Got to Go
We must be willing to accept the implications of this position. We have certain so-called leaders who disappear or have nothing to say when a crucial issue faces the black community. We must have one answer for this disappearing act. When election times come around, these so-called leaders must be put out to pasture.
This is more difficult than you imagine. When election time comes, a lot of us will hesitate. People will argue that it is better to have a weak black man in office than to risk no black man in office.
They will say that he is still some help just because he is black. This is not true. If a black politician does not recognize his accountability to the black community, then he is worse than nothing. It would be better to have someone in office whom we can recognize as an enemy than to have an enemy in office who appears to be our friend.
Legislators, judges, councilmen, congressmen, every black man who holds a political office must take orders from us. The moment he begins to think his job is bigger than we are, there is nothing for us to do but take him out.
We intend to demand that everybody who works in the black community recognize his accountability to us. When he strays from the straight and narrow path, we are going to talk to him. We will take a group of brothers and we will sit down and talk over his weaknesses and shortcomings.
We are going to do just what it says in the Bible. “If a brother strays, go sit down and talk to him. If he won’t listen to reason, take some more brothers to talk to him. If he still won’t listen, then treat him like a Gentile.”
In the Bible the Gentile is the white man. That means that if he will not accept his accountability to the black community, we have no alternative but to treat him like a white man — and put him out of the [Black] Nation. That is the Bible.
A lot of you are not really ready for this. You have still got a lot of that soft slavery weakness in you. This is because you don’t take seriously the simple fact that we are fighting for survival. If a brother is betraying the Nation, he must be put out of the Nation.
We are holding everybody accountable because we are getting ready for confrontation. We can’t afford any halfway people messing us up. We are preparing for all kinds of conflict.
Don’t think we had a bad summer and everything is going to be pleasant from now on. Get yourselves ready. That old slave psychology, that softness, has got to go. We must know that if we are going to move, it is going to be by confrontation.
_______________________________
For more about the Black Star Co-op, click.
For more about the CCAC and my father in the year following the 1967 Detroit riot, follow the links below.
Prophet of possibility Pt. 1 – The Michigan Citizen by Paul Lee.
Profit of possibility Pt 2 – also from the Michigan Citizen by Paul Lee.
In 1965 the idea of the Black Star Co-op was born at Central United Church of Christ. In 1968, the year after the Detroit riot, a grocery store was opened a block from the church. Due to a variety of reasons – inexperience of management and staff, costs of keeping enough stock, high prices – the store did not last long. Later the church operated a long running food co-op. Several people would go down to Eastern Market early Saturday morning and buy produce which was shared by everybody who paid $5 that week. There was no overhead and no paid staff. Later the church had a farm in Belleville, Michigan and the food for the co-op came off of that farm. Below is a short photographic story of the Black Star Market.
To read more about the church and the street it stand on, click on these links: “L” is for Linwood (About the street of Linwood), “H” is for Linwood and Hogarth (About the church).
This article is from my Grandmother, Fannie Turner Graham’s scrap book. It was printed in the Detroit Tribune on November 24, 1945. Victoria’s parents, James and Margaret McCall, were the owners and operators of the Tribune. My grandmother wrote the date and my mother wrote the identifying information.
The postcard on the left shows the Book-Cadillac Hotel, where the interview took place, in the 1940.
Part of the article is missing. I think my grandmother trimmed one side and part 2 was on the other side. I combined her pink article with a scan from online.
You can read more about the Tribune and the McCalls in this post “James Edward McCall, Poet and Publisher“.
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 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.
For more about my family and politics, click on these – 1965 Cleage for Congress and Elections Past.
My father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage & me.I wrote this after the Detroit riot in July of 1967. I was 20. I had been in Idlewild, MI at my Uncle Louis’ cottage with my Aunt Gladys and some of my cousins when it started. I ended up at my Grandmother Cleage’s house where my father, several uncles and cousins were also gathered. Her house was on Atkinson, about three blocks from the 12th street corner where the riot started. Aside from a little editing for clarity, these are my memories from 1967.
____________________________
The fire siren that night in Idlewild went on and on and on. Gladys got a phone call that a riot had started. We left that morning. The sky was pink with smoke as we drove into the city.
During the riot, when it got dark, we turned off the lights, put on black clothes and waited. The shots that had been going all day got louder, closer, smashed together. We sat on the porch and watched the tanks go up and down the street full of white boys wearing glasses, aiming their guns at us.
One during the day went by in a yellow telephone repair truck. He rode in the elevated stand, pointing his rifle. We looked back at him.
Lights from helicopters whirred over us. Troops went down 12th, down 14th. The street shook. Afraid to sleep because somebody might shoot through the window, we stayed up until the sky got light. My cousins cleared out the furniture in front of the windows, so they could shoot.
Should they let them get in or shoot before they reach the porch? They lay there on quilts, looking out the window. Seeing soldiers and armored trucks in flowerpots and dump trucks. Dale asked how the gun worked. Ernie shows him by the hall light.
The guns sounded like they were in the alley. I sat on the landing. Thorough the window it was dark and unreal outside. Blair came up, scared, so we went in the basement and turned on a program about Vietnam, but then off to a horror movie nobody watched.
Daddy came down, with a drink, to use the phone and dictate demands to the papers. Ernie showed us how to bolt doors if someone tried to come in the window.
They tried to get Grandmother down to watch TV, but she wouldn’t. She stayed upstairs, watched TV and came out only at times to turn lights on and silhouette everybody hiding guns as the soldiers were pulled back.
On the police radio: Fifty policemen wounded in one hour. They were run out of the Clairmont Square again. A woman turns in her sniper husband.
Dale was left on the porch when they flashed light on the porch and summer-salted in. Bullets were so close I was afraid and went back inside.
Grandmother turning on lights with armed flower pots aiming at us.
Turning Vietnamese guns up loud to drown out theirs. Jan and I, sleeping on the hard scratchy rug. Ernie wanting just a ring to show he was there. Dale taping, taking pictures to show his children. Jesus painted Black.
All that Sunday cars full of white folks went down Linwood past the Church. Windows rolled up. Sightseeing. Long, slow lines, car after car, windows shut tight. Troop Jeeps going by pointing guns.
For other Sepia Saturday offerings click HERE.
Dear Fan,
I am feeling fine today and I hope that this will find you and all at home well. I am off from my work today. No, not sick just felt like taking a bit of rest and too it has been raining all day and it was such a fine day for sleep before taking my midday nap I had to talk a little to my sweetheart, I only wish I could hear her voice and be made to feel happy. Dear I don’t know anything of interest to write about just now. Things are pretty quiet in Detroit, the factories are all getting ready for a big after war business and I think this city will get her share of it. I am sorry that your mother has been sick, I hope she is O.K. and her self again.
Miss Snow formerly of Montgomery now Mrs. Kelly of Detroit lost her husband last week, I think she will bring the body home for burial. They have him now in storage until she is ready to leave for home with him. Now dear I wrote you sometime ago and told you that I had something to tell you when I saw you, but I just can’t keep it any longer, what I want to tell you dear is this, I feel as if I have tried a single life long enough and now I am going to ask you to become my wife. Now dear, if you will commit to the above request let me know right away and I will write and ask the permission of your mother to marry you, and with her consent we will then fix the time of the wedding. Now I hope you won’t let this shock you any, and please answer me as soon as possible, if we should get married I shall want you to come to this city to live after the wedding, so dear while you are considering the questions of marriage you may also consider the question of residing in Detroit, also.
Now dear please don’t keep me waiting too long for an answer to this letter, as I am over anxious to hear what your answer will be. Remember me kindly to your mother and sisters, with lots of love and many thousand kisses I close, looking to receive an early and favorable reply
I am as ever the same,
Shell
To read Fannie’s acceptance letter click here
