Category Archives: Detroit

Riot or Rebellion? July 23, 1967

Cleages, Detroit, Sermon Notes
Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman (Rev. Albert B. Cleage ) preaching.

Riot or rebellion?

By Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman

(Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr.)

Below is a partial transcription of the sermon delivered above in it’s entirety.

Excerpted from “No Halfway Revolution,” text of a sermon delivered at Central United Church of Christ, the Shrine of the Black Madonna, on July 23, 1967, several hours after the Detroit Rebellion began:

“And Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ Then be bowed with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people that were in it. So the dead whom he slew at his death were more than those whom he had slain during his life” (Judges 16:30).

Our Scripture lesson is taken from the Book of Judges. While the riots were going on down in Watts [in August 1965], I preached on the same text. Samson is a good Biblical figure and he fits into the framework of riots and rebellion.

The Book of Judges has to do with the early leaders of Israel who presided over the young Nation Israel and were called “judges.” Samson was never a leader of Israel in the sense of having an official position. Yet his story is included in the Book of Judges because he was a leader in the fight against the Philistines. …

During this period when Israel was in bondage to the Philistines, Samson was the person people looked to. He was a kind of center, the outstanding personality. Yet he was different from all the other judges, essentially because the times were different. Israel needed somebody like Samson.

I remember when the riot in Watts was going on, the front page of Life Magazine pictured a young black militant with a do-rag around his head. He was a symbol of what was happening.  He represented rebellion against oppression.

So I have selected the same Scripture lesson now because that which started in Watts two years ago and which is now sweeping the nation is the same kind of rebellion against oppression which Samson represented in Israel. The same kind of hoodlum character emerges as some kind of peculiar hero because he does the things which have to be done at a particular time in human history.

Samson wasn’t any hero kind of person in normal circumstances. Normally people would have frowned on him. They would have called him a hoodlum. They wouldn’t have listed him in their religious scriptures as a “judge” of Israel. But during this particular time, he had what everybody wanted. He wasn’t afraid, he didn’t mind dying, he was emotional, he struck out against oppression. So everybody called him a judge of Israel. …

A riot becomes a rebellion when people tend to support the little group of people who begin some kind of violence. In America today, we have riots or rebellions taking place in almost every city across the country. …

This is the kind of times in which we live. We had our own riot here in the City of Detroit. Riot or rebellion, you pick your own word for it. I think what we had is a riot. I think it has been participated in by relatively few people — so far.

The radio stations called me and asked if I wanted to issue a statement asking people to cool it. I said I had been trying to get white people to do something that would make it possible to cool it for years, and nobody had paid any attention, so I didn’t have any statements about cooling it now.

I tried to explain that if everything is alright in Detroit, if nobody is alienated, if nobody feels oppressed, if all black people feel that there are other things they can do to change the situation, if they are confident that they have alternatives to violence, then it is just a little thing that broke out and it won’t last for long.

But if all black people in Detroit feel that they are helpless and hopeless, and that there is no chance of solving their problems peaceably, that they can’t solve them by the ballot or by organizing or by economics, then you have a rebellion on your hands — because, in that case, more black people are going to join in, once it has started.

There is a difference then between a riot and a rebellion. A riot is a little group, perhaps more interested in looting than in freedom. But a rebellion is a community that has decided that it will no longer tolerate the kind of racial oppression that it has been forced to tolerate.

So across the country we are getting a combination. In some communities there are riots. Little bands hear about what is happening somewhere else and think it might be good to have one here. And in other communities, it is not a riot at all; it is a rebellion.

People look around and say, we are tired of these slums. We are tired of all the conditions that we have to put up with. We are tired of the whole situation and we are not going to tolerate it any longer. And then a whole community erupts, and other people say, we don’t know why it happened. That is a rebellion. And more and more of these eruptions are rebellions, rather than riots.

Now in any period of rapid social change … you are going to get all kinds of people participating, and everybody who participates is not going to be a great freedom fighter. If you start a fight on a corner because your freedom has been transgressed, there is going to be somebody who comes up just because there is a crowd of people and picks all the pockets he can.

That doesn’t mean that freedom wasn’t involved in the first fight. That just means that somebody else who was broke or knows how to pick pockets utilized the situation.

But when that happens, and we all stand back and say, “there was nothing going on but some people picking pockets,” that isn’t true. And usually that is not true in a community, no matter how much emphasis is placed upon the looting. Usually there are other things that are important to the people. There are people who loot, just as there are people who do every other kind of thing that they want to do for their own personal satisfaction. …

As long as we had a place and we knew where it was (the man had made it for us), and we were afraid to get out of it, there was no possibility of a riot or a rebellion or whatever you call it.

I point this out to show you that there is some good in what is going on. It must mean that a whole lot of black people no longer believe that they “have a place.” And whether you like the expression that this new feeling takes or not, this change is a fact, and that is good.

I prayed for, lo, these many years that there would come a day when we wouldn’t know our place, and if that’s what is indicated throughout the country, that increasingly black people no longer know their place, then I say that is good.

If not knowing our place leaves us for the moment confused so that we do some things that are not constructive in the sense of planned campaigns for freedom, then that is a part of the struggle, an inevitable part of the struggle. …

In a rebellion or riot, a lot of people are concerned about things other than self. I am not talking about the looters now — those who are trying to steal what they can and get it home for themselves. They are just like the middle-class. I am talking about those who are outraged, whether it is a sensible outrage or an irrational outrage, outraged at the indignities that black people have to live with.

Those people strike out not selfishly but because they identify with a group. They identify with black people, and a policeman doesn’t have to shoot them before they are outraged at police brutality. A policeman doesn’t have to beat them over the head personally before they become involved in a reaction against police brutality. …

            It is a complex thing, this struggle for freedom. It is so easy after we become involved in a struggle to say, “Well, we have gone far enough now, let’s cool it. I got some of the things I wanted. I got my job, I have been promoted, I got a poverty program job now. Let’s call it all off now.”

But essentially what we were trying to get from the very beginning wasn’t something for you. It was equality for all of us. And when we once started it about 13 years ago, there wasn’t any calling it off.

Now you have been talking all this time about “I want freedom, I would give anything for freedom, I am tired of whitey, I am tired of him being on my back, I want to run my own community.” You have been saying it, but it is harder to say it now because they have fought on 12th Street and it may be on your street soon. It is not over by any means. …

We were all for the people in Newark [during the uprising in mid-July 1967] because we said they were striking a blow for freedom. We said, “Isn’t it wonderful, what they are doing?” And this Sunday some of you say, “Are those Niggers crazy? There they go, just acting a fool, up and down 12th Street, robbing and stealing.”

That’s right. Plenty of them are acting a fool up and down 12th Street. And soon they are going to be acting a fool up and down Linwood Street. They are going to be acting a fool all across town, up and down Dexter, up and down Joy Road.

But that is a part of what you started. You didn’t think you were going to have a rebellion, a freedom struggle, and nobody was going to get hurt, did you? Did you think it was going to go on everywhere else, and they were coming to Detroit in the end and say, “You all are black, too. We are going to give you the things that these other people were fighting and dying for. We are going to give it to you because you all were so good.” It doesn’t happen like that. When it started, it started for everybody.

Some of the people who holler so much about violence had a part in starting it. [NAACP executive secretary] Roy Wilkins doesn’t want to be reminded of it now, but when they started taking these cases to the Supreme Court, when the NAACP won the case to outlaw segregation in schools throughout the South, that was one of the first gunshots of the rebellion.

And Wilkins can say now that he doesn’t like what is happening, but he had a big part in starting it because at that time we didn’t know what we were. We didn’t know what the possibilities were in human life. We didn’t know what we could do. When the Supreme Court said [in its school desegregation decision on May 17, 1954] you have to give equal education, we said if we have to have equal education, there are a whole lot of other things we have to have too.

Martin Luther King said he didn’t believe in a whole lot of things which are now going on. But when he had the bus boycott in Montgomery [from Dec. 5, 1955-Dec. 20, 1956], that was the second shot. When black people started marching in Montgomery and white folks couldn’t stop them, black people all over the country said, “Look here, the man hasn’t got as much strength as we thought he had.” That was the beginning of our changed conception of ourselves, and a changed evaluation of the white man.

Then some people said, “We are not going to ride in the back of the bus anymore.” So we had the Freedom Riders [beginning in May 1961]. The whites burned up busses, they turned them over, they whipped black men and women over the head, but the Freedom Riders didn’t stop. Another shot. The rebellion is going on, people’s ideas are changing. …

A few years ago a black man stepped off the sidewalk in one of those Southern towns if a white man looked like that was what he wanted him to do. When you come from the stage where you step off the sidewalk to the point where you are ready to let police dogs and everybody else try to stop you but you keep on, you have come a long way in your mind. …

Even in Detroit, provincial and backward as we are, we have been thinking differently the last few years. … You remember the Freedom March in Detroit when more than 300,000 black people marched down Woodward Avenue [on June 23, 1963]? What happened at Cobo Hall when we got there is something else.

But we marched in protest, 300,000 of us. Even then, we were in the process of changing. Our thinking was changing. When you start this process, when you start black people deciding that they are going to be equal; that they are going to change conditions; that the white man is not going to keep them in bondage and slavery and oppression; that if be does, he is going to have to do it with force and naked power, then a whole new world is being born. That is what we are in the midst of now.

When Stokely Carmichael [chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] screams “Black Power,” he is only putting into a phrase the change which has been going on for almost fifteen years. Things had reached the point where the change could be put into a phrase. And so Stokely said “Black Power,” and everybody screamed “Black Power,” and the white man said — “uh-uh.”

Then the white man began to ask, “What is Black Power, what do you mean? What is the philosophy of Black Power?” But the white man knew that some big and basic change had already taken place, or Stokely Carmichael could not have cried “Black Power” and gotten a Black Power response.

This is the kind of thing that we are in the midst of everywhere in these United States. You look at the paper now and you wonder at the places that rebellions or riots are breaking out. Little communities that don’t have enough black people for you to feel comfortable in are fighting — 3,000 in a community of 80,000, and they are tearing up the town.

But those 3,000 have been systematically mistreated and oppressed, and when they get ready to strike back, they don’t always care whether they win or whether they lose. This we have got to understand.

Most of you are rational. You are for freedom, for justice, for equality. You make rational decisions, you are going to fight in a rational kind of way, you realize that there are certain things you can do.

But you know this freedom thing is exploding in people’s heads. And everybody is not going to be rational about it. When someone decides, “They have been mistreating my momma and my grandmamma, they have been mistreating all of us, and I don’t like it,” they are not all going to be rational about it. …

Everything that happens in a rebellion is not sensible. …  You try to give at every step a sensible alternative to violence, as we do here at the Shrine of the Black Madonna. We believe in political action. Now a lot of black people say, “I don’t care about political action, that is just the white man’s bag.” Well, that is what they think.

We have got to try political action because that is an alternative to violence. We have got to use picket lines, boycotts, all the things that offer the possibility of power without the necessity of violence. We try to do those things. That doesn’t mean that at the same time we look with disdain on these other people who are fighting in this country for the same cause that we are fighting for.

We have got to understand that it takes all kinds of people to fight a rebellion, and a lot of them are not going to be doing it the way you are doing it at any single moment. And a whole lot of people are not going to agree with the way you are doing it, either.

It won’t be too long before they will be calling you “Uncle Tom,” because unless you throw a brick you are an Uncle Tom. That would be a logical development, wouldn’t it? But you understand why people do what they do.

Because essentially we are trying to get free and we want justice and we are no longer talking about love and all those other things that cluttered up people’s minds for so long. We want justice and we are going to fight for it. But there are a lot of ways to fight. Because we fight one way, let’s not join in some universal denunciation of people fighting in some other kind of way.

The rebellion goes on. There is no halfway revolution. When it starts, it is going to go to its logical conclusion. Either we get free or we end up in concentration camps. You can understand that. There is no turning back, no stopping. You may wish you hadn’t started, but you did. It is going on and there is no way you can stop it. You can try to utilize reason, you can channel power, but you can’t stop it. …

            For years now we have been engaged in a process of trying to break the black man’s identification with the white man, so that a black man says, “I’m a black man and I am not ashamed of it. I am a black man and I don’t feel I have to go along with anything the white man says.” …

The times determine our heroes. Recall, again, in the Book of Judges, how Samson was considered one of the judges of Israel because he lived at a time when they needed that kind of person, fearless, strong, with a deep hatred for the enemy. And how Samson fought. And remember the end of the Scripture lesson this morning.

Sometimes you wonder, “What are they trying to do, what do they hope to accomplish?” Remember when Samson was in the Temple and the Philistines were all around, making fun of him, robbing him of his dignity. They brought him out because be symbolized the enemy whom they had fought against, the enemy who had humiliated them so many times. …

And a little boy brought Samson out and put him in between these two big pillars that held up the Temple. His hair had begun to grow back because he had been down in the dungeon so long, and with it his strength returned. He asked the little boy to put his hands on the two pillars because he couldn’t even see. They had blinded him. And the little boy put his hands on the pillars so Samson could support himself. And when Samson got his hands on the pillars, he knew what he was going to do.

You may not like it, you may not agree with it, but Samson spoke right out to God about it. “Let me die with the Philistines. Oh God, that I may be avenged upon the Philistines for one of my eyes.” You have to understand that indignation, anger, hatred, all of them stemming from systematic oppression, can develop to the point where an individual says, “I am willing to die if I can take a whole bunch of them with me.”

That is what Samson said. I am not quoting from anybody in Detroit or Newark. That is the Bible. “‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ Then he bowed with all his might and the house fell upon the Temple and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead he slew at his death were more than those he had slain during his life.”

This you are going to have to understand because this is a part of the rebellion. There are people like this in Detroit, Newark, Birmingham, California, New York, Chicago who are willing to destroy even themselves if they can express antagonism, if they can strike out against oppression. So to the Hebrew people, the Jews, Samson is a great hero.

Who knows but that a hundred years from today we may remember as heroes some of these very individuals we call hoodlums today, who are striking out for freedom? We don’t know. But they fight for freedom in their way and we in ours, confident that God will see that freedom comes. …

(Source:   Albert B. Cleage, Jr. The Black Messiah [Kansas City, Kan.:   Sheed Andrews and McNeel-Universal Press Syndicate, 1968], pp. 122-28)

Edited by Paul Lee

Other posts relating to the Detroit Riot/Rebellion

Rebellions Create Strange Leaders Sermon from the Sunday after this one, June 30, 1967 and historical context provided by historian Paul Lee

Link to the journal I kept during the riot -> Detroit Rebellion Journal – 1967

The Fabulous Cleages – 1952

Cleages, Detroit

This Sunday afternoon, I came across this article on the fb page of one of my cousins. Article and transcription below.

April 12, 1952 The Michigan Chronicle – “America’s Fastest Growing Weekly”

The Cleages An Introduction to one of Detroit’s most Versatile and Accomplished Families

A bright-eyed little lad of eight crossed 12th street just below Edison and walked down to the St. Mark’s Community Church near Atkinson. He opened the door,  entered and was directed to the Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., who sat on a table in the basement watching a troop of Brownie girl scouts busily making puppets.

“Can I help you?” the Rev. Mr. Cleage asked the little boy.

The boy nodded. He was trying to locate his cub scout group. He gave the Rev. Mr. Cleage the troop number and the minister located the troop meeting place through a church bulletin. He gave the boy directions, and the boy went away.

The incident was typical of the attitude of the people of that community toward each other and the St. Mark’s Church in general, and toward the Rev. Mr. Cleage in particular

In less than a year, the boyish-looking pastor of the church has succeeded in making the church not only a spiritual stronghold but a center of community interest and service as well.

Practical institutions like a day nursery, with a paid worker, where all members of the community can bring their children are integral parts of the total church program.

Youth activities, including sports, socials and dramatics, are not merely encouraged – they are directed and supervised by adults in the church.

The Rev. Mr. Cleage believes that the church should serve the community as a whole and not simply the adults. He also believes –in his own words – “That the church cannot have much influence on the congregation if it merely serves as a meeting place for services on Sunday morning.”

This intelligent approach toward religion, which draws into it all the normal aspects of living, characterizes the Rev. Mr. Cleage. It is an attitude which does not spring solely from his theological training but which has its roots deep in his family background.

For the Cleage family is one of Detroit’s most versatile and accomplished families.

The Cleage family is headed by Dr. Albert B. Cleage, Sr., veteran physician who has practiced medicine on the city’s west side since 1913, and by his wife, Pearl.

A graduate of Knoxville college and of the University of Indiana medical school, Dr. Cleage instilled in his four sons and three daughters an appreciation for education, sound principles and respect for human dignity.

All seven of the younger Cleages attended Wayne University. The Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., the oldest son, went on to graduate from the Oberlin (Ohio) Graduate School of Theology and to work on his doctorate in Visual Education at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles.

The second son, Dr. Louis J. Cleage, gradated from the Wayne University medical school. After interning at the Homer Phillips hospital in St. Louis, Dr. Cleage returned to Detroit to practice medicine with his father.

Henry W. Cleage, the third son, graduated from the Wayne university college of law and is a member of the legal firm of Cleage ad League in Detroit.

The youngest son Hugh, who studied agriculture at Wayne and at Michigan state college, is presently a clerk in the Detroit Post Office.

Two of the three Cleage daughters are now married and live in other parts of the county. Mrs. Barbara (Cleage) Martin lives in Newburg, N.Y. and Mrs. Gladys (Cleage) Evans, a former Detroit schoolmarm resides at the Veterans hospital at Tuskegee, Ala., where her husband is a physician.

Anna, the youngest of the Cleages, will graduate from the Detroit, will graduate from the Detroit Institute of Technology’s school of pharmacy in June. She has already received her bachelor of arts degree from Wayne university.

During the war years, capitalizing on Hugh’s training and Henry’s zeal, the two Cleage’s bought a 100-acre farm at Capac, Mich., and proceeded to raise chickens and operate a dairy. They maintained an average of 1,000 broilers plus 500 laying hens, and a herd of 15 milk cows.

Though successful, the venture proved just a bit strenuous for the two, so they sold the farm and returned home. Henry went back to his law books and Hugh became a postal employee.

The Cleage family is a closely-knit unit, the kind of family which is held up as an example of the typical American family. It is a disciplined unit, with the wisdom of age and experience meeting the enthusiasm of youth, and the two being molded into a liberal philosophy of life.

From this family background, the Detroit community has profited. For, aside from the fact that such a well-balanced group is a community asset in itself, the family produced the Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., who is demonstrating through his leadership of the St. Marks congregation the virtues of his family training. – by Fuller

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Other stories about this time and St. Marks

“A” is for Atkinson

Alpha Dance 1952

Then and Now St. Marks

A Sunday Morning in 1953 Merges With a Day in 2011

A Church and Two Brothers – Two Splits

Vote FREEDOM NOW!

Cleages, Detroit, sepia saturday
Henry Cleage outside of Cleage Printers 1963

I wish my interviewing skills had been better when I recorded this. Obvious things like, turn off the radio and go to a quiet room. I edited out as much of the extraneous noise as I could. Henry and I were sitting in the living room of my house in Idlewild, MI. You can hear the sounds of the kids getting dinner on the table and hollering at the dog in the background. In 1994 my youngest four were all at home and we were homeschooling. Henry lived about 4 miles away and often had dinner with us. In his statements, Henry couldn’t remember some names. When I posted the transcript of the interview years ago, my friend Paul Lee commented:  “Henry couldn’t recall the names of the “two brothers” who co-founded the FNP with “Afro-American” newspaper foreign correspondent William W. Worthy. They were Leftist attorney Conrad J. Lynn and Daniel Watts, publisher of New York’s militant “Liberator” magazine. As you know, Worthy and Watts attended the National Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference in November 1963.”

Yesterday I came across these posters from 1963 and today I found the theme for this weeks Sepia Saturday was Posters. Although these are not on a wall, there were identical ones put up around Detroit during the time leading up to the election of 1964.

Ronald Latham

Older posts about the Freedom Now Party

The Freedom Now Party – William Worthy’s Speech

The Freedom Now Party – Convention

Transcript of Interview With Henry Cleage – Freedom Now Party Votes Stolen

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And now a modern wall with posters not too far from my house. The colorful part is painted. The faces are printed on paper and glued on. To the left of my sister’s face, three artists were peeled off. The building is a former night spot what now stands empty in a mostly deserted strip mall.  I hope they plan to put the three missing artists back up. There were men in the back painting that wall and there are similar murals on the other walls.

A wall in Southwest Atlanta dedicated to local artists. My sister Pearl Cleage, a writer/playwrite is in the center.
For other Sepia Saturday Posts, Click photo.

Grandmother Before the Party – 1971

Cleages, Detroit, Reeds, sepia saturday, ,
Before the party.

It was June of 1971 and my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage was waiting for the party to begin. Uncle Hugh is in the kitchen getting things ready.  Grandmother was 87 and didn’t break her hip for some years yet. I remember so many dinners around that table. There were always cakes with caramel icing for birthdays. This time it looks like there are two cakes – one chocolate and one with caramel icing. Both have candles.

Candy corns in the little silver dish. There were often candy corns in the covered candy dish that always on the front room table coffee table. Candy corns or red and white striped peppermints or sometimes chocolate kisses.

My parents at the party, a corner of Henry. Blair and Anna Pearl are at the kids table in the front room.
A better view of the front room. You can see the candy dish on the table behind Maria’s chair.

I can think of several June birthdays. My father turned 60 that year. My cousin Anna Pearl turned eleven and her sister Maria turned nine. It must have been an all June collective party. I wish I had been there. My oldest daughter Jilo turned one that June.

Click to see other Sepia Saturday posts.

Mystery Photograph Explained

Detroit,

Evelyn Thompson

I found this photograph years ago in my Grandmother Cleage’s photos. I asked my aunt Gladys who it was and she said it was Anna Roberta Reed, Uncle Hugh’s daughter. When I posted it and identified it as such, her descendants assured me that it was not her.

While going through the archive of the Detroit Tribune recently, I found a newspaper article that identified her as Evelyn Thompson, daughter of Robert Carter.  She was married in September of 1935.

“Mrs. Robert Carter, of Cleveland, Ohio, who was formerly Miss Evelyn Thompson of 5253 Twenty-fourth street, this city. Mrs Carter is very happy and what bride wouldn’t be? She was showered with exquisite wedding gifts from her husband, including a new Hudson car, a baby grand piano and a diamond ring.

The bride who is the daughter of Walter Thompson, a well-known Detroiter and was a popular and charming member of the Detroit’s younger set. She was a student at Wayne University and was a member of several local social organizations, including the A.K.A. Sorority.

The groom holds a responsible position with the Edition Illuminating Company in his city.

Mr. ad Mrs. Carter, who were married in Erie, PA. Sept 30, are happily domiciled in their lovely residence at 2160 East 86th street, in Cleveland.”

She appeared in the same paper with the same photograph several years later:

“Mrs. Evelyn T. Carter of Cleveland, formerly Miss Evelyn Thompson of this city, who recently spent two weeks as guest of her father, Walter Thompson, on 24th street. She was accompanied by her infant son.”

Evelyn Thompson graduated in 1931 from Northwestern High School in Detroit. That is the same year my Uncle Louis Cleage graduated.  That explains her picture in the family photo box.

I found one other clipping, her obituary in the “Plain Dealer” April 6, 1977.

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News items were found on Newspapers.com. School yearbook photos found on Ancestry.com. First photo from my personal collection.

 

V.H. Tulane

A to Z Challenge 2018, Detroit, Great Migration, Montgomery Alabama

This year I am going through an alphabet of news items taken from The Emancipator newspaper, published  between 1917 and 1920 in Montgomery, Alabama.  Most are about my grandparent’s circle of friends. All of the news items were found on Newspapers.com. Each item is transcribed directly below the clipping.  Click on any image to enlarge.

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Victor Tulane was my grandmother Fannie’s uncle by marriage.  He was the husband of Willie Lee Allen, my great grandmother Jennie Virginia Allen’s sister.

The Emancipator 23 Mar 1918 Sat pg 3
Victor Hugh Tulane

I thought his obituary summed up his life pretty well.

Victor H. Tulane Dead

 Montgomery, Ala., Jan, 16., 1931

Transcribed from The Chicago Defender Jan 17, 1931 via ProQuest Historical Newspapers online database.

Victor H. Tulane, a leader of his Race here for many years, died at his home, 430 S. Union St., at the age of 57.  His rise to affluence, through his own industry and native shrewdness, was little short of remarkable.  Prior to his death he owned a mercantile business and operated a real estate agency of considerable scope. Tulane first came to Montgomery when he was 15 years old, having walked here from Wetumpka, where he was born.  His first job was porter in a saloon, but later he opened a store at the corner of High and Ripley Streets. which he operated for about thirty years.  He later rented his store and entered the real estate business, and before his death had accumulated a comfortable estate.

For many years Tulane served on the board of trustees of the Tuskegee Institute.  He was also chairman of the board of trustees of the Hale infirmary.  He was widely known for his generosity and willingness to serve in charitable movement.  He was actively connected with the community chest and was one of the first to donate toward the Y.M.C.A. building for colored persons.

Surviving are his widow, Willie L. Tulane of Montgomery, and his daughter, Naomi Tulane Vincent, New York city.  Funeral arrangements will be announced later by the Loveless Undertaking company.

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Victor Tulane wrote this letter to my grandmother Fannie as her mother and sisters were in the process of moving up from Montgomery to join her in Detroit.  This was soon after Fannie and my grandfather, Mershell, bought their house on Theodore, where they lived for over 40 years.  They had two children under five and the third, my mother was on the way.  

"Letter to Fannie Graham from Victor Tulane."
Letter to Fannie Graham from Victor Tulane

V. H. Tulane
Real Estate and Insurance

Scott Building 123 Monroe St

Telephones
388
555

Rents Collected                                                                                     Homes Bought
Loans Negotiated                                                                                            And Sold 
Estates Managed

Dear Fannie,
I am enclosing check from this M.R. & Ins. Co; for ten dollars which the sec’y should have mailed you some time ago.

We are winding up the affairs of this company and will send you another payment on stock acct. pretty soon.  I think that the company will be able to pay off it’s stock holders dollar for dollar.

I trust this will find all well and getting along nicely.

Your mother’s things were shipped yesterday.  Trust they will arrive on time and in first class condition.  Remember me to all the folks.  Tell the kids hello!
Let us have a line from you when convenient.

Your Uncle,
Victor

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Other posts about Victor Tulane

I found this information on Ancestry.com in Census Records, Directories, Death Records, Military Records and Marriage Records. News items were found on Newspapers.com. I also use Google Maps. Photographs and correspondence from my family archives.

Otillia McCall Howard

A to Z Challenge 2018, Detroit

This year I am going through an alphabet of news items taken from The Emancipator newspaper, published  between 1917 and 1920 in Montgomery, Alabama.  Most are about my grandparent’s circle of friends. All of the news items were found on Newspapers.com. Each item is transcribed directly below the clipping.  Click on any image to enlarge.

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Alma Otillia McCall Howard was my grandmother Fannie’s first cousin. Their mother’s, Jennie and Mary, were sisters. James McCall, the editor and publisher of The Emancipator, was one of Otillia’s brothers.  In 2011 I used Otillia for my “O” entry. There were several mysteries I have since cleared up. And other questions opened. I will begin with my first post, then give the answers I found.

“Mrs. J. H. Howard, formerly Miss Otillia McCall of this city but now of Holly Springs, Miss., was called home by the death of her father. Mr. Edward McCall, who died Monday, Feb. 2nd.”

I began with the intention of writing about my first cousin twice removed, Alma Otillia McCall Howard. I started by going to my Ancestry.com family tree page and pulling up her profile. I noted she was the 5th of 6 children and that her wedding date was missing. I opened my Reunion family tree software, hoping it was there. Her marriage date read 1911. That couldn’t be right. Her husband’s son by his first wife wasn’t born until 1912. There was no date for that marriage either. In fact there wasn’t even a name for Otillia’s husband, Joseph Howard’s, first wife.

Top row: Doorway to Otillia’s Chicago house. Siblings – Jeanette, Otillia, Roscoe, Annabelle, James. 2nd row: Students at Mississippi Industrial College(MIC) 1908; Otillia’s mother, Mary Allen McCall; postcard of the girls dorm at MIC; 1908 photo of MIC. 3rd row: Joseph, Jr. with drums and friends; Otillia’s apt house in Chicago; Otillia and her husband Joseph Howard about 1939. 4th row: MIC building now; my grandmother Fannie and friends in Holly Springs.

I searched on Ancestry.com. No luck. Tried Family Search, no luck. Then I remembered listening to an interview that my cousin Margaret McCall Ward did with Otillia’s step-son, Dr. Joseph H. Howard, Jr, about his amazing drum collection. Maybe there was something there.  Looked for the interview in my itunes list and listened. Unfortunately, he speaks sort of quiet at the beginning when he is telling us his mother’s name and I can’t quite get it. I think he said “Evie” and then changed and spelled it out as “Dama”. Turned that off.

Joseph Jr.’s drum collection sounds interesting. Maybe there is something out there with biographical information. I google Dr. Joseph Howard drums. Several articles come up. I read them and learn the extent of his collection, his wife’s name and his two children’s name. And there are even photographs of him. Nothing about his mother.  Unfortunately, he isn’t even actually related to me and none of this is about Otillia.

I remembered another interview that Margaret did with her Uncle Roscoe’s wife, Stella. Stella’s daughter and Joseph Jr. were both there and putting in comments. Maybe the information is there. It only takes a few minutes to find the transcript of the tape on my computer and open it up. Yay! That is what I was remembering. Right at the start of the interview, Margaret starts talking to Joseph and he tells where he was born and how his parents met in Guyana.  His mother lived there and his father was working on a ship. He gives his mother’s name and even spells her last name, Sempert.   I try looking for her using first name of first Evie and then Dama, hoping to find a death record. Nope.

Later in the transcript, Joseph talks about how his step mother, Otillia and his father, Joseph Howard met. She was teaching at Mississippi Industrial College in Holly Springs, MS.  Joseph Howard Sr was a physician and I don’t know if he was practicing in Holly Springs or if he was teaching in the school.  Unfortunately, just as Margaret was getting ready to go deeper, she stopped herself and got back to her task of trying to find out where her grandfather was buried. I wondered what Mississippi Industrial College looked like? I googled and found a few photographs from 1908, a brief history, and a lot of information and photographs of how the beautiful, historic buildings are falling down before our eyes. There doesn’t seem to be any money to save them. An architect who worked on a rehabilitation project years ago writes about how he hated to stop when the funding ran out. Someone warns about walking up the steps of the auditorium and finding themselves looking two stories down to the basement.

Having read some articles about “ruin porn” while I was off on a tangent when writing a different post, I tore myself away from the wrecked buildings. Holly Springs? I remember a photograph of my grandmother and some of her friends that was taken in Holly Springs. I wonder if they were visiting Otillia? I find the photo and find nothing except place and names on the back.

I remembered an email exchange with my cousin, Ruth about her memories of Otillia and her large house in Chicago.  I go back and find the emails and re-read them for any interesting information. She talks about her parents bringing her home from the hospital to that house and the other family members who lived there. It was a multi-unit dwelling. I found a photograph of the house on google maps when I was going to write Otillia and family up for the 1940 census. There was some confusion about whether the house I found was actually the house. I looked up the address on the 1940 census and googled it. I found several real estate descriptions and photographs of the house. I’m satisfied I found the right place.

At that point I started thinking about all the side roads I took and decided to write about that. I still owe Alma Otillia McCall Howard a post.  It shouldn’t be too difficult because there can’t be any other side roads to go down, right?

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Questions and Answers:

What were the dates of Otillia’s husband, Joseph Hannibal Howard’s marriages?

I found the marriage record for Alma Otillia McCall and Joseph H. Howard. They were married June 17, 1914 in Montgomery, Alabama, which was her home town. She was 22. He was 36. According to the 1940 census Otillia had three years of college. She died In 1974 in Chicago, Illinois.

I was still unable to find the date of Joseph Howard’s marriage to Evie Shumpert.  In the 1910 Census,  Evie Shumpert was single and living with her parents and siblings in Holly Springs, Mississippi and teaching in the public schools.

Evie’s and Joseph Howards son was born on July 12, 1912 in Holly Springs.  She died in September of the same year.  The inscription on her grave stone in Hill Crest Cemetery reads “Evie Shumpert/ wife of J. H. Howard/ Born Mar 11, 1884/Died Sept 17, 1913/In life beloved, In death (mourned?)” She was 29 years old.

One more thing I remember about Otillia and her house is the story of how her mother, Mary Allen McCall and Mary’s half sister, Mattie Saffold Harris met there one summer. That is another whole story and you can read about it here -> Finding Eliza part 3.

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I found this information on Ancestry.com in Census Records, Directories, Death Records, Military Records and Marriage Records. Some information was from oral history gathered from email and taped interviews. The news items were found on Newspapers.com.

Mattie Graham

A to Z Challenge 2018, Detroit, Great Migration, Montgomery Alabama

This year I am going through an alphabet of news items taken from The Emancipator newspaper, published  between 1917 and 1920 in Montgomery, Alabama.  Most are about my grandparent’s circle of friends. All of the news items were found on Newspapers.com. Each item is transcribed directly below the clipping.  Click on any image to enlarge.

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Mattie Graham was my grandfather Mershell Graham’s adopted sister. He informally adopted the Graham family when he was a young man.  My mother and her sister always called Mattie and Cliff Graham, “Aunt” and “Uncle”. I never met either one of them, although we were all in Detroit.

Detroit, Mich.

“Mrs. Mattie Graham Taylor formerly of Montgomery, and a graduate nurse of the General Hospital of Kansas City, Mo. is acting as night supervisor of the Dunbar Hospital of Detroit. Mrs. Taylor is kept quiet busy while in this city and we wish for her every success.”

I shared the whole clipping from Detroit because it mentions the growing Plymouth Congregational Church and also the arrival to Mr. and Mrs. Mershell Graham of a fine baby girl – my Aunt Mary V. Graham.

I look the same now. Sister Mattie Graham was my grandfather, Mershell C. Graham’s adopted sister. When I found the photograph several years ago, I did not know who she was until I found the article above.

I wrote about Mattie Graham before, in 2011 at “I Look The Same Now”.  She was a mystery at that time. I had the photograph and I had the caption on the back, below. I could not figure out who she was or where she was. A reader figured out that she had attended nursing school at The General Hospital for Negroes of Kansas City, Missouri. When I found the news item, I saw that the mystery was solved!

“Made in K.C. Mo. but just found a duplicate and had this developed – 10-10-1918. Over 1 year ago. Your sister, M.G.T (Mattie Graham Taylor). A and M College. Normal Ala.”  It all seems clearer this time around.

Mattie Graham  was born in Montgomery in 1886, the middle child of Joseph and Mary Graham. She attended two years of college and was married twice. She married Frank Taylor in 1909 in Montgomery when she was 22.  They were living together in the 1910 census. By 1916 she was in Kansas City, MO at nursing school. This marriage was officially ended by divorce in 1935, when Mattie was living in Detroit. In 1936 she married Earl Harris in Detroit. She had no children.

Mary Graham, Mattie’s mother, lived with her until her death in Detroit in 1951. Mattie died in 1973 in Detroit.I wrote about her brother, Cliff Graham this year for the letter “C”.

The speech below was given by my other grandfather, Dr. Albert B. Cleage, Sr on the occasion of the graduation of the first class of nurses from Dunbar Hospital. Dunbar was founded by a group of 30 black doctors in 1918 because they were not allowed to treat their patients at white hospitals in Detroit without special permission, and sometimes not even then. The hospital also served as a training school for nurses. Although Mattie did not graduate from Dunbar, she did work there as a nurse and  no doubt had a hand in training them.

Dunbar hospital in the present with doctors from 1922. My grandfather, Albert B. Cleage Sr. is front row, all the way to the right. Composite photo © Kristin Cleage.
Speech to the First Nurse Graduating Class of Dunbar Hospital

By Dr, Albert B. Cleage (About 1920)

Page 1 of speech

“Dunbar Hospital is the one institution in this city that demonstrates the possibilities of racial co-operation and enterprise. It is one of the outstanding  successes of Negro effort and Negro management. Dunbar Hospital is a success and is rendering to this community a service that cannot be estimated in dollars and cents. We have come together tonight to celebrate the first commencement of its Training School. These graduates are the first fruits of this organization, and by its fruits alone shall its status in this community be determined. Therefore, the great responsibility that rests upon you at once suggests itself. From tonight the relationship that has existed between you and Dunbar Hospital for three years will be reversed. For these three years it has been concerned about what the world would think of your fitness, your efficiency, your capabilities, but from now on, the deeds you perform, the service you render, the very life you live will determine what the world shall think of Dunbar Hospital.

Page 2 of speech

“By their fruits you shall know them”. This is the inevitable law of nature, and holds good not only in vegetable life, but also in the life of men and institutions. Young ladies, let me congratulate you upon your choice of a life work.  You have demonstrated by your application and devotion that you could have made a success in any line of endeavor; but like your sister Mary of old, you have chosen that better part. You are entering upon a great service at a time when our race needs you most. You have by your own free will chosen a life of Sacrifice and Service, and in proportion as you make the almighty dollar the be all and end all of your existence, in that same proportion shall you succeed or fail. Let that same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, when he said ” came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” – You have by your own choice turned your back forever upon material wealth – Riches shall never be yours- You shall suffer hardships and your pleasure and joy shall be in the satisfaction of Service well done. You have chosen to dwell in the land of sorrow and sickness and death, and that you cannot always endure unless sustained by that same mind that was in Him, who wiped away the tears from the widow’s cheek at the gates of Nain, and stood by the tomb of Lazarus and wept.

You are now servants of the public, and believe me it is an exacting taskmaster. you cannot and must not make class distinctions – you shall serve alike the rich and the poor, the high and the low, the moral and the immoral. Ofttimes, your purest motives, and most unselfish services will be misunderstood, and you will become the subject of infamous tongues of gossiping men and women, but let not this deter you from the purposes of your high calling. Stand fast and immovable, and let that same mind be in you that was in Him who said ‘”Father forgive them, for they know not what they do”.

Dunbar Hospital is fortunate in having you for its first graduates. You have demonstrated that you possess the true spirit of Florence Nightingale. You are pioneers, you have set a high standard of efficiency and devotion to duty for those who come after you. Dunbar shall miss you; the physicians shall miss your ever encouraging and cheering smile, and the patients shall miss your kindly, tender and sympathetic touch, but we realize that our loss is the world’s gain. We then willingly send you forth as Angels of Mercy to serve and lessen the sufferings of that greater number of our folks as they pass through the Valley and Shadow of Death.

Then if you remember nothing else I have said tonight, remember you can’t go wrong and that success and joy and peace will always be yours if you let that same mind be in you that was in Him of whom it is written. –“He went about doing good”–

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I found the information for this post on Ancestry.com in Census Records, Directories and Death Records. The news item was found on Newspapers.com. The photographs and  speech are from my personal collection.

Jennie Turner

A to Z Challenge 2018, Detroit, Great Migration, Turner

This year I am going through an alphabet of news items taken from The Emancipator newspaper, published  between 1917 and 1920 in Montgomery, Alabama.  Most are about my grandparent’s circle of friends. All of the news items were found on Newspapers.com. Each item is transcribed directly below the clipping.  Click on any image to enlarge.

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Jennie Turner was Fannie’s mother and my great grandmother. I knew her for a few years before she died when she was wheelchair bound and not really talkative. I knew my aunts Daisy and Alice for many years.

The Emancipator – Sat- Jun 26, 1920

“Mrs. Jennie Turner and two daughter, Miss Daisy and little Alice, left last Friday for Detroit, Mich.”

L>R – Robert Pope, Jennie Allen Turner, Alice Turner, Daisy Turner. Back – Beulah Allen Pope. 1921 Windsor, Canada.

My great grandmother Jennie and daughters were coming to visit my grandparents and their new baby daughter, Mary Virginia, who was born in April of 1920.  They didn’t move to Detroit until 1922.  My grandmother was a seamstress who worked for herself in Montgomery. My aunt Daisy taught school. In the photo with them are my great grandmother’s sister Beulah, who was also a seamstress, and her son Robert.  The photo was labeled as being taken in 1921. Perhaps they came up again to visit when my grandparents second child, Mershell Jr. was born.

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My mother Doris Graham Cleage’s  memories of her grandmother, Jennie Virginia Allen Turner

Today I’m going to write about Grandmother.  Grandmother Turner was born about 1872, nine years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Don’t know if she finished high school – but she did go. Her mother taught her to sew and it was a good thing she did because grandmother worked the rest of her life supporting herself and her children at sewing.  That is, she worked after husband Howard Turner died. They married when she was about sixteen. Don’t know his age.  He looked something like grandmother’s father and also like my father, mother said.  He was a farmer’s son from around Hayneville, AL, but he preferred the big city – Montgomery.  His father had three sons and planned to give each one a large share of the farm when they married.  Howard and Jenny received their farm, but neither one liked the country. One day they were in Montgomery.  He was at a Bar-B-Q.  She was at her parents with their daughters, Fannie Mae, 4, and Daisy Pearl, 2.  someone brought word that he had been shot dead.  Apparently no one ever knew who did it, but mother always said grandmother thought his father had it done because he was angry that Howard would not farm and had even been talking about selling his part.  The father did not want the land sold, but wanted it to stay in the family forever.  (Bless his heart!).  He and the son had had some terrible arguments before they left to come to the Bar-B-Q. I often wondered why he was there and grandmother wasn’t.  She always seemed to like a good time.

I remember her laughing and singing and dancing around the house on Theodore. She was short, about five feet I guess, with brown eyes, thin dark brown hair that she wore in a knot. She was very energetic, always walking fast.  She always wore oxfords, often on the wrong feet, and never had time to change them.  We used to love to tell her that her shoes were on the wrong feet.  (smart kids!)

"Jennie Allen Turner funeral"
This photograph was taken in Montgomery during 1892 while the family was in mourning. Jennie holds two year old Daisy while four year old Fannie stands beside her.

She never did thing with us like read to us or play with us, but she made us little dresses.  I remember two in particular she made me that I especially liked.  My “candy-striped” dress – a red white and blue small print percale.  She put a small pleated ruffle around the collar and a larger one around the bottom. I was about Deignan’s (note:  that would have been about 5) size, I guess, and I really thought I was cool!  The other favorite was an “ensemble” – thin, pale green material with a small printed blue green and red flower in it – just a straight sleeveless dress with neck and sleeves piped in navy blue – and a three – quarter length coat of the same material – also straight -with long sleeves and lapels – also piped in navy blue.  She never used a pattern.  Saw something and made it!  She taught us some embroidery which she did beautifully but not often. She never fussed at us – never criticized – and I think she rocked me in the upstairs hall on Theodore when I was little and sick.  The rocker Daddy made stood in that hall.  I remember lots of people rocking in that chair when I was small.

Grandmother went to work when her husband was murdered – sewing for white folks – out all day fitting and sewing – and sewing all night – finishing while mother and Daisy stayed with their Grandfather Allen, who would tell on them when Grandmother came home and she would spank them.  Mother said she remembered telling Daisy to holler loudly so Grandmother wouldn’t spank them hard or long and it worked!

Grandmother stayed single until she was about 37 or 38 when she married someone Mother hated – looked Italian, hardly ever worked.  Liked a good time. Fathered Alice and left when she was very small.  Somehow when mother spoke of him I had the feeling he would have like to have taken advantage of her.  She was about 20 and had given up two college scholarships to stay and help Grandmother.

Sometimes after her husband’s death, Grandmother took the deed to the farm to a white lawyer. (was there any other kind?) and told him to sell it for her.  He went to see it and check it out – told her to forget it – her title wasn’t clear, but he never gave the deed back and she figured he made a deal with her father-in-law.

"jennie's shot gun house"
A shotgun house. My mother’ description is off.

 Aunt Abbie (note: Jennie’s sister) said the father-in-law built Grandmother and Howard a “shotgun” house on the farm.  She would turn up her nose as she said it.  You know that is a house like this – no doors on front or back, you could shoot a gun through hall without damage.  Animals (pigs, dogs) would wander into the hall and have to be driven out.  Aunt Abbie only stayed there when the plague was raging in Montgomery.  Yellow fever (malaria) and/or polio every summer.  Many people sick or dying.  Huge bonfires in the streets every night to ‘purify’ the air”, and closing the city if it got bad enough – no one in or out.  More than once they fled the city in a carriage through back streets and swamps because they were caught by the closing which was done suddenly to keep folks from leaving and spreading the “plague”

In Detroit, when they came in 1923 when Mother and Daddy had bought the house on Theodore and had room for them (room? only 5 adults and 3 children!)  Grandmother, Daisy and Alice got good jobs, (they were good – sewing fur coats, clean work and good pay.) at Annis Furs (remember it back of Hudsons?)  and soon had money to buy their own house much farther east on a “nice” street in a “better ” neighborhood (no factories) on Harding Ave. While they lived with us I remember violent arguments between Alice and I don’t know who – either Grandmother or Daisy or Mother.  Certainly not Daddy because when he spoke it was like who in the Bible who said, “When I say go, they goeth. When I say come, they cometh.”  Most of the time I remember him in the basement, the backyard or presiding at table. Daisy and grandmother were what we’d call talkers.

Grandmother got old, hurt her knee, it never healed properly. Daisy worked and supported the house alone. Alice only worked a little while.  She had problems getting along with people.  Grandmother was eventually senile.  Died of a stroke at 83 or so. Alice spent years taking care of her while Daisy worked. Daisy added to their income by being head numbers writer at Annis!! 

"Jennie Annis Furs"
Seamstresses at Annis Furs, Detroit 1920’s. Grandmother Turner far right, 2nd row. Alice next to her. Skip 1 + it’s Daisy.

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This information came from family information. The photo is from my photo collection. The news item is from Newspapers.com. The links within the story are to other blog posts about the topic.

Alixe Harris

A to Z Challenge 2018, Detroit, Great Migration, Montgomery Alabama
The Emancipator Sat. Mar. 2, 1918

Missionary Club Meets

“On Monday evening of this week the Woman’s Missionary Club of the First Congregational Church of this city, met at the home of Mrs. Jennie Turner, 712 East Grove Street. A delicious luncheon was served. The club is working enthusiastically to raise funds to send delegates to the Alabama State Association of the Congregational Church which meets at Talladega College, Talladega, Ala., in March. Mrs. Ruby Washington and Mrs. Alexis Harris were appointed delegates.”

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The Emancipator Sat Jun 19, 1920.  Part of Rev. E.E. Scott’s obituary.

“Among the out-of-town friends attending the funeral of Rev. E.E. Scott here Monday were Mrs. Dillard of Selma; Mr. Farley, Beloit, Ala.; Mr. and Mrs. McCarroll, Shelby, Ala.; Rev. Jones, Cotton Valley Dean O’Brien, Mr. Fletcher of Talladega, Ala. Mrs. Alexis Harris, Detroit, Mich; Mrs. McKinney, Halzelhurst, Miss., and others.”

The first mention of Mrs. Alexis Harris that I noticed was in an account of Rev. E. E. Scott’s funeral. She returned from Detroit for the funeral, which was in 1920. I thought that was serious devotion to her old pastor.  I had seen her name mentioned before as one of the founders of the new Congregational Church that was started by the people from Montgomery’s First Congregational Church who migrated to Detroit.  I have a copy of this photograph that includes my grandfather, Mershell C. Graham and in front of him, Mrs. Alixe Harris. I wondered who she was and what her life was like. She became my letter “H”.

April 11, 1959. From my grandmother Fannie’s scrapbook. Newspaper unknown.

I began to research her on Ancestry and it wasn’t long before I discovered that she and Rev. E. E. Scott’s wife were sisters. That would account for her traveling from Detroit back to Montgomery for the funeral.

Alixe was born in Yazoo County, Mississippi on March 26, 1878. She was the youngest daughter of Molli Pepper, a cook.  Alixe disappears from the record until 1910 when she appears in St. Louis, Missouri as the wife of Edward A. Harris and the mother of two children, Frank and Alixe.  Edward was working as a clerk in the Post Office. They had been married in 1905.

In 1918 Alixe appears in the article in The Emancipator going to a church association meeting. Plymouth Congregational Church was founded in 1919. Both Alixe and her husband Edward signed the original document of the intention to start a church.  My grandfather, Mershell C. Graham also signed the document.

In 1920, Alixe and her family were living in Detroit. Edward managed a restaurant. The two children were teenagers and attended school. Alixe was not working outside of the house. There were four roomers sharing the house. Everybody in the house was literate.

In 1930 Edward was 53, he listed as the head of the house and worked at an auto plant as a laborer. Alixe was 52, a trained nurse and working for a private family. Their son Frank, 24, was married and working as a die maker in an auto plant. His wife was not employed outside of the home. They had an infant son, Frank Jr.  Alixe’s daughter, also named Alixe was 23 and a pharmacist in a drug store.

Also in the 1930 census, Rachel Scott, Alixe’s sister and the widow of Rev. Scott of Montgomery, was living in Detroit with her daughter Lily Bel Foster and her daughter’s husband Paul. Three of Rachael Scotts adult children, were living there also.

In 1940 The older Harris’ were living with their daughter and her husband, Bernard O’Dell. Bernard worked as a director of a recreation department, his wife Alixe was still working as a pharmacist in a drug store. Edward, who was now 64 worked as a janitor. Alixe was 62 and working as a nurse in a sanitarium. All the adults had two or more years of college.

Alixe Pepper Harris lived to be over 100 year old. She died in March, 1980.

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I found this information on Ancestry.com in Census Records, Directories, Death Records, Military Records and Marriage Records. The news items were found on Newspapers.com.