Category Archives: Grahams

My Cousin Was a Telephone Operator

Grahams, Photographs, sepia saturday,
Marilyn in the wagon at Nanny’s and Poppy’s. Detroit Michigan, 1955.

This week the Sepia Saturday theme is telephones or telephone operators. I would like to write about my cousin Marilyn’s amazing career as a telephone operator for Bell Telephone Company in Detroit.  She started working in 1981 and continued until her retirement in 2008.

My cousin Marilyn at work.
My cousin Marilyn at work.  Photo taken in 1989.

My cousin sent me a photograph of herself at work with the phone company. She wrote a bit about her years at there:

At Michigan Bell Telephone Co, which turned into AT&T Inc. Worked from 1981 to 2008 (about 28 years)

  • Information operator (“What city?”)
  • Also worked as a clerk in the company and
  • A telephone booth $ collector (Drove a big truck with a hard had, lots of keys hanging on side – 2 way radio “walkie talkie.”

Unfortunately I do not have any photographs of Marilyn at the switchboard so I am inserting a photo grab from one of my favorite movie, Danzón (María Novaro, 1991). The whole movie (Spanish, no subtitles) is available on YouTube in more than 10 parts. I would advise renting the movie. It has everything, dancing, true love, a fine young man on a boat, good hearted prostitutes, female impersonators, friendship, motherhood, aging. I found it on Netflix here and also cheap on Amazon.

Telephone Operators in the movie Danzón (María Novaro, 1991). María Rojo, Carmen Salinas, Tito Vasconcelos.
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Newspaper Clipping of My Parents in San Francisco – 1944

Cleages, Grahams, Photographs

My parents were married November  17 1943, at Plymouth Congregational Church in Detroit. They left immediately for Lexington Kentucky, where my father was pastor of Chandler Memorial Church until he accepted the position above as co-pastor of the interracial Fellowship Church in San Francisco.  I had never seen this photograph before my cousin scanned it for me yesterday. There is no newspaper name or date on the clipping.  Perhaps it appeared in The Sun, a black newspaper, founded in San Fransisco in 1944.

A photograph of Fellowship Church in San Francisco from my father’s album.

A Dance, a Box and half of Henry

Cleages, Grahams, Photographs, sepia saturday, ,
Click for headless photos and more.

The prompt for this weeks Sepia Saturday is a photograph of a boy in front of a theater next a sign advertising a movie about an ex-convict. Standing on the far right side is a man with his head cut off by the photographer. I looked through my photos and was disappointed to find no sepia headless ones. I thought I had seen some in a box of photographs that came from my uncle Henry Cleage.

I came across this photograph in the box. Most of the photographs are of Henry’s first wife, Alice Stanton. She is the one in the front holding the purse. I noticed Doris Graham, my mother and Henry’s second wife, dancing in the background.  I do not know who either of the men are.  The photo was taken in 1939 or 1940 in Detroit.  Henry and Alice were married on 3 September, 1941 in Detroit and divorced not too many years later. At first I thought that this photograph was taken the same day as the one below, but when I compared them, the news photo was of a much posher affair.

“Oh, Mr. Photographer! That’s what pretty Doris Graham (left) probably said as she glided by in the arms of Robert Douglass … Chesterfield club…”    The incomplete caption at the bottom of this photo from my grandmother Fannie Graham’s scrapbook. Doris Graham, my mother.  The newspaper was the Detroit Tribune which was published by my grandmother’s cousin, Edward McCall. The date was added by my grandmother.

 For some reason, at this point, I noticed the address on the box that the photographs were kept in. It was addressed to Dr. L. J. Cleage at Homer Phillips Hospital in St.Louis.

The box.

Had my Uncle Louis done his medical internship at Homer Phillips Hospital? If so, it was probably around 1940.  Although both Louis and my father were enumerated with their parents on Scotten Ave. in Detroit, both were listed as absent from the home. You can see them here in the 1940 Census.  I went to Ancestry.com and looked for records for Louis Jacob Cleage. In the 1940 census he was indexed with his parents but there was also a Dr. Louis Cleage in St. Louis, MO. There he was, living in the doctor’s housing at Homer G. Phillips, as a Jr. intern.

Homer G. Phillips Hospital and surrounding area 1940.

The story of Homer G. Phillips hospital is a familiar one – black citizens tired of second class health care, black doctors tired of not being able to hospitalize and care for their own patients, of being unable to practice in the hospitals in their city. Click this link to read more about Homer G. Phillips Hospital’s interesting history.  My husband’s younger siblings were born in St. Louis. He thought some of them might have been born at Homer G. Phillips. As luck would have it, his sister called  right about then and confirmed that she and all of the youngest five Williams’ were born there from 1950 to 1963.

I seemed to be on a roll, so I decided to see if my father was enumerated in 1940 as a student at Oberlin where he attended Seminary. He did not turn up anywhere else outside of his parents home in the 1940 census. However, he was listed in the 1940 Oberlin Student Directory.  His birth date is off by 9 years, but the home address is his parent’s Scotten Ave. address in Detroit.

After all this it was an anti-climax to find one photo with half a head missing – Henry holding up some fish while standing by Lake Idlewild.  Since the focus is on the fish, perhaps this doesn’t really count. My family photographers seemed to have been more likely to leave lots of space with everybody crowded to the center than they were to chop off a head. Or maybe they just tossed all of those headless photographs.

Henry with his catch. 1940 Lake Idlewild.

Three Hats

Grahams, sepia saturday

These are friends of my grandfather, MC Graham (Poppy). I used this photograph before but never as the featured photo. I thought the bowler hat theme was perfect for this.  I don’t know who they are. The photograph was probably taken between 1917 in Montgomery before my grandfather married or 1919 in Detroit. Unfortunately it’s undated and unidentified. I am going by the clothes my grandfather wore that day and in other photos that are dated.

My grandfather and unidentified friend.

This photo is un-photoshopped. I couldn’t get the woman’s face right so I just included it as is. You can see more of the coat in this one. We are left to guess at the dress underneath.

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Marilyn Makes a Trunk – 1956

Grahams, sepia saturday

When I was growing up my sister, my cousins and I always made a yearly trip to the Detroit zoo with our mothers and grandfather, Poppy.  My youngest cousin Marilyn was impressed by the elephants trunk this year and went around making her arm into a trunk afterwards.

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“F” is for Fairfield

Biography, Cleages, Family History Through the Alphabet, Grahams, Houses

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge.

In the fall of 1968, Henry, my mother and her parents, Mershell and Fannie Graham, bought the flat at 16201 Fairfield. The Graham home on Theodore had been invaded, shot into and suffered an attempted armed robbery.  Nobody had been hurt.

In the spring of that same year an insurance salesman was shot to death in front of our house on Oregon. The murderer cut through our backyard during his escape. Although nobody was home, my mother never felt the same about living there. They began to look for a flat to share.

I didn’t realize I signed as a witness on the deed.

I lived there from the fall of 1968 until I left home in the spring of 1969.  My grandparents lived there until they died in 1973 and 1974. My mother and Henry were there until 1976, when they moved to Idlewild. My sister, Pearl, was a sophomore at Howard University when we moved and never lived there, although  she came home for holidays.

16261 Fairfield, Detroit with the people who lived there in 1968.

The people in the photos are, starting upstairs and going from left to right – Henry looking firm,  me the night before I left on my cross country tour, Pearl and my mother. Downstairs we have my aunt Mary Virginia who lived with her parents for some months, Alice (my grandmother’s youngest sister), my grandmother Fannie, my grandfather Mershell and my mother holding my daughter, Jilo.  I got the idea for this photo house from a photograph I saw via twitter of a house in Detroit. You can see it at Detroitsees here.

The flat on Fairfield was kitty-corner from a University of Detroit field.  The only thing I remember happening on that field while I lived there was a high school band rally with different bands doing routines throughout a Saturday.  I remember staying up late working on art projects and catching the bus across the street to go to campus. Most of my memories are of returning to visit with my oldest daughter.  I know that I didn’t spend half as much time as I could/should have spent talking with my grandparents when they were right downstairs.

This house is still standing and looking very good.  You can see it on the corner in the street sign photo above. Although the hospital that used to be directly across the street is gone, the rest of the block is all there!  Whooooohooooo!

You can see my mother and grandfather’s wonderful garden and read more about Poppy in “Poppy Could Fix Anything.”

 

 

Mershell Graham and Fannie Mae Turner Marriage License – June 11, 1919

African-American Genealogy & Slave Ancestry Research, Grahams, Great Migration, Montgomery Alabama, One Place Study, poetry & literature, Turner,

On June 11, 1919 Mershell Graham and Fannie Mae Turner applied for a marriage license in Montgomery, Alabama. They were married by Rev. E.E. Scott at First Congregational Church in Montgomery on June 15.  I have no photographs of the marriage or memories that were handed down. I could find no record of their marriage license in the Montgomery Advertiser. They seemed to have no section devoted to “News of the Colored Folk” as some newspapers did.

Mignon, Jean, Hattie, ?,?,?,Emma Topp, Mershell, Fannie
Moses McCall on Belle Isle.

Soon after the ceremony my grandparents left and returned to Detroit where Mershell was working.  I assume they took the train, which would have been segregated at that time. They roomed with friends from home, Moses and Jean Walker. There were other roomers, all of them saving up to be able to purchase their own homes.

To read Mershell’s letter of proposal read  The proposal To read Fannie’s letter of acceptance read –  The acceptance 

I found several marriage related, handwritten poems in my grandparents papers and have printed them below. I wonder if they read these during the ceremony or exchanged them.

The gift
Yes, take her and be faithful, still, and may your bridal bower,
Be sacred kept in after years, and warmly breathed as now,
Remember tis no common tie that binds your youthful hearts
Tis one that only truth should breath and only death should part.

Remember tis for you she leaves her home and mother dear,
To have this world with you alone, your good and ill to share,
Then take her and may future years mark only joys increase
And may your days glide sweetly on in happiness and peace.

The Brides Farewell

Soon, soon I’ll go – from those I love
You, Mother, Sister, among the nest,
Where I will often think of you,
Far in the distant west.

Farewell, Mother, though I leave you
Still I love you, Oh! believe me
and when I am far away
Back to you my thoughts will stray.
Oft, I’ll think of you and home
Though in other lands I’ll roam.
Yes, though miles may intervene,
I will keep thy memory green
Mother, sister, from my heart
Thoughts of thee shall never depart.