This photograph was taken in the alley beside my grandparent’s house on Theodore in Detroit in 1937. My grandfather, Mershell, was 47. He stands here with his daughters dressed for church. He worked at the Ford Rouge Plant, taking the street car to work everyday and saving the car for going to church and other weekend activities. Mary Virginia, my mother’s older sister, was 17 and a senior at Eastern High School, on East Grand Blvd within walking distance of the house. She graduated in June and in September went to Business College where she excelled in typing. My mother was 14. She graduated from Barbour Intermediate School that year and joined her sister at Eastern High School. Here are their report cards from that year.
Meanwhile, a lot going on in the world in 1937. The montage below contains photographs of some. The Memorial Day Massacre when Chicago police shot and beat union marchers who were organizing at Republic Steel Plant. Ten workers died. Amelia Earhart flew off and disappeared. The German Luftwaffe bombed Guernica, Spain during the Spanish Civil War in support of Franco and inspired the painting of the same name by Picasso . The Japanese invaded China, killing and raping thousands. Roosevelt was re-elected. The Hobbit was published. Gone With the Wind won the Pulitzer prize for Margaret Mitchell. The first animated full length film, Snow White came out. An anti-lynching law was passed. The Golden Gate Bridge was completed and opened with a day for pedestrians to walk across. Buchenwald concentration camp was build. The Hindenburg exploded and burned. King George VI’s coronation took place. Auto workers in Flint, Michigan won recognition for the UAW after a prolonged sit down strike. The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers flooded leaving devastation and death behind. Ethiopia was now in the hands of fascist Italy.
What was going on in 1937
For more outgoing posts at Sepia Saturday, click here.
My mother and my grandmother turned out to be more sociable in their youth than they were by the time I knew them. Here are a couple of photographs I found of them being social butterflies.
Progressive Twelve Club – Montgomery, Alabama – 1911
Some of the young women in the Progressive Twelve Club were relatives. My grandmother, Fannie Mae Turner wrote the song. Daisy Turner was her sister. Naomi Tulane and Jennette McCall were first cousins. Some of them are also in the photo below. The information on the back of the photo was stuck to the album page so I’m not sure who is who. The purpose of the Progressive Twelve Club seemed to be sewing. I wish I could have heard them sing this song.
Fannie and friends at Holly Springs, MS
Progressive Twelve Club Song Composed by F.M.T. 1911
(1)
It was a bright September day In dear old 1911; our club of 12 was organized An hour to needlework given We hear the name “Progressive 12”, As you’ve already seen; the Kilarney rose adorns us Our colors are pink and green.
(2)
Chorus We’re loyal to our motto with it we like to delve; See…hear..speak no evil as do the Progressive Twelve! We’re loyal to our motto. With it we like to delve see no–hear no–speak no evil, Oh you! Progressive Twelve!
(2)
On Thursdays to our meetings In sunshine or in rain: We go to greet our hostess, and new inspiration gain. We’ve carried a record high and fair on which we look with pride Not only in art but in music, we’re noted far and wide.
Chorus
(3)
Mesdames Campbell and Dungee sing, Washington and Miller too, McCall and Tulane join in, (while) Laurence and Wilson sew. Mayberry makes the music Jones and the Turners two just work and think of our motto, with hopeful hearts and true.
Chorus-
_____________________________________________
The Social Sixteen – 1937 – Detroit, Michigan
My mother, Doris Graham is in the back row center with the flowered dress on. Her sister, Mary V. is seated in the very front. First man in the back right is Frank “Buddy” Elkins who Mary V. would later marry. My father’s sister, Barbara Cleage is seated on the far right, front. I don’t know what exactly the Social Sixteen did but my Aunt Barbara told me that the only reason they had her in the club was because of her 4 older brothers. The young woman at the other end of the couch was my mother’s best friend, Connie Stowers. We used to go visit her once a year. Which I still don’t understand because she lived across town, not in another city.
My mother, Doris Graham, was in the news quite a bit during her years at Eastern High School in Detroit. Some were from the school paper, “The Indian”. Some were from “The Detroit Tribune”, a weekly black newspaper published by my mother’s cousins, James McCall and his wife Margaret. I have other articles “starring” my mother but I am just using those from 1937 – 1940. The others will appear later. The articles were saved by my grandmother Fannie, Doris’ mother. The writing on them is hers.
An article written my mother for the Eastern High School paper, “The Indian”.
My mother sitting alone on the right front of the picture. From Eastern High Yearbook, “The Arrow”.
The same photograph was used from her Junior High graduation article.
From “The Detroit Tribune.”
From the Eastern High paper “The Indian.”
1 Year Scholarships to Wayne State University – from one of the Detroit daily papers.
Doris Graham Cleage in her classroom at Roosevelt Elementary School – 1959. 36 years old.
My mother was 36 years old and had been teaching for six years at Roosevelt Elementary school when it was taken. My sister and I attended Roosevelt. I had my mother for a Social Studies teacher when she first began teaching. We pretty much read the book, “Someday Soon.” and answered questions. It was not very interesting. She improved a LOT as she went through twenty years of teaching.
With class at Duffield Elementary School. Distar on the board. September 1969.
Her last teaching assignment was at Duffield Elementary school, where she taught reading using the Distar method. She loved it and taught it to me and I used it to teach all of my children to read.
I found the writing below in one of my mother’s notebooks. It isn’t dated and I don’t know if she wrote it after retirement or before or what she was planning to do with it.
Each year when school begins I see again the many ways in which my children are alike. I am equally impressed with their differences. Close on the heels of these feelings comes the realization that once more I must try to build with each child the kind of relationships that will make it possible for me to teach him.
Children ask themselves many questions about a new adult. Is she friendly? does she smile often? Does she really mean what she says? What does she expect of me? Too much? Too little? Can I be myself with her? Or must I pretend to be what she has already decided I must be? Will she listen when I am happy or in trouble or need help? Or will she always be too busy?
Satisfactory answers to these questions will mean satisfactory learning experiences for a child. Unsatisfactory answers will mean no learning – or even worse the learning of things that must later be unlearned.
It was a warm afternoon. The sounds of children at play came in through our open windows along with the good smell of newly cut grass.
My forty odd second-graders, (who come to me for two distressingly brief forty minute periods each week), were eagerly writing with crayons on small pieces of lined paper. Rough desks and clumsy crayons made writing difficult, but they settled to their pleasant task of writing for me their first and second choice for group work. We had been studying transportation as groups. Now according to our plan, we were dividing ourselves into groups of seven or eight to paint, draw write plays, poems, or stories, or create in clay about airplanes, boats, subways, cars or trains – whatever appealed the most to us. We had decided to use crayons instead of pencils because it took less time to pass crayons from a large box than it took to pass each one his own pencil.
As I walked among the crowded seats helping when I could, I came upon a small boy in a front seat. His paper was empty. His small fists were clenched on his desk. Leaning down to keep from disturbing others I asked, May I help you Julie?”
His close-set blue eyes were intense and unblinking as he raised them to me and said between clenched teeth, “I can’t do it.”
Thinking that he wanted a neat paper and knew that this was well-nigh impossible with crayon and rough desks, I said reassuringly, “Don’t worry about how it looks this time. Do the best you can.”
His hands did not move as he stared as his paper.
“I’ll never help him on the playground if he is in a fight – I don’t care if he is getting beaten, I’ll never help him.”
Work had stopped and forty pairs of eyes watched us unwaveringly.
“Who is it that you won’t help, Julie?”
He pointed silently to the boy who had passed a crayon to each child from a box of assorted colors. Julie’s jaw was set – his face moist, “I hate purple. He gave me a purple crayon I can’t stand it.”
Here was a child who brought to school a brilliant mind (At 7 he could read on a fifth-grade level) burdened by countless problems at home – over-worked parents building a small business, a senile grandmother, constant competition for recognition and affection with her as well as with older and younger brothers.
I stooped beside his desk. “We didn’t know that you don’t like purple. What color would you like to have?”
“I don’t care – but not this one! He opened his fist and showed a purple crayon moist from a small hand’s clenching.
All eyes were fixed on me as I rose from Julie’s desk. Their tension now was almost as great as his. I walked to the cupboard and returned with a green crayon. “Will this one do?”
He took it without a word and began to write his choices.
I looked over his head at the children. They smiled gently and I smiled back. We had taken another step on the road to good learning.
Doris Graham Cleage picking green beans at Old Plank 1963
I’ve been thinking about my mother these last few days. My mother, Doris Graham Cleage, was picking vegetables in the garden at Old Plank. I wrote about the farm in my post Playing Poker. What else was my mother doing in 1963, aside from maintaining a large, organic garden? She turned 40 February 12 that year and lived on the west side of Detroit at 5397 Oregon with her second husband, Henry Cleage and her two daughters Kris, 17 and my sister Pearl, 14. Both of us were students at Northwestern High School. Henry was printing in those days and putting out the Illustrated News.
She was in her 5th year of teaching Social Studies at Roosevelt Elementary School. She took two post masters degree classes at Wayne State University that year, Urban Geography in the winter quarter and Constitutional Law in the fall quarter.
There was a lot going on in those days and my family was involved in a lot of it. To see what was going on in the news in 1963 click here –> Politics
To read about the March To Freedom in Detroit, when over 100,000 people walked down Woodward Avenue to protest the violence in Birmingham, Alabama, in July 1963 click here –> Walk to Freedom.
To see Henry and the press at Cleage Printers click here –> Henry printing
Photographer DeeDee behind worried Barbara, Poppy with Pearl & me (Kristin) laughing.
My cousin Dee Dee is the seven year old who took the photograph for Three in a Wagon. This photo was taken the same day in my grandparents backyard. Barbara still has her pistol and Pearl is still holding her pad and pencil plus Barbara’s boot which is hanging open by her right side. I seem to have traded the doll for a tin of powder?
On the back of the photograph my grandmother, Fannie (aka Nanny), wrote “Barbara Lynne 3, Pearl Michelle 2, Kristin Graham 4. May 30 – 1951. This was snapped by DeeDee.”
This photo was taken in my grandparents backyard. We spent most Saturdays back then at Nanny’s and Poppy’s playing with our cousins. On the left end of the wagon is my cousin Barbara holding a cowboy boot and a toy gun. In the middle is my sister Pearl who is writing madly. I am on the right end holding a doll and looking worried. My sister grew up to be a writer. I grew up to have 6 children. If only cousin Barbara had grown up to ride bucking broncos or live on a ranch or rob banks, the mirroring of the future would have been complete. This photograph was taken by Barbara’s older sister, Dee Dee who was 7 years old at the time.
Front: Barbara, Pearl. Back: Dee Dee the photographer, Poppy, Kristin
For more old photos, with or without dolls, click on the picture below.
My grandfather wrote in his little notebook in 1940,
“Bonzo taken away by Humane Society Sept. 3rd 1940 $1.00 donation made. This dog was about 12 years old.”
In this photograph my mother, Doris was 10 years old. Bonzo must be about 5. They are in the backyard of my grandparents house on the east side of Detroit. Bonzo was an outside dog and had a place under the porch to sleep and get out of the weather. He went through the cold winters there. When he was taken away by the Humane Society he was suffering terribly from rheumatism.
Before my mother’s family had Bonzo, they had a dog named Toodles. Toodles was allowed in the house sometimes because once, when there was company and he was in the basement, he fell down the steps and, as I remember the story, broke his neck. Which is why Bonzo always stayed in the yard.
For more fine old photographs, some of girls and animals, click on the link below.
