I found this photograph in my Graham album. I have no idea who it is. I don’t know who’s sister it is. I know it isn’t my grandmother Fannie’s sister because I would recognize them. I don’t think it’s my grandfather Mershell’s sister because as far as I know she was a servant with several children by 1918. I looked for information about nursing schools for African Americans Kansas City, MO. in 1918 and turned up nothing, but Zann, a friend of mine, found several short pieces and some photos of the General Hospital for Negroes in Kansas. The uniforms the nurses are wearing look like the same uniforms. So, here is my mystery nurse for this weeks Sepia Saturday.
I can’t make most of this out very well, but here is what I make of it “Made in K.C. Mo. but just found a duplicate and had this developed – 10-10-1918. Over……….your….F. A dm………Normal Ala.”
While looking through newspaper archives awhile ago, I unexpectedly found an article with a photograph of my mother. In the photograph below she is seated at the table checking people into the dance. I looked for a photograph of the hotel where the dance was held and found the old postcard. Next I looked for something about The Girl Friends Society. I had no luck at first. Items about the Girls Friendly Society kept turning up and it wasn’t the same group. After I dropped “Society” in my search, I found several things, including the history of the group below with a link to their website. The Springfield, Mass. Chapter was founded in 1935 and they celebrated their 75th Anniversary in 2010.
I never knew my mother to be part of any posh groups so this was all news to me. In February of 1951, my father was pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield. I was 4 and my sister had just turned 2 in December. We moved to Detroit in the Fall of that year.
“Checking in at the “Winter Wonderland – Wonderland-shown above, at the 15th annual charity cabaret dance, held last night at the Hotel Kimball by the Springfield Chapter of the Girl Friends Society of America, are, left to right, Mrs. Doris Cleage, chairman of the ticket committee, Miss Helen DuBose and Harold Edmonds.Nearly 150 patrons of the Society’s charities attended the dance, which the Springfield Girl Friends termed the “Winter Wonderland.” Dancing was to the music of Lenwood Cook’s Seven Sharps.
The Springfield chapter has a membership of 12, including Mrs. J. Clifford Clarkson, president: Mrs Nello Greene, vice-president; Mrs. Marian Kennedy secretary; Mrs Irttle Funn, treasurer: Mrs. Hazel Fitch corresponding secretary; and Mrs. Doris Cleage, parliamentarian. Other members are Mrs. Maude Boone, Mrs. Cordella Clarke, Mrs Evelyn Delworth, Mrs. Charlotte McGoddwin, Mrs. Melle TAylor and Mrs. Theda Wilson.
“Hotel Kimball Springfield, Massachusetts. Ranks with the finest in the country. A magnificant hotel, modern and metropolitan in every appointment.”
* Founded during the Harlem Renaissance in 1927 by eleven young women based on friendship and community involvement
* One of the oldest social/civic organizations of African-American women in the United States
* Incorporated in 1938 under the legal guidance of Baltimore attorney Thurgood Marshall (spouse of Girl Friend Vivian Marshall)
* Founders of the organization were Eunice Shreeves, Lillie Mae Riddick, Henri Younge, Elnorist Younge, Thelma Whittaker, Dorothy Roarke, Helen Hayes, Connye Cotterell, Rae O. Dudley, Anna S. Murphy and Ruth Byrd
* Bessye Bearden, newspaper columnist, civic leader and mother of celebrated artist, Romare Bearden, served as the groups chaperone and advisor.
* Currently there are 45 chapters across the country, and over 1400 women of prominence in membership
*The first chapter expansion was in 1928 with the formation of the Philadelphia chapter, with Baltimore (1930), Boston (1931) and New Jersey (1932) and New Haven (1932) soon added
*The first Conclave (national meeting of chapters) was hosted by New York in 1933
*Organization colors are apple and emerald green, its flower is the Marshall Neal rose (now called the yellow tea rose)
*Since those formative years, the chain of friendship has grown to embrace a continent. Girl Friends have founded schools, headed colleges, earned all manners of academic and professional degrees, written books, headed their own businesses, saved lives, been elected to Congress and named to the cabinet of the US President. They have also been devoted wives, mothers, sisters and friends, and involved members of their communities.
*Currently there are 45 chapters across the country, and over 1400 women in membership.
Copyright 2007, The Girl Friends,® Inc. The Girl Friends® is a registered service mark of The Girl Friends, Inc.
My grandfather, Mershell C. Graham sitting on the porch railing of his unofficially adopted family’s home in Montgomery, Alabama in the early 1900s. Mary Graham seated in the rocker and her son John Clifton seated on the stairs.
As I was transcribing my grandmother Fannie Turner Graham’s records of her children’s births and deaths, I began to wonder about the lives of Dr. Ames and Dr. Turner (no relation) who attended these events. As I read about their lives in various online sources I also learned about Detroit race relations, some of which I knew but I had not put them together with the lives of my family and those they knew. I also realized some tie-ins with my paternal Cleage side of the family. They all get mixed up in this post.
On April 3, 1920 Mary V(irginia) Graham was born at home with Dr. Ames attending. My mother, Doris Graham Cleage did not remember him fondly. “It was a very difficult delivery, labor was several days long. The doctor, whose name was Ames, was a big time black society doctor, who poured too much ether on the gauze over Mother’s face when the time for delivery came. Mother’s face was so badly burned that everyone, including the doctor, thought she would be terribly scared over at least half of it. But she worked with it and prayed over it and all traces of it went away. Mary V’s foot was turned inward. I don’t know if this was the fault of the doctor or not, but she wore a brace for years.”
Dr. James Ames came to Detroit in 1894 after graduating from Straight University in New Orleans and Howard University Medical School in Washington D.C. He was elected to the Michigan State House of Representatives from Wayne County’s 1st district for a two year term, 1901-1902.
In 1900 the total population of Detroit was about 285,704. When my paternal grandparents, Albert B. and Pearl Cleage, moved their family to Detroit in 1915 the black population was about 7,000. By the time my maternal grandfather, Mershell C. Graham, arrived in 1917 the black population had soared to over 30,000.
Black doctors were routinely denied admitting privileges at white hospitals. This meant their patients had to be admitted to the hospital by a white doctor. They were sometimes also denied the right to treat their patients once they were admitted. Often hospitals had segregated wards and once they were full, black patients had to find another hospital. In 1918, 30 black doctors came together and founded Dunbar Hospital. Dr. Ames was Medical Director and Dr. Alexander Turner was Chief of Surgery. My grandfather Dr. Albert B. Cleage was one of the doctors. Dr. Ames is first row second from left in the photo of the Dunbar staff above. My grandfather is first row, last one to the far right.
Fannie Graham’s second child, Mershell C. Graham Jr, was born June 10, 1921 at Dunbar Hospital with Dr. Turner in attendance. In that same year, membership in the Ku Klux Klan in Detroit totaled 3,000. The third child, my mother, Doris J. Graham, was born February 12, 1923 at Women’s Hospital with Dr. Turner attending. By that time membership in the KKK in Detroit was 22,000. In November of that year between 25,000 and 50,000 Klan members attended a rally in Dearborn township, which is contiguous with Detroit’s west side.
By 1925 Detroit’s total population was growing faster than any other Metropolitan area in the United States, the black population was over 82,000. Housing segregation was widespread, although there were neighborhoods such as the East Side neighborhood where the Grahams lived that black and white lived together without friction. Perhaps the area wasn’t posh enough to invite trouble. Maybe the large number of immigrants accounts for it. Unfortunately that was not the story citywide as people began to try and move out of the designated black areas into the other neighborhoods. Families moving into homes they had purchased were met by violent mobs that numbered from the hundreds into the thousands. This happened in 1925 during April, June, twice in July and in September.
In the 1920s, Dr. Alexander Turner was one of the most prominent black doctors in Detroit. A successful practitioner and surgeon, Turner co-founded Dunbar Memorial Hospital in 1918. The 27-bed hospital had an operating room and catered to Detroit’s black community. Widely respected, Turner moved easily between Detroit’s black and white worlds. He held appointments at two white hospitals that barred most black doctors. He owned a chain of pharmacies and operated two private offices, and his clientele was 75 percent white.
But none of that mattered when the doctor moved his family into a house on Spokane Avenue, in an all-white neighborhood on the city’s west side.
On June 23, 1925, as Turner, his wife and mother-in-law were moving into their new home, they were greeted by members of the Tireman Avenue Improvement Association — thousands of people carrying rocks, potatoes and garbage, news reports said.
At the time, the neighborhood was off-limits to blacks. And it was common practice for mobs of whites to keep blacks from integrating neighborhoods, said Charles Ransom, a reference librarian at the Graduate Library at the University of Michigan.
The Turners had only been in the home five hours when the group attacked. At gunpoint, two men forced Turner to sign his deed over to them and, with the help of the police, had the Turner family escorted out of the house.
The family returned to Turner’s Warren Avenue home, which contained one of the doctor’s two offices, several bedrooms and a five-car garage. Turner later moved to Ohio, where he died in 1944.
Albert B. Cleage Jr age 15
While writing this I realized that in 1925, my father, Albert B. Cleage Junior, was 14 and attending Northwestern High school with the children of the families that forced Dr. Turner out of his home. The elementary schools for both communities fed into Northwestern High School, which my father and his siblings attended. No wonder my grandmother Pearl Cleage is famous for going up to the school and fighting segregated seating and other inequalities practiced at the time. Ironically, in the ’60s when my sister and I were living on Oregon Street, several blocks from where Dr. Turner tried to move in, and attending Northwestern High School, the community was 99 percent black.
On November 1, 1927 Mershell C. Graham Jr was killed when he was hit by a truck on the way back to school after lunch. He was taken to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, a Catholic Hospital on Detroit’s East side. Dr. Turner was there with him when he died.
On September 9, 1928 Howard Alexander Graham was born at Woman’s Hospital with Dr. Alexander Turner attending. By 1930 Detroit’s population was 1,568,662. On March 4, 1932, Howard Graham died. I know that his first name was that of Fannie’s father. I wonder if his middle name, Alexander was for Dr. Alexander Turner.
#1 Baby Mary Virginia – #2 baby in cap Mershell – #3 Baby Doris – #4 Baby Howard
From the back pages of my grandmother Fannie Turner Graham’s Bible
“Our darling little Mershell Jr. was run over by a truck on Tuesday Nov. 1st – ’27 at 12:45 PM. on his way to school from lunch. skull crushed etc. – Neck broken – shoulder fractured- rushed to St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital – never regained consciousness – died – same night at 2:10 – Dr Turner at his sid(e) (Fun)eral-Nov 4th … (Lavi)scount offic(iated) sang….”
Mary Virginia born April 3rd 1920 at 5:10 AM on Saturday. Detroit Mich at 1031 St. Jean Ave, 7 #. Dr. Ames & … 2nd baby – Mershell C. Graham, Jr. born June 10th – 1921 at 7:45 PM. On Friday. Detroit, Michigan. Dunbar Hospital. 8 1/2# Dr. Turner. Died 11/1/27 killed by auto.
3rd baby – Doris J. Graham born February – 12th – 1923. 5:10 A.M. – on Monday at Women’s Hospital Beaubien and For(est) Detroit, Michigan 7#
Two pages from Howard Alexander Graham’s baby book.
The Arrival
A babyHoward A(lexander) Grahamwas born toMershell C. and Fannie Turner Graham – Woman’s Hospital.
On the7thday ofSeptember 1928at 5:10 o’clock P.M. Address6638 Theodore Street. Autograph of MotherFannie T. Graham Autograph of FatherMershell C. Graham Autograph of DoctorA.L. Turner M.D. Autograph of NurseAunt Abbie Allen Autograph of othersAunt Jean Walker presented this book to him.
Photographs
Saw his first circus – 2 1/2 years old – and what a thrill. July 1931 On Oct 23 1931 – Howard came into bathroom while Dad was trimming my hair. Where have you been I asked? Answer …In the children’s room. Question—What doing? Answer – “Lecturing on common-sense.” The above is true – Believe it or not. Had more sense then any child his age we’ve ever seen.
***********
2/20/32 Howard sent to hospital – scarlet fever. 2/28 – began to grow worse – they sent for us to come see him –Sunday 2/28/32 – He was unconscious and didn’t know us…remained unconscious 4 days On Tuesday 3/1 – called us to Hospital to see him. On Thursday AM he began to get better. Thursday eve – regained consciousness. At 12:45 AM. The phone rang and Dr. called us to come see him… Then again at 5:30 a.m. “Dr” phoned us to come. Mr. Vorpogel dressed and drove Daddy out there – but Howard was dead on arrival. Died 3/4/32 at 5:00 AM… Buried 3/15/32 – beside Mershell.
"On our back porch 1959. Kris 13 & Nannie. She's just turned 13."
I look so comfortable leaning into my grandmother. Nannie was 71. It was almost back to school time. One more year ahead at McMicheal Junior High for me. Right now I’m wishing I could go back there again, even for just one of those Saturdays in my grandparents backyard.
I posted this chart last year for Labor Day. Here is a chart showing 7 generations of workers from my 3X great-grandmother to my children. My direct line is highlighted in yellow. The women with children combined whatever else they did with cooking, cleaning, washing clothes and raising the children. The first generations started their work life as slaves in Alabama. You can see a similar chart for my paternal side HERE.
Last year on Labor Day, I posted a chart of 7 generations of my family’s work history on both of my blogs. (How did I miss that I’ve been blogging for over a YEAR??) Today I’m going to repost them with a few minor changes. I can only find Lewis and Judy Cleage in the 1870 US Census and their marriage record. I am not convinced that all the children listed living with them are their children if their ages are correct. But having no other information, I put them in. I do not know what work the children did in the future. I think I will look for them again. Annie Green Reed had two husbands and four more children but I left them off of this chart. They were all laborers or farmers or housewives. Both Buford Averitt and Robert Allen come to the family tree as white men who did not acknowledge their black offspring as far as we know. Oral history and records of birth, marriage and death account for their making it onto my chart. I’ve pinpointed Buford but there are several possibilities with Robert so he has no job here. My direct line is highlighted in yellow. You can see a similar chart for my maternal side HERE.
Northern Congregationalists came south to Montgomery, Alabama after the Civil War. First Congregational Christian Church was founded in 1872. They also supported a school nearby. My grandmother, Fannie, attended both the school and the church. She met her husband, Mershell, in the church.
When Mershell Graham, my grandfather, migrated north to Detroit in 1918 many of his friends, who were also members of First Congregational Church, were also leaving segregated Montgomery. In 1919 a group of nine gathered together to form Plymouth Congregational Church. They first met in members houses and in borrowed space until they were able to purchase their own building, a former Synagogue, in 1927. They moved in, in May 15, 1927.
Plymouth Congregational Church – September 1928. Detroit, Michigan
Plymouth had been in the building a little over a year when this photo was taken. My grandfather, Mershell C. Graham, is standing behind his daughters, Mary V. and Doris (my mother). Their cousin, Margaret McCall, is standing between them. They are in the front row, towards the left side of center. The minister, Rev. Laviscount, is standing behind Mary V. My grandmother, Fannie, had just given birth to their youngest son, Howard, so she was not able to be there.
You can read an online history of Plymouth Congregational Church of Detroit Michigan HERE.
A post about the Cradle Roll my grandmother Fannie filled out at Plymouth HERE.
You can read about Witherspoon Presbyterian Church which my paternal grandparents were founders of HERE.
Learn about the Presbyterian Churches founded by the Cleage side of my family HERE
Today, a guest post from my sister, Pearl Cleage, written about our mother. Doris Graham Cleage.
Doris Cleage 1923 – 1982
My favorite memory of my mother takes place in one of my least favorite environments: the airport. The Detroit airport at that. I had just flown in from D.C. and the plane was rolling slowly toward the gate, giving me ample time to worry about the next three days.
In the best of times, arrival and departure gates are not great places to play out complex emotional moments. The lighting is terrible and you’re surrounded by strangers. If you’re leaving, it’s too late to start any significant conversation, but not yet time to kiss and say good-by. If you’re arriving, first there is the interminable wait to actually deplane, the impatient jostling of people in the jet way, anxious to get to the concourse so they can jostle their way down to baggage claim, if they were foolish enough to check one.
Once there, those like me being met by friends, lovers or family members try to accomplish the almost impossible task of hugging hello without bumping noses while juggling belongings and trying not to get trampled by the jostlers who are now breathing down your neck as the bags begin to tumble to the carousel and for the merest fraction of a second, you wonder if the trip was even worth it.
And then I saw my mother. She was standing at the agreed upon meeting place, surrounded by a crowd of people, all anxiously scanning the new arrivals just like she was and my first thought was: When did she get so tiny? At just under five foot two, she was dwarfed by the people on either side, even standing between them on tiptoe, searching the sea of strangers for her baby’s face. She looked worried and frazzled and, in the weird way that happens with post-middle aged parents who are seldom seen, suddenly older; more fragile; more vulnerable.
The fragility is what startled me. When had this change occurred? How long had it been since I had actually laid eyes on her? Too long, I knew, but the distance was necessary to insure my emotional survival. I loved my mother, but like most of the women on both sides of the family, including me, she had a mean streak that could manifest itself in harsh judgments about any and everything. That made moments like the one we were now approaching even more fraught with emotional peril since the last thing I needed was a critique of my behavior. I was just emerging from a series of ill-conceived moves both professional and romantic that resulted in a tearful phone conversation during which my mother asked me the worst question in the world: What were you thinking? The next three days were supposed to give me an opportunity to respond.
Please, God, I thought, let this be a good visit. By that I meant one with a relative lack of family drama (possible, but if past is truly prologue, not likely), and maybe, if I was very patient and very lucky, a moment or two where my mother and I could sit together and talk calmly like two grown women about where we were in our lives.
Even as the thought of such a conversation popped into my head fully formed, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. My mother was not a share your deepest secrets kind of woman. She didn’t solicit your opinion because she truly didn’t care what you thought, a trait I admired even while it terrified me. She married brothers, but was so unconcerned about the resulting gossip that I never even knew her behavior was perceived as scandalous until I heard two women discussing it in the seat behind me on the bus all the way home from ballet class at Toni’s School of Dance Arts.
Like the song says, she had paid the cost to be the boss, and while there was in my mother a deep disappointment at some of the ways her life had turned out, she was prepared to live with the consequences of her decisions without complaint. Heart to heart discussions of what she might have done or said differently held no interest. On the contrary, such unsolicited opinions were certain to evoke a look of such amazed indignation and displeasure that all you wanted to do was take back your feeble offering and beg her humble pardon for having had the temerity to make a suggestion about how she lived her life.
But I had a plan. I would ambush my mother with a fresh pot of peppermint tea in a sunny corner of her kitchen. I would put on a record of Leontyne Price singing Puccini, confess my sins and gently begin to pick her brain. I wanted that conversation. No, I needed it. My life was undeniably a mess and I had exhausted my ideas about how to make it better. The moment, I decided, had arrived for my mother to tell me the womanly secrets and ancient female coping mechanisms she’d been withholding until I was ready.
Well, I was ready now. There were so many questions I needed to ask; about her, about me, about whether or not work was worth the risk and love was worth the pain. You know, those questions. The problem was, where to begin? With her journey or mine? My mother was an archeologist trapped in the body of a first grade teacher. She longed to ride camels and see the pyramids of Egypt, but had to settle for the west side of Detroit and a few weeks in Idlewild at the end of the summer, having cocktails lakeside with well manicured doctors wives, all the time dreaming of the shifting white sands of the Sahara.
Could I ask her how it felt to see so much less than you could imagine? Could I ask her why she did it? Could I ask her how she had survived the loss of all those adventures and the stifling of all those dreams? Could I ask her if she thought I could survive it, too? And last but not least, could I ask her if she still loved me even in the midst of all my flopping and floundering and foolishness?
So there it was at last. I had buried the lead, but then my mother spotted me and however long it had taken to stumble upon the real question, her face at that moment was the real answer. There was so much absolute, unconditional, unequivocal, pure, joyous love shining in her eyes as she threw up her hand and hurried toward me that the force of it made me stumble and I almost dropped my bag.
Now I am not a mystical person, but I felt my heart crack and open that day to welcome the gift she was giving me and I understood that there is only one answer to all the questions that were driving me crazy: love/love/love/love/love.
Suddenly the fantasy conversation I’d been hoping for was just that – someone else’s fantasy. My mother and I didn’t need a cozy sunlit corner and a steaming pot of peppermint tea. We had each other. Then we bumped noses and she hugged me so hard she didn’t seem fragile at all anymore, which is, of course, tangible proof that the power of love can strike anywhere, anytime. Even when the lighting is absolutely terrible.
