Saturday, October 10, 2015 marks the 300th Sepia Saturday. In reviewing my contributions for the past 100 Saturdays, I found that I did not participate in 19 of them. I decided to post photographs for those 19 missing prompts. Most of the photographs are more recent than my usual offering. Click any image to enlarge.
“Feb. 21, 1947 – Winter Carnival/ Center Couple – President Gellerman and his wife who’ve just crowned the king and Queen – Bet you can’t find me! F.M.H.”
“Kris May 1947” I was viewing the world from on high, not quite as high as the men in the prompt but it seemed very much so to me. I also seem to be giving a lecture.
Taken by the railroad tracks between my house and my daughter’s house.
Henry Cleage under the Illustrated News at Old Plank house. 1963.
The family table at the testimonial dinner for my father, Rev. A.B. Cleage Jr. 1963. No Christmas tree, but lots of lights up there in the ceiling and food on the table. Henry with the cigarett, my mother in front of him. I am across the table from her. My aunt Barbara is looking towards the camera. Uncle Eddie Evans eating at the end of the table.
Atty. Henry Cleage in a court room.
Daughter Ife sculpting in Florida studio.
A valentine card from me to my mother given when I was in elementary school, 1950s.
Not a parade, but my family walking down Cass Ave in Detroit, after eating at a Lebanese restaurant near Wayne State University. Women and girls in the front, guys way back. And me at the very end, taking the photo. Osaze does not have a swan head on, but he is wearing a cap.
This is a newspaper clipping I found of a demonstration in support of school busing. I recognize only General Baker, right front, holding his daughter.
Cousin Ernest with unidentified girl and a few horses with their heads down.
Cousin Warren on a tractor.
Lines and wires near Atlanta’s West End.
Daughter Jilo wearing football helmet, a gift from her Aunt Pearl. 1972 Atlanta, GA.
Granddaughter Tatayana rolling out pie crust in Idlewild, MI.
Granddaughter Sydney looking into tunnel like opening in the fort on Sullivan’s Island, SC. This is where many enslaved African’s entered the United States. Our “Ellis Island”.
On my grandchildren’s birthday, we give them a dollar for each year, plus one to grow on. When I turned 66, they gave me a dollar for each year, plus one to grow on. Here I am counting it up. About as close as I have been to piles of cash.
Small photo my parents sent home to their parents when they lived in San Francisco, CA in 1943.
Bonzo, MV and Doris Graham. August 1932. Backyard of Theodore, Detroit,MI
My mother Doris and her sister Mary Virginia with their dog Bonzo. The picture was taken in August 1932, about 6 months after their brother Howard died of Scarlet Fever. Mary V. was 12 and Doris was 9. The sisters were granddaughters of Jennie Virginia Allen Turner, who was the daughter of Dock and Eliza Allen. My mother later had a sister-in-law named Gladys Cleage, who will celebrate her 93rd birthday this Saturday. I could not find a photograph of her with a sister and a dog, but here she is with sister Anna.
Gladys and Anna Cleage, about 1930 beside their home on Scotten, Detroit.
Gladys and Anna were the grandchildren of Lewis and Anna Cecilia Cleage, and great granddaughters of Frank and Juda Cleage of Athens, TN.
My Uncle Hugh outside my Uncle Louis’ cottage in Idlewild, Michigan. Wonder where that blanket is now. My uncle Louis bought several blankets on trips out west.
Pearl and Barbara in the wagon. Kris (me) and Dee Dee standing.
This photograph was taken in 1950, the year before this other wagon photograph 3 in a wagon. This time Dee Dee the photographer appears with us. My sister Pearl and I had just moved to Detroit from Springfield, MA. We spent most Saturdays at our maternal grandparent’s house with our cousins Dee Dee and Barbara.
Fast forward to 1954 and there we are in the wagon again.
Mary V. wearing little black shoes. This picture was taken in 1921. She would have been about 1 year old.
My mother said that after a difficult birth, her sister Mary V.’s foot was turned inward.She did not know if this was the fault of the doctor or not, but Mary V. wore a brace for years.
Mary V’s grandson, Ahmad Elkins, posted the pictres below on fb recently. They are his grandmother’s well worn baby shoes, saved through the years. Amhad shared his photographs with me and gave me permission to post them here.
Two other posts about Mary Virginia Graham Elkins are:
I have been writing this post for way too long, getting lost in research and real life. A Sepia Saturday prompt a week ago featured a posh hotel and made me start to work again. This post does not feature a hotel, rather the lack of one because black motorists back in the 1930s were not welcome in white hotels as they traveled. In 1936 The Negro Motorist Green Bookbegan publishing and shared information about lodging places that Negro motorists could be sure of a welcome. Before that people stayed with friends or friends of friends or kept driving. Click on all images to enlarge.
From Detroit, MI to Athens Tennessee, passes through Richmond, Kentucky.
I had been unable to find my great grandmother, Anna Celia Rice Cleage Sherman’s death date or death certificate before finding the above item. After jumping up and down shouting my joy at finding the date, I began to wonder who the Cobbs where that my grandfather and his brothers stayed with. I came across several other items from different years, with various family members stopping with the Cobbs in Richmond, KY on their way to or from Athens, TN. How did my family know the Cobbs and who were they?
John Wesley Cobb was born in 1882 in Richmond, Kentucky to Squire and Malinda (McCallahan) Cobb. His parents were born in slavery in the 1846 and 1859. By 1889 Squire Cobb was an important member of Richmond’s black community. He was a barber with his own shop, a member of the Knights of Pythias, and St. Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal church. Malinda Cobb birthed 9 children. Six lived to adulthood. Both parents were literate and the children attended school. John and one of his brothers were tailors. His sister Susie was a teacher before her marriage. His oldest sister, Lena, married a barber. Malinda Cobb died in 1916. Squire Cobb died at about 89 years of age in 1935.
John Wesley Cobb. Photo curtsey of Joan Cobb Webb, Granddaughter of John Wesley Cobb.
John Wesley Cobb married Bessie Pollard about 1803. They had one daughter , Leona Cobb, in 1904. They later divorced and both remarried. John second wife was Lillian Titus, who taught school when they were first married. They had no children.
JW Cobb started as a tailor for the R.C.H. Covington Company, a department store in downtown Richmond. He sewed on clothes like the one pictured in the advertisement below. Later Cobb, was able to open his own tailor shop and he continued to work on his own account through out the following years.
John W and his wife Lillian owned their own home at 311 First Street. John Wesley was an active member of St. Paul A.M.E. Church. In several news items, he is listed as Rev. JW Cobb, assisting the Pastor at funerals. I suspected that the paper had the wrong name but I just found him in the death index on FamilySearch and his title is given as Rev. In 1935, the Cobbs presented gold footballs to the football team at an awards banquet. I wish there had been a picture or a description as I don’t know if they were little pins or full size footballs!
He and his wife appeared regularly in the news/society items in the Richmond Colored Notes. He served as secretary for the group that sponsored the Madison County Colored Chautauqua.
On December 16, 1946 Lillian Cobb died from breast cancer that had spread to her spine. Her husband was the informant. On the 28th of February 1958, John Wesley Cobb died. I have not yet found his death certificate, and I do not know what he died from.
How my grandparents knew the Cobbs.
For several years Lillian Titus Cobb, before her marriage, lived in Indianapolis, Indiana with her sister Susie Titus White while Susie’s husband, Rev. D. F. White was the pastor of Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church. My grandparents, Albert B. Cleage and Pearl Reed (later Cleage), were members.
Both of these are from the house at 5397 Oregon, Detroit. I have no idea what Pearl and I are watching but it seems to have our interest. I did the drawing below in my sketch book for one of my drawing classes a few years later. You can see several other photographs of my mother and sister and me watching (or not watching) tv in the header above.
The corner of the living room on Oregon.
When I left home, I didn’t have a television until 1973 when my sister gave us a small TV so we could watch a program that she produced. We continued using that television until it was stolen in 1978 when I was at a prenatal visit. It was so wonderful not having a TV that it wasn’t until the 1990s that we got another one. That one was built so that we could watch videos, which is what we did for a long while. I think it was several more years before we actually started using the television part of it.
Right now we do not have a working television. We do have a large computer screen that is hooked up to Roku and my computer and we can watch movies and videos that way now. We even catch a few television shows sometimes.
This photograph was taken of me and my husband shortly before we moved from Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina to rural Simpson County, Mississippi, far from the Ocean and the beach. You can read more about our life in Mt. Pleasant at this link, S is for Sixth Avenue, Mt. Pleasant, SC. To learn more about the Isle of Palms, click this link, Isle of palms, South Carolina (Wipkipedia)
