During the 1950s, my father’s Central Congregational Church had a very active youth program. In 1955, when these photographs of the modern dance group were taken, the church was meeting at Crossman School and all activities were taking place in the parsonage at 2254 Chicago Blvd. As always, click on images to enlarge.
I don’t remember my mother using a hair dryer except for a short period of time. In the aftermath of the Detroit Riot of 1967, many people began to wear afros. My mother had waist length wavy hair. She remembered it being very curly when she was a child and thought that when she cut it, it was going to become kinky enough to make an afro. Much to her chagrin, it did not. Until it grew out again, she would wash it, roll it up in curlers and sit under the dryer to get some curl.
Below is a sketch I made of my mother for a drawing class in 1967. At that time, my drawings added at least 20 years to family members age. It was not on purpose. Click on images to enlarge.
In the summer of 1945 my parents moved from Los Angeles, where my father had been studying film making, to Springfield, MA. He was the new pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church, an historic African American church. During their trip across country they stopped in Detroit to see their families. A trip to my Uncle Louis’ cottage in Idlewild was included. More photographs from that trip can be seen here – Idlewild 1945.
I had forgotten all about my Aunt Barbara’s 2nd wedding to Ernest Smith until a friend sent me these strips. It took place the day after Christmas, December 26, 1966. You can see the Christmas tree in the first frame, first strip. My grandmother never put the tree up before Christmas Eve. The marriage was short lived and ended after several years. Barbara became Cardinal Nandi and went on to successfully manage the Bookstores and Cultural Centers of the Shrines of the Black Madonna.
You can click to enlarge the pictures a bit.
It was 1956 and my mother, sister, grandfather and I were on our way to a few weeks out of Detroit at my Uncle Louis’ cottage in Idlewild. Click all images to enlarge.
My sister sent me this postcard while I was waiting for my 4th daughter to be born. The midwife had given a date a month before my actual due date so there was an extra lot of waiting through the Mississippi summer of 1978 until she was finally born September 26.
9-12-78
They had their hair bobbed awhile ago, but promised they wouldn’t cut it again until after the baby comes! You see them now, don’t you?? Hang in there!! Love – Pearlita
The story of Tulani’s birth – written shortly after she was born in Jackson, MS September 26, 3:36AM Tuesday (If you don’t want to read the details of a birth, stop right here.)
The midwives I used when my 3rd daughter was born had moved out of town. The two I found were not like the others. Neither had children of their own. They were scary about everything. They said the head was small and they hoped it wasn’t encephalic. To me! They wouldn’t believe that when I said conception probably occurred and placed the due date a month early, then said they didn’t want to do the delivery because I was overdue. They didn’t hook me up with a support doctor, so Jim called the doctor I had used as back up last time and she agreed to do it, although she fussed about the midwives not having a back-up doctor.
Woke up with contractions. Sat up to see if more were coming. They were. Woke up Jim, who timed a few – coming every 5 minutes. I was real glad. Labor was starting the day before the two week deadline ran out. Had dreaded dealing with that after fearing every abnormality possibly connected with pregnancy during this 9 1/2 months. Now, Jim called someone else to see if the kids could spend the day there since the other people worked. Then it was almost 10 o’clock so he suggested we call the doctor since the contractions were so quick. I was doing deep regular breathing which I did until transition, but blowing out rather harder than breathing in. I asked if he was sure we wanted to go in so soon since we probably had a 9 hour wait ahead of us. But finally I agreed. He called the doctor who was off that night and another lady doctor fills in for her. She said we better come on since fourth babies may come pretty quick.
I threw up once or twice as we were getting ready to leave. All loaded up and left. Dropped the kids down the road. Carrie Ann came out and said she hoped it came quickly so I wouldn’t still be waiting around in the morning. I said I hoped so too. But was mentally resigned to 9 hours of labor and didn’t expert to deliver until around 9AM.
Got back on highway. Had regular contractions all the way there. Pretty strong. Not looking forward to 9 more hours of labor but glad to be in labor. Threw up or gagged once or twice. Finally got to the hospital around 2AM or a bit before. Jim took me in and upstairs – a guard pushing the wheelchair. I was still breathing the same way, sometimes rubbing my stomach, had no back labor, during final 6 weeks of pregnancy had been told the baby was in posterior position and would cause a long labor by midwife.
On the delivery floor was wheeled into a labor room by one of the nurses on duty. There were 2, a white RN and a black LPN. I asked if the birthing suite was available and it was so we went there – a combination labor and living room where delivery can take place without being moved. I took off my clothes and peed and got into bed while Jim went to check me in. The white RN (while I was peeing) asked if I was having natural birth. I said yes and she (not trying to be unkind) made some comment like “ooohhhhh honey, that’s good, if you could stand it”. I told her I’d done it 3 times and I was sure I could. Glad it wasn’t my first. Continued this while continuing to have regular and strong contractions.
Got into bed and was shaved just a partial and checked. No enema and 5>6 cm’s dilated. I couldn’t’ believe I was that far along. Jim returned. The doctor came in. A little white lady, a bit older than I (I was 32), not 40 yet. She asked if we’d had any special plans we’d discussed with Dr. Barnes. We said just no drugs and keep the baby with us. She said you had to have a special nurse present to keep the baby.
She went back out. The RN kept making dumb comments, trying to be friendly. She said she’d be ready for delivery about 3AM. Ha! I thought. Told me to tell them if I felt like pushing. I felt like pushing a bit, but kept quiet, remembering last time and how I’d pushed mildly for hours before the real push. Then she must have checked me or the doctor did and said I could push when I felt like it. Contractions were almost continuous. So on one or two more pushes I had to push and did. The waters broke and I told them. The RN started saying “sit up, you can’t push laying down!’ I was in the middle of a push, and I was saying “just wait a minute, just wait”. So after that push everyone was rushing around getting ready for the birth. It was about 3AM. They had me sit on some little plastic seat to make it easier to catch the baby.
So, I started pushing, which was a relief. The rests between contractions were longer. I said now they’d probably stop. The doctor said rests were usually longer during 2nd stage. They started seeing head. I pushed harder and finally, actually 15 or 20 minutes I felt that big head coming through and down and made noise as I pushed. There was no pain through the cervix this time, like when Ayanna had her arm up, but the head against the perineum felt like I was going to pop. I was not relaxed. I saw that hair down there on the head, but the main feeling was yikes, I’m going to pop. The doctor said let the contractions deliver and don’t push, so after a years wait (not really) a contraction came, I panted and the head came out. I pushed and it all popped out. For some reason I didn’t look in the mirror while this was going on. But I immediately looked after she came out. And she was squirming around while the doctor suctioned her nose. Didn’t look like much mucus. Was no blueness to her. She gave a short cry. They cut her cord and I picked her up and she was a regular, whole baby, without even a club foot (smile).
Then Jim went to the nursery while they weighted her and examined her. He brought her back because her temperature was stable at 99 already. She nursed a bit then they took my blood pressure and said it was low so took the baby. Jim held her awhile. Then they pushed my uterus (ouch!) and some clots came out. Not firm enough so pushing and shot of pitocin, drip of something else. They didn’t hear about nursing firming up the uterus. Any way I went to sleep and didn’t bleed to death.
In June of 1980 my sister Pearl and her daughter visited us in our home on St. John’s Road Mississippi. My husband, Jim, took this photo of both of us and our children. The one with her eyes closed is Pearl’s daughter. I thought it would be interesting to take an entry from her journal, as it appears in her new book “Things I Should Have Told My Daughter – Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs” by Pearl Cleage and, since I wasn’t keeping a journal at the time, take old letters and put something of what was happening in my life at the time.
Pearl had recently moved to her own apartment, leaving her husband and devoting her time to writing and figuring out freedom. From Pearl’s journal about her life in Atlanta …
“June 5, 1980
I have just discovered the only advantage to freelancing. You get to be stoned while you earn a living. Unfortunately, that is also true of rock and roll stars, actors who are lucky enough to be cast in Robert Altman films, Rastafarians, and particularly foolhardy circus preformers. I think it also applies to the construction crews that do most of the renovations that I know about. It also applies to artists of all kinds, but since I was talking about freelancing, which is a way of making money, let’s leave the art out of it, shall we?”
Meanwhile, several states over in Mississippi…June 17, 1980 from a letter to my father
Dear Daddy,
How’s it going? It’s hot, hot, hot here. It’s been a strange weekend. Kibibi – the 25 year old woman who lived a weird summer with us at Luba when we first came to MS was shot 3 times in the head by her 10 month baby’s daddy during an argument. It was such a ridiculous, unexpected, stupid thing.
I remember Kibibi sister’s husband coming up the stairs of the house on stilts and telling us about the shooting. Given that the civil rights violence had barely ended, it seemed horribly sad that she was shot to death by her daughter’s father.
You can read more about my life during this time in R is for Route 1 Box 173 & 1/2
My sister and I running by the dunes at Ipperwash, on Lake Huron in Canada. It was 1960. I was 14 and would start Northwestern High School in September. Pearl was 12 and would start McMicheal Junior High School. The lake is in the background but the strange distortions at the top make it difficult to tell what is there.
My mother and Uncle Henry had been trying to find a place to spend weekends and vacations out of Detroit. That weekend we had driven through various towns and country to reach Ipperwash. There was a wide beach and cars could drive on it. The beach itself was all open to the public. I remember the house we looked at was like a big farm house and had beds all over, in the attic and in the several bedrooms. We spent the night at a cabin the realtor had and left early the next morning. They decided not to buy there because of the cars on the beach and the public.
I remember driving either there or home through a rainy day, looking through the window at the towns we drove through, everything summer green, but grayed by the gloomy day.
The Ipperwash Crisis – While looking for photo of the beach, I found that during WW 2 the Canadian Federal Government expropriated the land of the Stoney Point First Nation with promises to return it after the war. The war ended, the land wasn’t returned. In 1995 members of the Stoney Point First Nation occupied the land in protest. There was a cemetery located in what was now called the Ipperwash Camp. During the protests an unarmed member of the protesters was shot and killed. The land was to be returned to the Stoney Point First Nation but it hasn’t been completed yet. You can read more about it at the link above.
I found this postcard in my Cleage family photographs. She is not a relative. Her family lived down Balch street from my Grandparents while they lived in Kalamazoo. Her father and my grandfather also belonged to some of the same groups. The Dunbar group for the uplift of the Race was one of them. My grandparents moved to Detroit in 1915 but must have kept in touch with the Pettifords.
Marion was the third child of Joseph Pettiford and the first child of Joseph and his second wife, Mary A. Brown Pettiford. All of the children were born in Kalamazoo. I was able to fill in some of the questions using Ancestry.com but it was when I started looking through historical newspapers that I found out much to flesh out the bare bones of the family.
Joseph Wilson Pettiford was the son of Young Pettiford who was the son of Edmund Pettiford, born in 1795 in North Carolina into a community of free people of color. The family moved to Ohio, where Joseph was born, and later to Indiana, where Edmund died.
By the 1890s, Joseph and his family were living in Kalamazoo, MI. Located in the SW corner of the state in Berrien County. He worked as a custodian (not a janitor, he informed the local paper) in the county Courthouse for over 20 years. It was an elected position. He was very active in the Masons, holding local and state posts. Both he and his wife were active in 2nd Baptist Church. He could cook up a good possum dinner, according to the local paper, The Kalamazoo Gazette.
In 1922 Mary Pettiford suffered a fatal stroke while out fishing with her husband near South Haven. Her funeral was well attended. Marion was listed among the children and that is the last I can find of her. In 1928 Joseph died. Unfortunately the obituaries after 1922 are not online for the Kalamazoo Gazette. I’m sure it was a long one after all his years at the courthouse and perhaps it mentioned what happened to Marion.
I checked the 1930 census, the 1940 census. All of her siblings in the 1930 and 1940 census. The marriage records online at Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com. I checked newspaper articles at Ancestry and at GenealogyBank.com. So far, no luck. I will continue to check back now and then and report any new findings.
Eighth Grade Graduates Exercises at Vine School
The eighth grade graduates of the city schools will hold their graduating exercises at the Vine Street school auditorium, Friday morning at 9:15.
For more information and photos of the early Pettifords, Weavers and other free people of color visit – The Weaver Settlement
For a beautiful picture of an extended Pettiford family reunion in 1935 – Pettiford reunion photo from 1935
This is the modern dance group at Northwestern High School in Detroit in 1964. The photo is from my year book. There is my sister Pearl, 3rd from the left, first row leaning back. She was in the dance group all through high school and also participated in the All City dance group and even contemplated a career in dance but writing won out. Ms. Carty was their advisor/teacher.
Pearl remembers “I remember this number. It was to “Elijah Rock” and we thought the costumes were so cool. Choreography was great, too. We had a whole Martha Graham thing going!
“I think Craig Carter took it from the track that ran around the gym so he was looking down at us“
