Category Archives: sepia saturday

Louise Reed Shoemaker

Reeds, sepia saturday
luliecollage
Louise Lillian Reed Shoemaker

My grandmother’s older sister is wearing a cameo broach here, but is otherwise unadorned. Louise Reed was born about 1873 in Lebanon, Kentucky. She was the fourth child of Anna Allen Reed. Her father was Palmer Reed.  In 1889, her sister Sarah married James Busby and moved to Benton Harbor, Michigan. On June 10, 1891, Louise married Michigan native, Solonus Shoemaker, in Berrien County, Michigan. She lived the rest of her life there and died in 1938 at the age of  65. Daughter, Mildred, was born in 1899. Son, Floyd 4 years later in 1903.  She is buried in Chrystal Springs Cemetery in Benton Township, Berrien County.

Mrs. Shoemacker, Berrien Resident For 44 Years, Dies

Obituary

“Mrs. Lillian Louise Schoemacker, 63 died at 4:30 a. m. today at her home, 693 Maiden Lane. She was born at Lebanon, Ky., October 27, 1874. She was married to Solumun Schoemacker on June 26, 1891, in Berrien county where she had been a resident for 44 years.

Mrs. Schoemacker leaves a son and daughter, F.E. Schoemacker and Mrs. Mildred Wright, both of Benton Harbor; three sisters, Mrs. Sarah Busby of Benton Harbor, Mrs. Minnie Mullen and Mrs. A. B. Cleg of Detroit; three brothers, H.M. Reed, Clarence Reed of Chicago, George Reed of Indianapolis, Ind.

Friends may view the body at the Reiser mortuary. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.”

Note: The last name is spelled “Shoemaker”. “Cleg” is spelled “Cleage”.

For other jewelry laden photographs, or in some cases pet laden, visit Sepia Saturday click the photo below of a woman wearing more jewelry than anybody in my family album wore.

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June 1961 – Nurses, Freedom Riders and Jet Magazine – Sepia Saturday #180

sepia saturday

Nursing students Sylvia and Jacqui Vincent, my 2nd cousins once removed, appeared on the cover of the June 15, 1961 issue of JET magazine.  After reading the article about my cousins I noticed the many short articles about the Freedom Rides that appeared throughout the magazine. The first  Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961, just a few weeks before this issue. Integrated groups boarded two buses in the north with plans to defy the segregated seating on the buses and the segregated waiting rooms when they got to the south.  They met violence as they entered Alabama. They were beaten and the bus was set on fire. I found the following horrifying description of that first ride in this article Get On the Bus: The Freedom Riders of 1961.

My 2nd cousins once removed. Their grandmother was my great grandmother's sister - daughters of Eliza and Dock Allen.
My 2nd cousins once removed. Their grandmother was my great grandmother’s sister – daughters of Eliza and Dock Allen.

jacqui_jet_nursingJohnson Publishing Company’s web page describes JET Magazine   as follows:

JET is the No. 1 African-American newsweekly and has more than 7 million readers. As Editor-in-Chief of the magazine and its website, JETmag.com, Mitzi Miller continues the legacy of serving credible and entertaining information to the Black community.

Initially billed as “The Weekly Negro News Magazine”, JET is noted for its role in chronicling the early days of the American Civil Rights movement from its earliest years, including coverage of the Emmett Till murder, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Our wedding announcement section “Black Love” and “Beauty of the Week” are a long-standing traditions in JET magazine.

The publication has been a staple in homes and businesses of Black Americans since 1951, bringing life to its popular catchphrase: “If it isn’t in JET, it didn’t happen.” JET is the beloved bible of America Americans and ranks number 4 in reader engagement.

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St. John Road, 1981 – Sepia Saturday #178

Biography, sepia saturday

header_faceThe photograph below was taken in 1981 when we lived on St. John Road in Simpson County, Mississippi. You can read more about that time in this post P.O. Box 173 1/2. I was 35 and pregnant with my fifth child, who turned out to be my first son, James. Tulani and Ayanna (with a piece of gum hanging out of her mouth) are in the photo with me.  My husband, Jim, was the photographer. He was about to go to Boston for an organizers workshop.  He was working for the Woodcutters Union at the time and not making a living wage.  My son seems to wear a similar expression sometimes. Maybe I passed it on.  I’ve added a photo of my father and grandfather.

1981 - with two daughters.
1981 – with two daughters.

That son 30 years later.
That son 30 years later.

Me and my father about 1966
Me, at about 20, and my father, Albert B. Cleage Jr.,  1966

My grandfather, Albert B. Cleage - 1909. About the time he graduated from Knoxville College.
My grandfather, Albert B. Cleage – 1909. About the time he graduated from Knoxville College.

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Upside Down

Detroit, Grahams, sepia saturday

In my maternal grandparents yard there was a metal pipe swing frame that my grandfather had attached to the apple tree. There was a big swing three or more people could sit in and there was a baby swing for one little person with a bar to hold them in, you can see it below to the right. And there were a pair of rings that my cousin Barbara was expert with.  I don’t remember ever doing a flip or anything else.

My aunt Mary Virginia and my cousin Marilyn

In this photograph my Aunt Mary V. is helping her youngest daughter, my cousin Marilyn learn how to use the rings. Marilyn was the youngest of the five cousins by 6 years. She was often regulated to “go-ie wo-ie” during games.

Sean hanging by a thread.
My grandson Sean hanging by a thread.
Sydney upside down.
My granddaughter Sydney upside down.
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For other posts featuring Poppy and Nanny’s yard –

Chemistry Lab – 1964 & 1966

Biography, sepia saturday
chemistry_lab
Chemistry lab from my box of Cleage photos.  No identifying information.

My chemistry career is hazy.  I took the required 1 year of classes in high school. I remember the periodic table on the wall, the bunsen burner and the smell of the room.  I don’t remember who my teachers were.  Maybe it was Mrs. Peterson for the second semester.  I know that she was my homeroom teacher for my senior year. We had home room at some point during the day, not at the beginning or the end because we all came to school and finished our day at different times, depending on our schedule.

National_Honor_Society
That is me in the middle of the middle row.  This is a photo of the National Honor Society.  Mrs. Jones was our sponsor.

I didn’t like Ms. Peterson. I can’t remember what she looked like. When I try, I see Ms Jones in the photo above.  I didn’t like her either. At some point Peterson asked if she could call me “Kirsten” because she liked that better than “Kristin”. I said no, she could not.

Early in my senior year, I decided not to go to my graduation and not to get graduation pictures and therefore not to pay the senior fees. As the year ended, Peterson told me that if I didn’t pay the fees, she was going to put me out of her senior homeroom and I would have to go to the auditorium instead. For reasons I don’t remember, I must have cared because I paid the fee and went to my graduation. That made my Grandmother Cleage happy. It was past time for senior photos by then, but I was in the year book for a few group photos – the one above and another one for the Library staff.  I enjoyed my high school career  as much as I look like I did in this photo.

I took 1.5 quarters of chemistry in college. At the end of my freshman year, I decided to go into nursing so that I would always be able to find work in the far off places I was going to live in. Chemistry was a television class with a day or two of lab work a week.  My experiments never came out right. I worked in a hospital that summer and didn’t feel drawn to the medical field after all.  I started off the fall semester taking the second quarter of chemistry but the day of the mid-term, I dropped both chemistry and biology. Such a feeling of relief. I changed to liberal arts and decided to be totally impractically and major in art.

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My Parents Smoking – 1944 & 1952

sepia saturday,

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Click for more smoking Sepia Saturday posts.

I always liked this photograph of my mother in 1952, holding her cigarette and making a point. She looks so sure of what she’s saying. I assume my father took the photo. It was taken in the living room of the parsonage at 2212 Atkinson, while my father was Pastor of St. Mark’s United Presbyterian Church on 12th and Atkinson. Through the door you can see the kitchen. I remember the tank of guppies, always needing to be cleaned, that stood on a counter under the window. There is the long legged television with Picasso’s “Two Clowns” in the antenna, a leatherette double frame with spaces for pictures and wires attached. When the TV stopped working Mr. Rice, the repairman,  came with his big metal toolbox, full of tubes and testers to find the burned out tube and change it. I can’t remember when we no longer needed tubes changed or when we got our next television or what it looked like or when my mother stopped smoking.

ma_smoking
Doris Graham Cleage with cigarette, Detroit, 1952

albert_cleage_smoking
Albert B. Cleage with cigarette, San Francisco, 1943.

From a letter my father wrote home to Detroit from Los Angeles, CA. on December 4, 1944. Photo by my mother.

“Has the Cigarette shortage hit the hinterland as yet? Here we can’t get any most of the time. I manage to get three or four packages a week with the frantic cooperation of Doris and a boy at school who works where he can get hold of some occasionally.  At school the Student-Union sells them every once in a while. Then we all  line up for blocks until the seventy-five or one hundred packages are gone.  Profound commentary on modern life if anyone has the time to figure out just what is is.  Drug stores and Groceries just laugh at you when you ask for Cigarettes…”HA HA HA… Listen Folks, he wants cigarettes…HA HA.”

To want to read more about Cigarettes and where they went during WW2, follow this link Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em.

And here is the recording of Sarah Vaughn singing  “No Smoke Blues”. Thank you John J. for mentioning this.

Alice Reads A Thrilling Comic – #Sepia Saturday 174

Cleages, Photographs, sepia saturday

This photo comes from my Cleage stash and features Alice, my Uncle Henry’s first wife, reading a Thrilling Comic.  How did she happened to be reading it? Did she enjoy comics? Love thrillers? Was she posing (or posed) for the photo? Was the comic book laying around because that is where Henry got his short story ideas?  Judging by her eyes, she does look mildly thrilled.

Alice_Stanton_reads

Thrilling Comics

“Thrilling Comics was one of the longest runs the publisher had. It ran for eighty issues. The issues themselves featured many different kinds of comic stories like the standard superhero story as well as westerns, detective, stories, comedies, comic strips, short stories and many more.”  The series started in 1940 and ran through 1951. To see all the covers for the 80 issues, click Thrilling Comics.

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P is for Poultry – Sepia Saturday #173

A-Z Challenge 2013, sepia saturday

a-to-z-letters-pThis is the sixteenth post for the April A-Z Challenge. Today I am going to combine A-Z with the Sepia Saturday prompt, which shows a young man holding up two fowl.  I do not have anybody holding dead poultry, but I do have several photographs of family members with living chickens.

In 1975, we moved to Simpson County, Mississippi and got some chickens and goats. We did kill the chickens for food, as well as keep some for eggs. If I had known about this prompt, I would have taken a few photos of the headless chickens.

Jilo with a hen. 1973, Mississippi.
Jilo with a hen. Simpson County, Mississippi – 1976.

shellchickensjeans
My grandfather, Poppy, in Detroit, 1919. On the photo my grandmother wrote “Shell with his pets. Jeans.”

My Graham grandparents married in 1919 in Montgomery Alabama and immediately came to Detroit, where my grandfather had been living and working for a while. They roomed with friends from home, Aunt Jean and Uncle Mose, until they could afford to buy their own house.   This is their backyard. Not sure who owned the chickens. When they got their own home, my grandfather kept chickens and raised a big garden. By the time we grandchildren came along, the chicken house had been cleaned out and was a storage shed for tools and our outside toys.

 For other stories about my life in the rural, try these posts.

 

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Long Ago – House War Workers March – 1942 Detroit

A-Z Challenge 2013, sepia saturday
March in Detroit in support of housing for black workers during WW 2 in the Sojourner Truth Housing Project.
March in Detroit in support of housing  black workers in the newly built Sojourner Truth Homes during WW 2.
a-to-z-letters-l

This is the twelfth post in the April A-Z Challenge and also in response to the prompt for Sepia Saturday #172.  I am posting about a long ago march held in Detroit in 1942.  I remembered this photograph in my Cleage family collection after seeing the post on Tony Zimnoch’s blog, The Last Living Rose, which he did in response to Sepia Saturday and the death of Margaret Thatcher.

There is no information written on the photo about when or where it was taken. When I first looked at this photo, I thought that the signs were saying house war workers, as in people who worked in the house. I soon realized the march was about housing for war workers, after reading several articles about the housing shortage in Detroit during World II.

When thousands of Southern workers, black and white, flooded into Detroit to take jobs in the auto industry, they found a city with both highly segregated housing and a lack of housing. Most African Americans were crowded into a 30 block area, with inadequate housing, and rates of pneumonia and tuberculous that were much higher than those for whites.

In 1941, the Federal Housing Commission authorized the building of a housing development for black workers. It was to be called the Sojourner Truth Homes after the abolitionist and former slave, Sojourner Truth. They decided to place it in a white neighborhood. The residents were not happy. They were even angrier when they found that the FHA would no longer guarantee loans to houses near the Sojourner Homes.  White reaction caused the Federal Housing Commission to change it’s mind and announce Sojourner Homes would be a white housing project. The idea of an integrated project never entered anyone’s mind, as far as I can tell. Detroit Mayor Jefferies spoke out on the side of keeping the project black. That is why, in the march above,  banners say, “Support the Mayor”.

In January, after the housing was completed and black families were preparing to move in, over 700 white men turned out to bar the way. They blocked cars, they stoned vehicles and they refused to let the people move in. The police were unable or unwilling to stop it.  Meanwhile, back in the black community, word came and black men came to support the  people moving in. A riot ensued and over 200 people were arrested, almost all of them black, although the violence had largely been on the white side.

In February, 1942 Federal troops were called out to make sure black residents were able to move in. Eventually 168 black families lived there. The violence was over for the time being.

mass_meeting_flyer
Flyer to protest the decision to make the Sojourner Truth Homes for white workers and exclude black workers.
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A flyer asking white men to come out and keep black people from moving into the Sojourner Truth Homes.
From Life Magazine - March 16, 1942.
From Life Magazine – March 16, 1942
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Postcard To My Grandmother From Her Niece – 1909

Reeds, sepia saturday,

This postcard was written to my grandmother, Pearl Reed, after a visit to two of her sisters in Benton Harbor, MI in 1909.  Pearl was 23 and her niece was about 15.  I wonder why she chose a picture of the Ohio Penitentiary.

Dear Pearl,
I am glad you got home and I worst (sic) you were here know (sic).
Margaret Busby

Miss Pearl Reed
2730 Kenwood
Indianapolis, Indiana

I didn’t have any castles in my photo stash, but this morning I remembered this postcard of the Ohio Penitentiary that my grandmother Pearl’s niece sent to her in 1909.  Surrounded by stone walls, like the castle below, it is my entry for Sepia Saturday 171.  I did post this in 2010 but I don’t think anyone ever saw it, so here it is again.  The Penitentiary was demolished in 1998.  To see photos of then and now – including a photograph that shows a little tower – go to Old Ohio Penitentiary.

To see more Sepia Saturday posts - CLICK!
To see more Sepia Saturday posts – CLICK!