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
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When I was in the second grade I became a Brownie for a few months. At the time my father had left St. Marks Presbyterian Church with 300 members and founded a new church, Central Congregational church. We met at Crossman School on Sunday and held all other church activities at 2254 Chicago Blvd. We also lived there. It was a huge house. That was my sister and my bedroom window on the upper right. Perfect casement windows for Peter Pan to fly through.
Central Congregational Parsonage at 2254 Chicago Blvd, Detroit.
The scout troops met in the basement recreation room where all of the youth activities were held. We wore the usual Brownie uniform and used the usual Brownie handbook. I remember only one event, a jamboree held at Roosevelt Elementary School in a small gym, up a short flight of stairs above the 2nd floor. There were various stations set up and we went to different ones and did different things. After several months I quit because I was bored. I wish I had a photo of me in my Brownie outfit, but I don’t.
At some point I was in the kitchen, which we shared with the church, while my mother was making dinner. One of the Brownie leaders came in to prepare a snack and asked where I’d been. I told her I wasn’t coming any more. That was my experience as a Brownie. One more thing I remember. A little girl at school, which was majority Jewish at that point, said there couldn’t be any brown Brownies. I don’t remember who she was telling this to but I told her, yes you could be because I was a brown Brownie.
That was the uniform I had on the right.
This was our scout handbook.
Input from Benjamin Smith, one of the scouts pictured below:
“Between Scouts and Youth Fellowship, I spent a lot of years in the parsonage basement. It was a different time. The side door was unlocked until your father went to bed.”
“I am the taller kid in the rear. All of us in that picture went through Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Explorers. Sadly, I am the only one still here. John Curry, standing, left front. Ligens Moore, seated front. Norman Cassells, seated front right. Harrison Stewart, standing with rope, front right. Benjamin Smith rear left. Longworth Quinn rear left. Ligens had a pilot’s license at 12 yrs old. Longworth’s father published the Michigan Chronicle for many years.
“The girl scouts from left to right, are Andrea Keneau, Ann Page, unknown, Laura Mosley and Janice Mosley, deceased (and Laura’s older sister.)
I remember Longworth. In 1969-1971 we both worked with the Black Conscience Library. He was in Law School at the time. Such a long, long time ago.
Times were different but I remember that someone tried to break into the house one night when my father wasn’t home. My mother rapped on the upstairs window with her ring – they were in the backyard trying to break in through the french doors of the conservatory – and they fled. Pearl and I were asleep. When she called the police they said she shouldn’t have knocked on the window, but she was so mad at the nerve of them. They would have been so angry if they had gotten inside and found nothing worth stealing.
My youngest son joined the Boy scouts. He was an active member of a troop in Baldwin, Michigan for some years. They did all the scout things, camped out, went on hikes, earned badges, went to Jubilee at Mackinaw Island. He earned the Sharp Shooter, Swimming, Water Skiing and the Polar Bear badge to name a few. To earn the Polar Bear Badge he had to camp out two nights in a row in weather below freezing, preparing all their meals at the campsite. As I remember it was in the 20 degree range. My husband became the troop treasurer and continued in that capacity long after my son lost interest. He also camped out in the 20 degree weather. They were a pretty free-spirited group and never wore uniforms so I have no photos of him in scout gear. My older children were in 4-H clubs.
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To read more about Dock Allen and his escape from slavery, click Dock Allen’s Story.
Husband and sons with beards.
To see more beards and hair, CLICK.
This weeks theme is hair, specifically facial hair. I only have one photo of an ancestor with a beard. Dock Allen is sporting a pretty nice one. My husband and sons are doing their part to bring more bearded photos into my albums.
Playing poker – my aunt Gladys with cigarette, me, my uncle Hugh, cousins Jan and Dale, my mother.
Still playing poker – my mother with glasses, cousin Warren, cousin Ernie, aunt Gladys, cousin Jan and cousin Dale.
The house on Old Plank Road. Between Milford and Wixom Michigan.
My mother and Henry bought this house about half an hour from Detroit about 1961. There was talk of moving there year around, but it never happened. We had a large garden and went up on weekends and for longer periods during the summer. We only owned 2 acres of the 40 acre farm, not including the barn. In 1967 someone bought the barn and started keeping chickens and pigs there, though they didn’t live on or near the property. The animals regularly escaped. The pigs dug up our garden and the chickens roosted on the porch. Before Henry and the man came to blows, they finally sold the house to the man with the animals.
These are my feet in my work boots. I wore them to milk the goats and work in the garden when it was muddy. It must have been muddy because I have my jeans tucked into my socks. I don’t remember any stripped socks but there I am wearing some. The rocking chair used to rock on Nanny and Poppy’s back porch.
In 1978 we lived in rural Simpson County, Mississippi with our 4 children, some chickens and some goats. While looking for a photograph of my feet in my work shoes I came across this batch of negatives which included a photo of my shoes.
Click to enlarge
In row one, we have my friend Teresa’s son, Palo, holding his baby sister. The baby’s father is holding her in the next. I cannot remember their names right now. Picture three is my family plus Palo. Last are baby and father again.
In row two, I’m outside with my three oldest daughters, Jilo, Ife and Ayanna. Next two photos are of our friend Robert with his and Ruth’s two children. Robert got us started with milk goats and rabbits. He had a very good herd of milk goats himself. Last is the photo of my shoes.
In row three, we start with Robert and children again. The ghost photo has their two and our three oldest. Next, my midwife, Ruth, is reading to my daughter, Ayanna, who she helped to deliver. Last, I’m reading while holding baby Tulani.
The three older girls are in the side strip with the baby crib my mother and her siblings used and all of my children used. Except for Ife who slept in a dresser drawer. You can see baby Tulani best in the bottom row dribbling milk. The house was built on stilts and was about 10 feet up in the air. I do not know why they built it like that because it was in tornado country with no water to flood anywhere nearby.
For more photographs click below. Some will be shoe related and some will not.
When I saw the theme for this weeks Sepia Saturday was film, I wanted to post a photo from a movie I remember wandering into one evening when I was about 4. We lived in St. John’s Congregational Church parsonage/community house in Springfield, Massachusetts where my father was pastor. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the movie. I remember waking up from my nap and going down the hall to a big room where the movie was being shown. There I saw a larger then life, green genie coming horrifyingly out of a bottle. Perhaps it was “The Thief of Bagdad“, released in 1940. By 1950 it could have been available for showing in darkened rooms full of folding chairs to community groups. I did not stick around after the Genie started coming out of the bottle.
However, this movie is not sepia and it’s not from my family photo stash, so I kept looking. Finally I remembered finding an envelope of negatives (film) of me, my bear, Beatrice, and my grandfather, Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr. They were taken in the Summer of 1948 in our backyard.
Click to enlarge
For more Sepia Saturday film related (or not) posts, click.
Training Duke
As Told To Me By My Uncle Henry Cleage
Sometimes we would wake up and Uncle Hugh would be sitting on the porch. He wouldn’t say good-bye when he left. Mama’s family was just like that, they’d appear and then disappear without a word. We had a great big police dog, Duke. He was a bad sucker. Everybody in the city knew he was a bad dog.
So Uncle Hugh said “That dog ain’t worrying me.”
Uncle Hugh Marion Reed
You know, he used to come around the house in the back. We told him not to come in there, that dog would eat him up.
He said, “That dog ain’t gonna touch me.”
We said don’t mess with that dog. He just insisted. He walked out there to the little screened back porch. He walked out. Duke was standing there all ruffled up. He should have known, because Duke lifted that upper lip, you know? (Note: Here Henry would lift half of his upper lip and give a low, menacing growl) Duke backed up a couple of steps. Uncle Hugh kept by the door and he took the first step. The dog stood there and Uncle Hugh thought he had him and let the door slam and soon as that door slammed, Duke just leaped at his head. Uncle Hugh tore up the whole screen on the back door getting back inside. He was going to force the dog back and go out there and show him who’s boss. Well, he got back in because we all hollered at the dog and grabbed him and everything else, but we knew the dog.
Smoking all those cigarettes had got him, he said. He was going to pop off at any time, he didn’t think he ought to go through that excitement he would have had to go through to train him. “That is a bad dog,” he said. “That is a tough dog, he’s a smart dog too, but if I was here a couple days, I’d straighten that out.”
Well, he could have. If he’d been there a couple days, I mean.
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.
Unknown woman #1 and unknown woman #2 (who is leaning just a little too close to my grandfather.), my grandfather Albert, my grandmother Pearl. 1910.
My grandparents, Albert and Pearl (Reed) Cleage were married in October of 1910 in Indianapolis, Indiana. For their honeymoon they went to the Appalachian Exposition in Knoxville, Tennessee and from there to visit my grandfather’s people in Athens, Tennessee. After returning home, they went to Decatur, Illinois to decide if that was where my grandfather wanted to practice medicine. One of my aunts told me that this photo was taken at a medical convention they attended soon after their marriage. Perhaps it was in Decatur.
Thanks to a comment below by Tattered and Lost I found that the location of the photograph was actually Mt. Vernon, VA at George Washington’s plantation. I will be posting more about this soon.
At any rate, the women are all wearing hats, although none are quite so fancy as the one in this weeks prompt. To see other hat wearing women, men and babies plus several posts completely unrelated to hats, click on the picture below.
To see the 10 minute movie “The New York Hat” (1912) that the prompt came from, follow this link – “The New York Hat.”
