Tag Archives: #Albert B. Cleage Jr

R – Receives Check

A-Z Challenge 2025, Cleages, Springfield, MA

For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.

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THE SPRINGFIELD UNION, Saturday, Apr 21, 1951,Springfield, MA, page: 24

COMMUNITY GOOD WISHES–A gift went with good wishes to Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., left, at Hotel Kimball last night. William C. Jackson offers the gift as George A. Laws stands by. Mr. Cleage, minister of St. John’s Congregational Church five years, will become minister of St. Mark’s Community Church, Detroit, Mich., May 1.

Thank You’ Said to Mr. Cleage by 25 Men for His Work Here

When Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., resigned as St. John’s Congregational Church minister to go to Detroit, Mich., William C. Jackson had an idea that he took up with George A. Laws, chairman of the St. John’s standing Committee.
The result was that 25 men, representing Springfield’s Negro community, had dinner with Mr. Cleage at Hotel Kimball last night.
They came from different churches, different professions, different parts of the city.
But they came for the same reason: to say “thank you” to Mr. Cleage for five years of effort toward church, community and racial improvement.
Around the dinner table, among others,, were James H. Higgins, former Common Council president; Rev. Frederick A. Brown, assistant pastor, Alden Street Baptist Church; Walter English, Buckingham Junior High School teacher; Ernest Harrison, contractor.
Also Dr. O. L. K. Fraser, dentist; Reginald Funn, former president of the local chapter, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: Paul Mason, Ward 4 councilman.
And a group of St. John’s members; Robert Daniels, Romeo Elder, Russell Harrison, Howard Porter, Emery Butler and Eugene Sommerville.

Moving day. Me and sister with friends and their mother.

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Rev. Albert B. Cleage was my father. My sister and I were born in Springfield, Massachusetts where he was pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church. We moved back to Detroit, where both sides of our extended family lived when I was 4 and my sister was 2. That is where he became pastor of St. Mark’s United Presbyterian Community Church which ended up in the fight and split described in the post Q-Quite a Goal. Going alphabetically does put events out of chronological order.

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Other posts with my memories of living in Springfield

Moving – Springfield to Detroit 1951
Moving Day Springfield to Detroit Revisited – 1951
T – The Thief of Baghdad & A Waltz
K is for King St. Springfield, MASS
U is for Union Street
M – Milkman
L – Leaves


Q – Quite a Goal

A-Z Challenge 2025, Detroit

For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.

Rev. Albert B. Cleage – 1957
Detroit Free Press Detroit, Michigan • Thu, Apr 9, 1953 Page 10

NAACP Chief to Open Detroit Member Drive

Roy Wilkins, administrator of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, will be the principal speaker at a public rally opening the 1953 membership drive of the Detroit branch NAACP at 3:30 p. m. April 19 at Ebenezer AME Church, Brush and Willis.
A parade from the Art Institute to the church will precede the rally. The Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., is chairman of the drive.
L. Pearl Mitchell, special secretary of the NAACP, will direct the Detroit drive which seeks 7,500 members.
Attorney Edward Turner is president of the Detroit NAACP branch, and Arthur L. Johnson is executive secretary.

In April 1953 my father had just been dismissed from St. Mark’s United Presbyterian Community Church, where he had been pastor for several years, in a dispute with the governing Presbyterian body. Over 300 members resigned, leaving about 35 members in the congregation.

CHURCH MEMBERS QUIT IN SQUABBLE
Protest Dismissal of Young Detroit Pastor

Detroit – Rev. Albert B. Cleage, jr., was dismissed as pastor of St. Mark’s United Presbyterian Community church, here this week by the Committee of Missions of the Detroit Presbytery, the United Presbyterian church.
Members of the congregation protested the action by a wholesale resignation.
Dismissal of Reverend Cleage was the result of protests lodged with the committee by five church members, including Henry W. Cleage, the pastor’s uncle, following their resignation from the church in January.
OBJECT TO PROGRAM
The group objected to the young minister’s program of cultural and social activities, which, they said, interfered with the spiritual functions of the church.
Explaining their action the committee said problems of church discipline were also involved.
The charges against Reverend Cleage generally accused him of ignoring the authority of the committee and failure to program church activities in conformance with views of the committee.
MEMBERS NOT ASKED
Members of the congregation protested they had not been consulted in the dismissal. They had no word of the committee’s action until it was announced by the pastor.
Congregation members protested the dismissal without investigation and resigned from the church en masse.
At last reports they were organizing a new church with Reverend Cleage as pastor.
REPLACEMENT UNKNOWN
A replacement for St. Marks’ has not been announced. Approximately 35 members of the congregation remain.
One member said he did not resign because “two wrongs do not make a right.” He said that he objected to the dismissal but could not agree with the mass resignations.
The resigning members of the congregation said the Presbytery’s failure to consult or consider them in the matter made “it impossible for us to continue as members of this church.”

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A related post -> A Church and Two Brothers – Two Splits 1953

K – Knickerbockers for Easter

A-Z Challenge 2025, African-American Genealogy & Slave Ancestry Research, Cleages, Detroit, , ,

For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.

Henry, Albert Jr. (my father) Albert Sr, Gladys
Detroit Free Press April 18, 1924 page 15
Going to church
Cleage family going to church.

Were there Easter baskets back in the 1920s? Yes there were. You could get fillers or buy a ready made basket. I remember my Grandmother Pearl Cleage gave us ready made Easter Baskets in the 1950s .

Hudson’s Department Store – Detroit Free Press Wednesday, April 02, 1924

One hundred years ago, it was Easter Sunday and my father and his family were ready for church. They were members of St. John’s Presbyterian church, in Detroit, Michigan. My grandparents Albert and Pearl Cleage were founding members. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about my Cleage family 100 years ago. You can read it at THE CLEAGES 100 YEARS AGO – 1925.

G – Going Back to 1972 Black Religion Symposium

A-Z Challenge 2025, Cleages

For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.

My father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. later Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman

For several years after the 1967 Detroit Riot/Rebellion, my father received many invitations to speak around the United States. His participation in the Duke University Black Religion Symposium was one such instance.

For those who want to hear more from the Black Religion Symposium, audio of the speeches is available here -> Black Religion Symposium. The date on this page is for August, but the paper above gives April as the date and I’m going with that date. My father is the first speaker after the introduction.


E – Effigies Hung

A-Z Challenge 2025

For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.

Rev Albert B. Cleage Jr.
Ann Arbor News 1968-04-05

Detroit Churchmen Hanged In Effigy

DETROIT (AP) – Archbishop John F. Dearden, the Rev. Albert Cleage, Milton Henry and Richard Lobenthal were found hanged in effigy Thursday in Detroit’s Kennedy Square.
The name-carded, stuffed-clothing figures were cut down quickly by police.
Archbishop Dearden heads the Detroit archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church. The Rev. Albert Cleage and Milton Henry, are leaders among “Black Power” advocates, and Lobenthal is Michigan director of the Jewish Antidefamation League.
Police said they did not know who hanged the four in effigy, but suspected “right wingers who have created similar incidents in recent months.” They did not name the “right wingers.”
The figures were strung up on the superstructure of a new underground parking garage in the square.

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Oddly enough, although I was 21, I don’t remember anything about this event. I wonder if it was not printed in the Detroit papers. I found this article in an Ann Arbor paper. Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. is my father.

Note: From November 1967 to August 1968, both daily papers, the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News were on strike. That is why it didn’t appear in my search of those papers online. Also why I didn’t know about it.

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My friend, historian Paul Lee, put this short clip of an interview with my father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. by Chet Huntley on YouTube. It is from late 1967 or early 1968, not long after the 1967 Detroit riot.

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1300 Lafaytte – Apartment for Security 1968 – A post about my father’s life during that time

New Year’s Day Sermon 1967

Cleages, Detroit, Sermon Notes

Although this sermon was preached on New Year’s Day in 1967, as I listen to it, I think it could have been preached today. On that day we didn’t know that the Detroit rebellion was ahead. On this day we don’t know what is ahead for us.

My father preaching with the Black Madonna painting behind him.
Sermon Notes for Sunday January 1, 1967 – click to enlarge.

Click to hear the sermon.

T – TRAIN TRIP Revisited

Cleages, sepia saturday, ,

This is my tenth A to Z Challenge. My first was in 2013, but I missed 2021. This April I am going through the alphabet using snippets about my family through the generations.

Several years ago, I wrote about a trip to the west that my grandparents, Albert and Pearl Cleage made by train from Detroit to California. They were traveling with a group. I wasn’t sure when or where they went, aside from starting in Detroit. Since then I have found photographs that show they visited The Garden of the Gods in Colorado, the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and a beach with Oil derricks in the distance which may be Venice, California. They also visited an old west set and a mission bell, which I have so far been unable to locate.

I also decided that a photo of the grown children still living at home, eating dinner with my parents, dates the photo between 1951 and 1953 when we lived in that house.

Waiting for the train. My grandmother Pearl Cleage on the far right.
Garden of Gods-outside Colorado Springs.
By Ahodges7 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8776166
Garden of the Gods . My grandfather Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr.
By Dicklyon – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109743047
Southwest Mission Bell
A stagecoach on a movie set.
My stylish grandparents – Albert and Pearl Cleage. He is wearing the rakish white hat and she is wearing the stylish black hat, with a feather.
My grandmother holding her hat on.

Looking out over the vista. My grandparents are on the far right.

A beach with derricks. Venice Southern California? Venice is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California.
Venice California oil derricks. Venice is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California.
Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, California.
Hollywood bowl
The Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, California
At a train station

We moved back to Detroit in 1951 and lived down the street from my grandparents who lived on Atkinson. At that time my aunts and uncles in the photo below lived with my grandparents.

My mother seems to be on her way to the kitchen, perhaps to refill a serving dish. From the left, we have my uncle Louis, my mother, Uncle Hugh and part of Aunt Anna and my father. I believe that this dinner took place when my grandparents took the trip. I can think of no other reason that they would all be crowding around the dinner table. The photographer must be my uncle Henry, who doesn’t appear in the photo. Where were my sister and I? Perhaps sitting at a different table. Perhaps it was after dark and we were in bed.

dinner atkinson
Around the table
#AtoZChallenge 2023 letter T

S – SEMINARY

A-Z Challenge 2023, Cleages, Detroit

This is my tenth A to Z Challenge. My first was in 2013, but I missed 2021. This April I am going through the alphabet using snippets about my family through the generations.

Transcribed from the sermon “On the Origins of Christianity”, December 8, 1967, by my father Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr. You can listen to this excerpt below.

Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. about 1950 Springfield, MA

I can remember Christianity never meant a whole lot to me when I was a child. I went to ordinary Negro churches where not too much was being said and not much of anything was being done. My experience with black Christian churches in my childhood was a very disillusioning experience. I wondered why anybody wasted time Sunday after Sunday going into the building and sitting there listening to utter nonsense that had no relationship at all to the lives of the people who were sitting there. It seemed there had to be some tremendous traditional hold upon people to make them continue to go in.

The church I went to was a Presbyterian church here in the city and they had a series of preachers, as I can understand, it was not too prosperous a church at that time, and I can’t remember a one, not a one out of a whole series, a whole childhood that ever had anything to say on a Sunday morning that would make black people come in and listen, that had any message for the world in which they lived. That had anything to do with the problems that they faced. And yet it’s important that we realize that we tend to accept this kind of thing, this is the church. We don’t expect, really, as black people, we don’t expect the church to say anything. We don’t really expect the church to mean anything. We don’t really expect the church to be anything. When we come into church, we expect to get the warm feeling of tradition. Maybe it calls to mind a church down home some place where we used to be young and have friends. It calls it to mind and this gives us a sort of a warm glow which bathes the innocuousness of the minister and the off-beat of the choir into something that we think is pleasant, but it has very little to do with what we are actually getting in the church. It’s some ancient memory that we bring to the experience of worshiping Christ in church today.

Now it’s important, I think, that we realize this. I know during my childhood Christianity had very little meaning. My mother talked about it all the time. Obviously for her it had meaning and obviously it was painful that for me it had no meaning. For most of her children it had no meaning. And she couldn’t see that the church we were going to had anything to do with it. We were supposed to believe. Now that had nothing to do with the church, just you were supposed to believe. Everybody’s supposed to believe. It’s the only way you get to Heaven.

I remember the first time I began to have any conviction that the church could in any way be meaningful, was when one evening I just happened to stumble into the Plymouth Congregational Church when the Rev. Horace White was preaching. And he was the first minister I had ever heard who made the slightest effort to make sense. I was amazed to sit in a congregation and hear a minister who was trying to say something. He didn’t always succeed, but he was always trying to say something. And for him Christianity had to have some relationship with the world. And so, I listened to him. And I said Christianity really isn’t as empty and meaningless as people everywhere would lead children to think. It is possible for an individual to take the Bible and try and apply it to the world. To try and see in the Bible a revelation, an epiphany to see God revealed in the Bible. It’s possible. And I only came to believe it because I saw a man trying to do it. Now he fell far short of understanding how the Bible really relates to the lives of Black people because he was at the beginning of a long process. I mean, much has happened since he tried to preach sense to a black congregation. And we’ve gone through a lot of experiences since then. We are different now than we were ten, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago when he was trying to preach sense basing it upon the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. But I think back now how many things he didn’t understand, that I didn’t understand. I decided at Plymouth church to enter the ministry and I went to a seminary. 

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You can hear the whole sermon and see his sermon notes in this post – On The Origins of Christianity.

#AtoZChallenge 2023 letter S

C – CHESS

A-Z Challenge 2023

This is my tenth A to Z Challenge. My first was in 2013, but I missed 2021. This April I am going through the alphabet using snippets about my family through the generations.

playing chess
My father Albert B. Cleage Jr playing chess about 1952

I recently took a survey of the family and found that all my children and grandchildren can play chess, most can also play dominoes. I was curious because we have so many photographs of the boys playing chess and hardly any of the girls. My husband and I used to play chess everyday when we first met. Unfortunately there are no photographs from those games played over 50 years ago.

Below is an article my son James wrote describing in detail his experience at the annual Optimist Chess Tournament held in Ludington, Michigan. Both he of my sons participated for several years.

Chess Tournament

by James A. Williams

Twelve year old James concentrating. Behind him we see his younger brother Cabral.
Seven year old Cabral playing his game with James in the back playing his game.

I had been practicing for months, three hours a day. Hoping to bring home the first place trophy from the annual chess tournament. I had two chances to claim the first place trophy and failed both times.

Game #1: My first game was a simple one and I won it easily.

Game #2: My second game was a little harder. But my opponent was intimidated by me due to the fact that I had beat him in two previous meetings earlier that day. He resigned.

Game #3: My third opponent was not as talented as my second opponent but much more skilled than my first. I won that game.

Game #4: My fourth game was what I anticipated to be the biggest game of the tournament. I was to take on the only other undefeated player in my group. I won that game and was 4-0 to that point.

Game #5: My fifth game was the one I needed to win in order to clench a #1 place. I lost due to a terrible blunder concerning my castle. I was headed to the playoffs and a second chance at #1.

The Playoffs

Game #6: I played my second opponent once again in a decisive game six. If I lost this game my first place hopes would vanish and the best I would be able to do would be #3, I won game 6.

Game #7: This was my last chance at #1. I was matched against the same opponent that had beat me in game five, an opponent that in my four years of tournament play I have never beaten in three meetings. I lost game 7 due to the fact that I overlooked a fork that would have stripped my opponent of his last playing piece and left him only pawns to defend against my rook, a knight and king.

Dashboard

I was forced to walk away with the second place trophy.

from The Ruff Draft March/April 1993

About the Ruff Draft

In 1991 my family began putting out a newsletter we called The Ruff Draft.  We had recently started homeschooling. The purpose of The Ruff Draft was both to give real writing opportunities to Ayanna (15), Tulani (13), James (9) and Cabral (4), and to show extended family and friends that they were learning something. 

In the beginning we used an Apple 2c. They wrote the articles and I typed them into the computer, printed them out and lay out the newsletter. Later my cousin Blair gave us a Mac and the whole newsletter could be done on the computer. There were drawings and photographs. Sometimes the readers sent in articles.

For four or five years we published bi-monthly and mailed it out all over the country to family and friends. As the writers graduated and moved on to bigger things away from home. You can see an issue of The Ruff Draft at this link The Ruff Draft – July 30, 1991.

#AtoZChallenge 2023 letter C