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.
Click to hear the sermon.
Today I came across this Thanksgiving sermon from 1966 and decided to post it today, although this year’s Thanksgiving was several weeks ago. So many parallels between today and yesterday.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
by James A. Williams
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.
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
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.
I do not remember seeing my parents dressed up for this dance or any dance. The most dressed up would be for church or holidays and there were no evening gowns worn for those. I was six years old. I do not remember ever seeing my parents dressed up and going out. After we moved off of Atkinson to Chicago Blvd, I remember that my mother had several fancy gowns hanging in her closet, but never saw her wear one.
That radio was passed to me when I was in college and I had it for a number of years before I moved to very small quarters and most of my stuff disappeared. There was a phonograph in the lower part. You could also get short wave through the radio and I remember listening to Radio Habana Cuba during high school while I was studying Spanish.
Now, if they were down there practicing their steps to the radio or their collection of 78s, that would be a life I wasn’t aware of. I was in college before I found those 78s and heard The Ink Spots, Bessie Smith and so many other classics. My mother never played them as I was growing up.
I found this article in the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity magazine, The Sphinx, about a ball in the spring of 1952 in Detroit. This might be the one my parents were going to.
For more click about where we were living – A is for Atkinson.
I posted a companion photograph to this one in 2015. You can see it here -> Alpha Dance 1952
The Sheraton Cadillac in photographs through the years.
A Way of Travel
“From the 1830s through the 1950s, people traveled in trains pulled by steam locomotives. Cars in these trains were almost always arranged in a particular order—an order that reflected social hierarchy. Coal-burning steam engines spewed smoke and cinders into the air, so the most privileged passengers sat as far away from the locomotive as possible. The first passenger cars—the coaches—were separated from the locomotive by the mail and baggage cars. In the South in the first half of the 20th century, the first coaches were “Jim Crow cars,” designated for black riders only. Passenger coaches for whites then followed. Long-distance trains had a dining car, located between the coaches and any sleeping cars. Overnight trains included sleeping cars—toward the back because travelers in these higher-priced cars wanted to be far away from the locomotive’s smoke. A parlor or observation car usually brought up the rear“
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My father was 18 in June of 1929 when he graduated from Northwestern High School in Detroit. That fall he entered Wayne State University. After a year, he decided he wanted to attend a black college and for a year he went to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He had been to his father’s hometown of Athens, Tennessee with his family while growing up to visit family that remained there. They always drove down, stopping with relatives or friends on the way because hotels were segregated and unavailable to black travelers. This was my father’s first time riding in a segregated Jim Crow car.
In a 1967 sermon titled “An Enemy Hath Done This“, he reminisces about this trip. I have excerpted it from the book “The Black Messiah” by Albert B. Cleage, Jr., pages 160 and 161. Published by Sheed & Ward 1968
by
Albert B. Cleage Jr.
I remember a few years ago when black folks were forced to ride in Jim Crow Cars, I went down South. It was a horrible thing to sit there in a Jim Crow car and wonder why all of us should be jammed into this little car just because we were black. It was the first time I had been down South, and I was very ignorant. I couldn’t even find the car to begin with. When you climbed into that car you had to have some kind of sinking feeling that there had to be something wrong with you. You knew the man was right because it was his train. It was his station. He was letting you ride. He had to be right. So you couldn’t help thinking that the man wouldn’t be putting me way back on this old beat-up piece of car unless there was something wrong with me.
Even then, on a Jim Crow car, there was a better feeling than in the plush cars in which the white folks rode. Sometimes we over look those little things, but honestly, the first time I rode on a Jim Crow car I said, “This is the nicest train I have ever been on.” I was going down to Fisk, my first year in college. It was the nicest train car I have ever been on because the people had something together. We ought to have been tearing up the train because we had no business back there. But instead, we were laughing and talking and sharing our lunch, you know, the shoe box with fried chicken and soul food. You know how you how white folks act on a train, everybody taking care of his own business and looking all evil at everybody else. Well, these folks were saying, “Won’t you have some?” and walking up and down the aisle and making sure everybody did have some. With no white folks around, everyone was relaxed and friendly. I thought to myself, this is another kind of train. It is a Jim Crow thing the white man has put us in but even here we have something he doesn’t know anything about.
That didn’t justify it because we had no business in there, sweet as it was. There was something wrong with it, and deep down inside all of us knew it. One of the things that made us friendly was the fact that we were sharing the same kind of oppression. We all hated the same man. I know you would like me to say it another way, we were unfriendly to the same man, or something. But we were together because the man forced us together, and this little Jim Crow car symbolized it. When we got off the car, it didn’t matter where the station was, we all headed straight for wherever it was black folks lived. The car was just a symbol of the life that we lived. I had never been on a Jim Crow car but I had lived in a Jim Crow community all of my life
This Segregated railway car offers a visceral reminder of the Jim Crow era
Jim Crow Journeys: An Excerpt from Traveling Black
From Jim Crow to Now: On the Realities of Traveling While Black
This week’s Sepia Saturday features an old airplane. I have two photographs of a small, old plane in my Cleage collection. Unfortunately there is nothing written on the back of either photo but I recognize my aunt Barbara – the baby in white, and the edge of my great grandmother Celia on the right edge.
Here is a photograph of my family standing in a field in Detroit, about 1921.
My grandfather Dr. Albert B. Cleage, Sr holding baby Barbara. next to him in my father Albert Jr, standing to the far right is my great grandmother, Albert Senior’s mother. My uncle Louis is front left, Henry is between Louis and Hugh who is standing with his hands on his hips.
Front row: my uncle Louis and my father Albert. In the back row: My grandmother Pearl holding baby Barbara, Henry, Hugh, Great grandmother Celia. My aunt Barbara was born July 10, 1920 in Detroit, Michigan.
Related Air around Detroit in 1922
This is my ninth year of blogging the A to Z Challenge. Everyday I will share something about my family’s life during 1950. This was a year that the USA federal census was taken and the first one that I appear in. At the end of each post I will share a book from my childhood collection.
Taking vigorous exception to statements made by Springfield Housing Authority Chairman John J. Robinson, that there is no segregation in Riverview or Reed Village, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr., chairman of the housing committee of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said last night that the NAACP will take legal action if the segregation “pattern” continues. Such action will result in a test case which would receive national attention, he said.
His statement follows in brief:
“The NAACP has been engaged in investigating the tenant selection and placement policies of the Springfield Housing Authority for more than two years and our preliminary findings indicate the existence of a definite and deliberate policy of racial segregation in tenant placement in both the Riverview and Reed Village apartments,” said Rev. Cleage.
“The Springfield Housing Authority seems to subscribe to exactly the same racial theories as those advanced by some of the residents of Amore Village who stated that they were not prejudiced, but felt that Negroes should live to themselves. The Springfield Housing Authority seems to believe that Negroes and whites living in the same projects must be segregated in separate Negro and white units. The fact that this discriminatory policy existed at Riverview first prompted an NAACP investigation and eventually a conference with the Springfield Housing Authority.
“The NAACP Housing Committee reported its findings back to the Executive Committee and was unanimously authorized to continue its investigation until the Reed Village segregation pattern had been definitely established, and if such a pattern was continued, to proceed in co-operation with the organization’s Legal Redress Committee to take legal action against the Housing Authority. The NAACP case against segregation in Public Housing will receive full support and cooperation from the National Legal Staff of the NAACP. When and if legal action is taken, Thurgood Marshall of New York, who has already been consulted regarding developments, will be asked to handle the case. Such a development will receive national attention as a test case and for that reason the Housing Committee is proceeding with understandable care in preparing its case.
“The case will again test the principle that separate but equal is an actual impossibility already established by the NAACP on many legal fronts. The NAACP contends that a pattern of segregation as practiced by the Springfield Housing Authority contradicts the non-discriminatory provisions of both the state and national Housing Acts from which the Springfield Housing Authority derives its powers. The Springfield Branch of the NAACP in no way endorses or condones the policies of the Springfield Housing Authority.”
From The Springfield Union November 1, 1950
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’m also participating in the Genealogy Blog 1950s Blog Party hosted by Elizabeth Swanay O’Neal, “The Genealogy Blog Party: Back to the 1950s,” Heart of the Family™ https://www.thefamilyheart.com/genealogy-blog-party-1950s/
This is my ninth year of blogging the A to Z Challenge. Everyday I will share something about my family’s life during 1950. This was a year that the USA federal census was taken and the first one that I appear in. At the end of each post I will share a book from my childhood collection.
My father turned 39 on his birthday, June 13, 1950.
In the final assessment of the “Years of Transition and Trial.” the History of St. John’s Congregational Church says:
“In the five years that Mr. Cleage was at St. John’s he increased the church membership and the value of the church property, and enlarged and expanded the community service activities by establishing the St. John’s Community House at 643 Union Street with a completely equipped settlement house plant.
While in Springfield, Mr. Cleage was active in civic affairs, serving on the Executive Committee, the Legal Redress Committee, and the Housing Committee of the NAACP, and participating in the Round Table of the Conference of Christians and Jews, the YMCA, and the American Red Cross. He inaugurated Sunday Cultural Vesper Services and programs. At one of these, Langston Hughes was presented. Mr. Cleage was also a popular speaker and lecturer on New England college campuses.
With the death of Dr. DeBerry and the departure of Mr. Cleage a turbulent perirod in the history of St. John’s Church came to an end, and once again the church set about the task of finding a new minister, one who, perhaps, could close the breach that still divided the congregation.”
From Prophet of the Black Nation by Hiley H. Ward ©1969 United Church Press, pg 66.
Although much of his time was taken up with the church and community activities, my father found time to make an excellent photographic record of his two daughters time in Springfield. He took so many photographs of my sister and me during our years in Springfield. Before we were born he took many photographs of our mother, Doris Graham Cleage. Afterwards she only appears in a few along with us. Perhaps she didn’t have the time to pose any more. Perhaps we were just so interesting. As I put this series together, I wondered what her thoughts were about it.
This shot was taken in our living room in the parsonage of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield, Mass. For years I never noticed my father reflected in the mirror. I looked everywhere for that teapot in later years but it was lost in one of the various moves. It was blue with a gold design over it. The couch was with us for many years. By Christmas of 1950, the cushions had been replaced or recovered with red leather like fabric which is how they were until the couch disappeared from my life. I remember that table, which was also around for a long time. And those little plastic records my sister and I used to play on our parents’ record player and then on our own little phonograph.
Click this link Bertram and the Ticklish Rhinoceros to find some of the pages and illustrations from the book.