Tag Archives: #Albert B. Cleage Jr

Then and Now – Atkinson 1953

Cleages, Photographs, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, , ,

The “Saturday Night Fun” assignment from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings (along with some of the fine results) can be found here.  It involved picking out a photograph to use in this challenge for August 16 by the Family Curator.  For the original challenge you hold up an old photograph and match it up to the present day scene.  This means you have to be in the area.  Unfortunately, I live far from the sites of my past and that of my ancestors so I was am not able to do this exactly.  I also was not able to just choose my photo and let it go at that. Here is what I did.

The parsonage now and us back in 1953.

In 2004 I spent a day driving around Detroit taking photographs of places where I used to live and of other houses family members lived in.  The angle of this house fit almost perfectly with the photograph taken in 1953 of my father with my little sister Pearl and me.  We are in front of the parsonage on Atkinson. My father was the minister of St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church, two blocks up the street on the corner of 12th Street and Atkinson.

My sister and I shared the bedroom on the upper left.  We used to look out of the side window into the attic of Carol and Deborah. They were our age and lived next door and got to stay up much later then we did. They had a wonderful playroom in the attic.  I taught Pearl to read by the streetlight shinning into our bedroom.  I don’t know why we waited until we were supposed to be in the bed to teach and learn reading.

On our other side lived Eleanor Gross with her family. Eleanor was a teenager and babysat with us during the rare times our parents went out.  My paternal grandparents lived down the street and I have a 2004 photograph of that house which I think I will mix with one from the 1950’s.  I was trying to think of someone still in Detroit that I could get to take a photo from the proper angle of St. Mark’s. I like this assignment!

My Detroit Rebellion Journal – 1967

Cleages, Detroit, sepia saturday, ,
My father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage & me.

I wrote this after the Detroit riot in July of 1967.  I was 20. I had been in Idlewild, MI at my Uncle Louis’ cottage with my Aunt Gladys and some of my cousins when it started. I ended up at my Grandmother Cleage’s house where my father, several uncles and cousins were also gathered. Her house was on Atkinson, about three blocks from the 12th street corner where the riot started. Aside from a little editing for clarity, these are my memories from 1967.

____________________________

 The fire siren that night in Idlewild went on and on and on. Gladys got a phone call that a riot had started. We left that morning. The sky was pink with smoke as we drove into the city.

During the riot, when it got dark, we turned off the lights, put on black clothes and waited. The shots that had been going all day got louder, closer, smashed together. We sat on the porch and watched the tanks go up and down the street full of white boys wearing glasses, aiming their guns at us.

One during the day went by in a yellow telephone repair truck. He rode in the elevated stand, pointing his rifle. We looked back at him.

Lights from helicopters whirred over us. Troops went down 12th, down 14th. The street shook. Afraid to sleep because somebody might shoot through the window, we stayed up until the sky got light. My cousins cleared out the furniture in front of the windows, so they could shoot.

Should they let them get in or shoot before they reach the porch? They lay there on quilts, looking out the window. Seeing soldiers and armored trucks in flowerpots and dump trucks. Dale asked how the gun worked. Ernie shows him by the hall light.

The guns sounded like they were in the alley. I sat on the landing. Thorough the window it was dark and unreal outside. Blair came up, scared, so we went in the basement and turned on a program about Vietnam, but then off to a horror movie nobody watched.

Daddy came down, with a drink, to use the phone and dictate demands to the papers. Ernie showed us how to bolt doors if someone tried to come in the window.

They tried to get Grandmother down to watch TV, but she wouldn’t. She stayed upstairs, watched TV and came out only at times to turn lights on and silhouette everybody hiding guns as the soldiers were pulled back.

On the police radio: Fifty policemen wounded in one hour. They were run out of the Clairmont Square again. A woman turns in her sniper husband.

Dale was left on the porch when they flashed light on the porch and summer-salted in. Bullets were so close I was afraid and went back inside.

Grandmother turning on lights with armed flower pots aiming at us.

Turning Vietnamese guns up loud to drown out theirs. Jan and I, sleeping on the hard scratchy rug. Ernie wanting just a ring to show he was there. Dale taping, taking pictures to show his children. Jesus painted Black.

All that Sunday cars full of white folks went down Linwood past the Church. Windows rolled up. Sightseeing. Long, slow lines, car after car, windows shut tight. Troop Jeeps going by pointing guns.

For other Sepia Saturday offerings click HERE.

Easter Memories

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Henry, Toddy, Albert Sr & little Gladys

Henry’s back, Hugh looking out of car.

Kris ((me) and my sister, Pearl at our Cleage grandparents house with our “mashies” and Easter baskets. 1953

Memories of Easter – dying eggs in my Graham grandparent’s basement on Easter Saturday with my sister and cousins.  Easter baskets with jelly beans and chocolate eggs and one big chocolate Easter bunny.  Tiny fuzzy chicks.    The year someone gave us 4 or 5 real chicks that died one by one in their box in the basement.  Sugar eggs decorated with wavy blue, pink and yellow icing and a little scene inside.  Reading the book “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes”, new clothes, going to church. Going by the Grandmother Cleage’s after church.  What I don’t remember is gathering for a big Easter meal like we did for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I wonder why?

I have some Easter hats here and although you can’t see them clearly, my sister and I are holding some stuffed bunnies.  To see other Easter or bunny Sepia Saturday offerings click here.

Not a bridge, a ferry

Cleages, Investigations, Reeds,

In my new batch of photos, I found another photograph in the #160 series that I showed in my last post, here.  I didn’t notice, until after I posted this photo a few minutes ago, that there were words on the building, “Levy Bros.”  “Falls City Ferry and Transportation Co.”  Looking at the landscape, behind the ferry and building, I saw a distant shore.  No longer looked like Athens, TN!  Which is why I deleted that post and started looking things up.

 I googled “Falls City Ferry and Transportation Co.”  and found this entry in ‘The Encyclopedia of Louisville’ page 286.  “The last ferry operation was between Louisville and Jeffersonville.  The original company, facing difficult competition from electric interurban car service over the Big Four Bridge beginning in 1905, was reorganized as the Falls City Ferry and Transportation Co. in December 1920, with David B.G. Rose as principal shareholder.  Among the minority shareholders was Harland D. Sanders, later of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame.  Though the passenger load declined through the 1920’s vehicular traffic increased as automobiles proliferated.  There was as yet no vehicular bridge between Louisville and Jeffersonville.  Fares were low.  During the 1920’s pedestrians were carried for five cents.  Once aboard they could ride all day for that modest fee.”

Louisville is not on the Detroit, MI to Athens, TN route.  It is on the route from Athens, TN to  Indianapolis, IN, where Uncle Hugh Reed still lived.  In fact, I have a photograph of my father and his brothers taken with Uncle Hugh’s sons, perhaps on the same trip.  In this photo we have front row, Henry and Hugh Cleage.  In the back row, Albert  Cleage (my father), Hugh Reed Jr,  Thomas Reed and Louis Cleage. About 1921 in Indianapolis, IN. My father is wearing the same outfit.

Photos, Photos Everywhere

Cleages, Photographs, sepia saturday,

This week I spent hours putting my photographs from the paternal side in order.  First by grouping them into piles according to the numbers on the reverse side.  After dividing them up by number, I then started dating the files.  I was able to determine who some of the babies were in later photos by which siblings were already there and how old they were.  I will show some of these in a later post.  It’s been slow going and I almost missed Sepia Saturday.  However I thought I should make an entry.  Above you see some of the piles.

These two photographs have the same number.  I have wondered for years if that boy with the stocking cap on standing next to the car was my father.  When I saw the photo of my Uncle Louis (on the left) and my father, Albert, with the stocking cap, I saw it was him.  There are other photos that have both boys that have different numbers but they appear to be taken at the same time on one of the family’s annual trips to Athens Tennessee, my grandfather’s hometown.  One brother, Edward, remained in Athens.  The rest of the family ended up first in Indianapolis, IN and then in Detroit, MI.

Here are some other posts about the Athens branch of the Cleages.
Uncle Ed’s daughters – 1917.  Memories to Memoirs, and Juanita and Daughters.

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