My father took many photographs that now help me document my family’s life. There are photographs houses, street scenes and my mother in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In Springfield, MA he took pictures of my sister, my mother, me and along with those of St. John’s Congregational Church and members. For the first few years after we moved back to Detroit, there were photos and then, he stopped taking pictures.
Taking photographs – 1940s.
A few months ago I noticed that my father took no more photographs of our family after we moved from 2212 Atkinson to 2254 Chicago Blvd. Pictures taken during that time were not taken at home. We were at one of my grandparents houses, or in Idlewild. And the photographer was not my father, my mother or other family members were. I wondered what happened during that time that made him stop.
In 1953, at the time we moved from Atkinson to the house on Chicago, there had just been a church split and my father, a minister, was involved in building a new church from the ground up, something he hadn’t done before. This involved finding a church building and raising the money to purchase it. New members had to be found and a program that would get those new members involved and feeling a part of the church, had to be developed. There were constant meetings at our house, a combination parsonage/church activity building. And my parent’s marriage was ending. My parents separated in 1954. Maybe, on top of everything else, his camera broke and he couldn’t afford to replace it because he kept donating his salary back to the church.
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You can see some of the photographs my father took in these earlier posts:
In March of 1953, a disagreement between my father, then known as Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr., pastor of St. Mark’s Community, United Presbyterian Church and a group of members who were not happy with the direction he was was taking the church, came to a head. My father and 300 members of the congregation resigned and founded St. Mark’s Community Church, which several months later became Central Congregational Church and in the 1960s became the Shrine of the Black Madonna.
The split within the church also precipitated a family split. The ties between my grandfather, Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr. and his brother Henry Cleage were broken. The close relationship they shared throughout their lives, was gone. My sister didn’t know she had a cousin Shelton Hill (Uncle Henry’s grandson) until he introduced himself when they were classmates at Northwestern High School.
The Cleage siblings: left to right front; Albert, Josephine, Edward. Back left Henry. Back right Jacob
My grandfather Albert B. Cleage Sr. was the youngest of five siblings. He and his brother Henry were always close. They helped organize Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis and worked together to open the black YMCA there. During the 1930s and 1940s, they lived several blocks from each other on Detroit’s old West Side and saw each other almost daily.
After my father, Albert B. Cleage Jr. (later known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) was ordained in 1943, he served as pastor of churches in Lexington, KY, San Francisco, CA and Springfield, MA. During those years he often wrote home asking his family to help him find a church in Detroit. More than once he mentioned getting his Uncle Henry to help.
In 1951 a group representing the United Presbyterian Church, including Albert Sr. and his brother Henry, organized St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church. It was located on 12th Street near Atkinson. My father was called to be the pastor. They started with 90 members and increased to over 300 during the following two years.
Uncle Henry and my father were both strong minded men. By the spring of 1953, they had reached an impasse over who was in charge and whether the focus of the church should be on its own members or on the larger community. An emotional church meeting in March 1953 caused a split between both the church members and the brothers, Albert Sr. and Henry.
In 1956 my grandfather Albert was very sick with cancer when the family heard that Uncle Henry was quite ill and in the hospital. Soon after they heard that Uncle Henry had died. They wondered if they should tell their father. He was so sick and they didn’t know how it would affect him. In the end, they didn’t have to. My grandfather was lying in bed and said “Henry died, didn’t he?” They said he had. Grandfather said, “I thought so.” They never figured out how he knew.
My grandfather was too sick to go to the funeral. Afterwards, Uncle Henry’s family had the funeral procession drive by my grandparent’s house on Atkinson. The cars drove past very slowly. It was a gesture toward the healing of a rift that began with the church fight in 1953.
Henry William Cleage died April 10, 1956. My grandfather Albert Buford Cleage Sr. died a year later on April 4, 1957. Both are buried in Detroit Memorial Cemetery in McComb County, Michigan.
Today’s post is about the Michigan Freedom Now Party. My photographs were taken during the first convention, which took place in Detroit in September 1964. It was held at Central Congregational Church, now the Shrine of the Black Madonna. To read an interview with Henry Cleage about organizing the party and what happened during the election, click this link – Freedom Now Party,.
Freedom Now Party Convention.
On the far left, back of my sister’s head and the back of my head. Standing in the checked shirt is Oscar Hand. Behind Mr. Hand, in the white shirt, is Richard Henry (later Imari Obadele) Writing on the wall is Leontine Smith. Against the wall in the white dress is Annabelle Washington. I cannot name the others.
Henry Cleage reading platform. Grace Lee Boggs in left corner.
Preamble to the Freedom Now Party Platform
Four of the many candidates on the Michigan Freedom Now Party slate. From left to right: Loy Cohen, secretary of state; James Jackson, lieutenant governor ; Albert Cleage (later Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman), govenor and Milton Henry (later Gaide Abiodun Obadele), representative of the 14th Congressional District.
My father’s desk in the San Francisco apartment. Photos of his sisters, Gladys and Barbara on the desk and one of my mother on the bookcase. This desk looks like one that I have from my mother, but it’s not. I think the apartment was furnished. Surprised the typewriter isn’t visible.
My parents, Albert B. Cleage Jr and Doris Graham, were married in Detroit on November 17, 1943. They left immediately after the ceremony for Lexington, Kentucky, where my father had accepted a call from Chandler Memorial Congregational Church. They were there only two months when he accepted an interim pastorship at the new, experimental San Francisco Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. He served from January of 1944 through June of the same year. The captions under the photographs are taken from what my parents wrote on the back when they sent the pictures back home to their families.
The Church – on the corner. We live upstairs – rear – behind the jungle. (Rubber, Magnolia – Olive, etc.)
This is Romeo and Patrick and me – fat jaws and all. June 1944
Mountains! Taken out our front window – over the housetops across the street.
This is Post Street looking toward the Ocean. Looks like you could follow it right on up to Heaven, doesn’t it? June 1944
Looking down at the “Fillmore slum” from our front window. The lady who bakes cakes for us lives over there –
Guess who this gangster looking talent is. June 1944.
Birds eye view of my mother hanging up clothes in the backyard.
Following is an excerpt from a biography of my father, about his time in San Francisco. I wish I had the box of letters I know existed from those six months.
“Cleage does not remember his work with the famous Fellowship Church of All Peoples with any fondness. The new congregation, which had about fifty members when he was there, was a contrived, artificial affair, he says. ‘An Interracial church is a monstrosity and an impossibility,’ he said. ‘The whites who came, came as sort of missionaries. They wanted to do something meaningful, but this was not really their church. The blacks regarded it as experimental too, or were brainwashed to think that it was something superior.’ He called his white counterpart, Dr. Fisk, ‘well-meaning,’ and said Fisk thought he (Fisk) was doing a great work, but had no understanding of tension and power. He felt the Lord looked in favor on this work, and any whites that joined him were headed for glory. He hated to have problems mentioned. Problems included the property left deteriorating after the Japanese were moved out, and the boilermakers’ union ‘which set up separate auxiliary units for black so they could discontinue the units after the war.’ Cleage joined in with NAACP efforts to get at these injustices. He was told he could stay at the Fellowship of All Peoples if he wanted to, and he said ‘they were nice people, but it did not seem to me it was a significant ministry.’ About Fisk, he said, ‘He talked about the glorious fellowship washed in the blood of the Lamb; I talked about hell on the alternate Sundays. He felt upset about my preaching, but he didn’t want to raise racial tension in his heaven.'”
From Hiley Ward, Prophet of the Black Nation. (Piladelphis: Pilgrim Press, 1969), p. 55.
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You can see a newspaper clipping of my parents and a very short post about their time in San Francisco here Newspaper Clipping of My Parents. Soon after July 1, my parents moved to Los Angeles, where my father studied film making for a year before he was called to pastor St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Pearl standing, me seated, my father. The photographer told us to look in that direction.
This is the 17th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. The next four posts will be about some of the places that I lived that I didn’t cover in the Alphabet Challenge last year. Today I am going to remember 1300 Layfette, Detroit. My father, who was still using his name, Rev. A.B. Cleage lived here for a year during 1968-1969. I was a senior at Wayne State University.
In the aftermath of the 1967 riots my father had received many crazy letters, including death threats. Several people involved in the movement had been beaten or shot during this time period. There were also the more well known assassinations that took place. I remember one sermon when my father announced that he had heard there was a price on his head and plans to kidnap him and hold him for ransom. He told the congregation that if he was kidnapped, give them nothing for his return. Strangely, I don’t remember worrying about this.
The flat on the left was the one my father lived in. The 12th floor is about half way up.
It was during this time that it was decided that he would move out of his first floor flat on Calvert, that had no security measures, and into the an apartment on the 12th floor of the very secure 1300 Lafayette apartments.
Here is a description written by Hiley H. Ward in his 1969 biography of my father, Prophet of the Black Nation, about the apartment and the atmosphere of the times.
“…He has continued to live alone, until recently in a twelfth-floor panoramic apartment ($360 a month, two bed-room) in the exclusive downtown eastside Lafayette Park overlooking the river, Detroit and Windsor, Canada. His church described his moving there as a security measure… in his immaculate apartment two of three paintings remain unhung after a number of months – not a sign of particular interest in the place.”
Several things I remember:
My father leaving my sister and me standing out in the hall while he went through the apartment with a drawn gun to make sure nobody was there.
The picture above being taken by a Detroit Free Press photographer for an article they were doing about my sister Pearl’s poetry for the Sunday magazine, Parade.
The time I spent a week with him while my mother and Henry went out of town. He went over to his mother’s house on Atkinson for dinner every night. I decided to just fix myself dinner. I did, but I left the tea kettle on and forgot about it. It melted on the burner. I still have a lump of the remains. During this visit I was instructed to give no one the phone number or the address.
All that remained of the tea kettle.
Watching the 4th of July fireworks.
I was trying to reconstruct the layout of the apartment from memory when I decided to look online. Currently the same apartments are in use as co-op apartments and I was able to find the layout and placement at the website for the current cooperative apartments.
At the same time that my father was living here, The Black Star Co-op being developed.
The article below sounds good, Mayor Bowles of Detroit fulfilled an election promise and appointed a black person, my grandfather, as city physician. I had read about this before in an article that praised Mayor Bowles for making the appointment. There was a veiled reference to the Mayor having been accused of being a member of a “secret group”.
Recently my cousin Jan was scanning photographs and old newspaper articles and she sent me the badly deteriorated copy of the article below. This article also praises Mayor Bowles for his appointment and talks about the negative pressure he has been receiving because of it. Although the end of the articles has crumbled there was enough left to make me wonder just what was going on? I googled Mayor Charles Bowles and Aaron C. Toodle, the mysterious pharmacist cited in the article below.
As it turns out, Mayor Bowles ran for Mayor several times, twice with the backing of the Ku Klux Klan. He was reputed to have ties with the bootleggers and racketeers in Detroit and this resulted in a petition of recall just 8 months after his election. My grandfather held the post of city physician for many years.
Both of the Newspapers quoted below were black newspapers. The first is the “Chicago Defender”. The second is the “Detroit Independent.” The racist statements were made in a white paper, “The Detroit Free Press”.
“Detroit, June 20 – The announcement was made from Mayor Charles Bowles’ office that Dr. Albert C. Cleage, West side physician, had been appointed to the position of city physician, the appointment to become effective July 1.
Dr. Cleage, who has been a resident here for the last 15 years, will be the first member of the group to be elevated to the position of city physician. Mayor Bowles is carrying out pre-election promises to appoint members of the group to better positions.
Dr. Cleage is a graduate of Knoxville college, Knoxville, Tenn. class of 1906. Dr. Cleage finished the medical course at Indiana university and was appointed interne at the City hospital, Indianapolis.
While at the City hospital Dr. Cleage took a competitive examination and finished second in a class that included graduates from practically every university in the country. Following his internship at Indianapolis, Dr. Cleage practiced medicine for three years in Kalamazoo, Mich, before coming to Detroit.
Dr. Cleage is married and the father of seven children. Albert, Jr, is a student at Detroit City College. Henry is a cello player in the all-city high school orchestra. The new appointee is an Elk and a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha and Sigma Pi Phi fraternities.”
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Anti-Bowles Forces Resent Placing Negro on City Staff
“Dr. Albert B. Cleage 4225 McGraw Avenue, recent appointee of Mayor Charles Bowles to the staff of City Physicians, began his duties in that capacity last Tuesday morning. Dr. Cleage is eminently fitted for this position as he has served on the Welfare Department at Indianapolis, and is a graduate of the University of Indiana Medical College. Dr. Cleage’s salary will be $3,300 a year with a $600 allowance for a private car.
Considerable alarm has been manifested by the Anti-Bowles administration faction over the appointment of a Negro to the City Staff. Rather than credit Mayor Bowles with giving the group the representation that it should have had some years ago, this faction incriminates the mayor by charging him with making an effort to obtain a large percentage of race votes.
The Detroit Free Press charges that the appointment was engineered by John Gillespie, commissioner of public works, and that the appointment is coincidental with the dismissal of employee from the garbage department. The paper further asserts that Gillespie discharged these employees in order to replace them…(missing part)”
Free Press Hates Negroes
Negroes Appreciate Courage and Fairness of Mayor Bowles
Baseless Attack on Negroes Drive Former Enemies to Bowles Camp
When a newspaper is as anxious to run Detroit as the Free Press is it ought to have sense enough not to insult 50,000 Negro voters as it did July 1st.
Many City Physicians have been appointed in Detroit without appearing on the front page of the Free press. Why does the Free Press keep all others off the front page and put the Negro __tor (can’t make out) on the front page? For only one bad reason, only to harm the Negro and discredit Mr. Bowles by appealing to white prejudice.
The Free Press tried to make whites believe Mr. Bowles has done too much for Negroes.
If 80 percent of the welfare cases are colored, mayors long before Mayor Bowles should have had the courage and fairness to appoint a Negro.
Since no one else did, Negroes give all credit to Mayor Bowles and will stand by him for his fine attitude toward the race.
Mayor Attacked for City Race Appointment
(continued from page one)
Toodle, druggist, have been instrumental in having some of the dismissed employees re-hired. It is this activity of these men, it is believed, that the daily papers referred to when they erroneously stated:
“Dismissed employees of the garbage department said that Dr. Cleage has held a number of meetings with Aaron C. Toodle, Negro druggist at St. Antoine and Vernor Highway, for the purpose of placing Negro citizens in city jobs.”
In speaking of the consternation caused by a Negro’s being placed on the city’s payroll in a department other than the garbage department, Dr. Cleage said:
“There is absolutely no politics in this appointment. I have interested myself in getting jobs for unemployed Negroes and have succeeded in getting jobs for ten or twelve men with the city. Most of these were old city employees who had been laid off.”
These are my father, Rev Albert B. Cleage Jr/Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman’s sermon notes for New Year’s Day of 1967. I also included the bulletin for that day and one of the songs sung by the choir. The painting of the Black Madonna and child in the photograph above was not yet painted on New Year’s day. It was painted during the spring of 1967 and unveiled on Easter Sunday of that year. The Detroit riot/rebellion occurred during the summer of 1967.
Sun. Jan. 1, 1967 – New Year’s Day Scripture; Luke 17: 5 & 6 – & – 11 – 21 Luke 17:21 – “The Kingdom of God is in the midst of you” xWe tend to have certain psychological confusions which clutter up our relationship with God – and our participation in the Church. WE ARE ALWAYS WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO BE DONE FOR US…When we come into the church – We ask – “Increase Our Faith” (We want to believe in something) “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed…” JESUS SAYS – “USE WHAT FAITH YOU HAVE” FAITH IN WHAT? Faith that we are participating in God’s planFaith in our importance as children of GodFaith in the future of our Black Brothers We ask – “Jesus Master have mercy upon us” (Do something for us.) “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed But we seldom pause to give thanks – And Jesus says -“Our faith can make us well” Ten Lepers – only one returned to give thanks –– The 9 like most church members got what they wanted and wandered away.-Didn’t even understand the source of their blessings –-People who use the Church – We ask – “When is the Kingdom of God coming?” (We wait for something spectacular to happen) (so we BECOME DISCOURAGED) JESUS SAYS— “THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS NOT COMING WITH SIGNS TO BE OBSERVED — FOR BEHOLD THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS IN THE MIDST OF YOU.”
x 1967 – OUR ONLY SECURITY MUST COME THROUGH OUR PARTICIPATION IN THE STRUGGLE – TO ATTEMPT TO STAND APART AND A BYSTANDER IS SUICIDE!
-PROBLEMS- _IMPORTANCE OF THE CHURCH – Heritage Comm_ Inner City Organizing Comm Black Star Co-op.
While looking through the binder holding my father’s sermon notes I found these for Sunday, December 25, 1966. Some were written on a small donation envelope. There is also a bulletin and two pages of sermon notes that are for the same Sunday. Although page 2 and a possible page 4 are missing, I think that there is enough here to give the gist of the sermon.
A Christ To Carol Go tell it on the Mountain Jesus Christ is Born
II. Christmas Spirituals = Carols written by slaves = “Good News”?= Glory Manger Po’ Little Jesus Boy Jesus first came first to down trodden and oppressed. “Tell John…”
I. Child waiting for Christmas thinks only of Santa Claus = Child for whom Christmas means most – not one who receives most in terms of material gifts –
III. “Gospel” was the Good News of the possibilities in human life – Slaves may have been closer to realizing possibilities than many of us today.
We tend to judge everything today in terms of materialistic value – EVEN CHRISTMAS – Commercialized (How much we can give)
The following article on accountability was written by the late Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, formerly the Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., the founder of the Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church, for his weekly column, “Message to the Black Nation.” It was published inthe Oct. 14, 1967, issue of “The Michigan Chronicle,” Detroit’s oldest black newspaper.
His column began informally with two articles that he wrote in the wake of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion, which were published in the Aug. 12 and Aug. 19, 1967, issues. The first was headlined “The Message’/We Must Control Our Community” and the second was headlined “Transfer Power To End Violence.” The following week, on Aug. 26, his column formally began under the “Message to the Black Nation” title, but the “Black” was omitted in the Oct. 14 column, apparently due to a typographical error. It ran for the next two years, with only occasional breaks, such as when he vacationed in Mexico in December 1967. It was usually published on p. A-12, but sometimes on p. A-16.
In the beginning of this column, he refers to the Citywide Citizens Action Committee (CCAC), which was a broadly-based coalition of black organizations and individuals that was formed at a public meeting held in the 13th-floor auditorium of the former Detroit City-County Building, now the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, on Aug. 9, 1967. CCAC was disbanded the following year. — Paul Lee.
MESSAGE TO THE NATION
Explains Principle Of Accountability By REV. ALBERT B. CLEAGE, JR.
CCAC flier urging black people to “Fight to Win Self-Determination for the Detroit Black Community” by joining one of its 12 committees. At least 12 of the chairs or co-chairs were members of or closely associated with Jaramogi Agyeman’s church, including attorneys Russell S. Brown, Jr., Milton R. Henry and Andrew W. Perdue; bookseller Edward Vaughn; artist Glanton Dowdell; street speaker Jackie Wilson (later Amen Ra Heru); publicist William M. Bell; physician Dr. Horace F. Bradfield; William Flowers; Marion Burton; United Auto Workers (UAW) organizer Nadine Brown; and Loretta Smith.
Black people in the city of Detroit have a new kind of unity born out of the July [1967] rebellion. Our new unity is the unity born of conflict and confrontation. It is a unity that was made possible by our realization that in a moment of crisis the total white community came together in opposition to us in our struggle for freedom, justice and self-determination.
This is the first time in the city of Detroit that we have had this kind of unity and out of this unity has come a new kind of organization, the Citywide Citizens Action Committee (CCAC).
Historically black organizations have not been born out of conflict or the will to self-determination but rather out of a fruitless seeking after integration. Our old organizations expressed our conviction that it was possible for us to integrate into the white man’s society and that some day there would come a great getting-up morning on which black and white would walk hand in hand in love for one another.
That was the basic dream which brought all of our black organizations into existence. That was essentially the message of the black Christian church. Now we realize that it was this dream which thwarted and frustrated all our efforts to secure freedom and justice.
Today’s unity was born out of the realization that our survival means a continual conflict and confrontation which can only be restored through the transfer of power and self-determination for the black community.
What Self-Determination Means
Self-determination means black control of the black community. This is the purpose which has brought us together. Self-determination means control of the police department in our community. It means controls in our community. It means that we must control everything that touches the black community.
FREEDOM MARKET: The Black Star Co-op Market, 7525 Linwood, the first economic cooperative venture of the Citywide Citizens Action Committee (CCAC), Aug. 12, 1968. Formerly Rashid’s Market, it was a stock corporation inspired by Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Steamship Corporation in the 1920s. The old stock certificates are now collector’s items. BENYAS-KAUFMAN PHOTO, COURTESY PAUL LEE, BEST EFFORTS, INC.
Self-determination is not something vague and abstract. It means that we must control all of the stores on all the streets in our community. It means control of the housing in our community. It means that we cannot tolerate one huge white real estate concern operating 60 percent of the apartment houses in our community.
As the days pass and we begin the complicated task of translating these objectives into concrete programs, there is going to be a lot of double-talk and confusion. Very few black people will publicly deny that they support self-determination even though many will refuse to do the things necessary to achieve it.
That is why we must have one citywide organization interpreting day in and day out the simple facts involved in black control of the black community. CCAC must help people understand what is involved.
We do NOT mean that we are going to turn the black community over to the self-seeking black capitalists. There would be no great improvement for us if individualistic black businessmen controlled the business in our community for their personal benefit. We are not exchanging one kind of economic slavery for another.
We are far beyond the days when we would proudly point to Brother So-and-So who had gotten rich from exploiting us and was driving around in a Cadillac. If a black businessman is going to operate in our community, he must contribute to it and be accountable to it.
This is the first principle of black control of the black community: the principle of accountability. Everyone who is going to do anything in the black community must be accountable to the black community.
This will be something entirely new for us. No black leader has ever considered himself accountable to the black community before — in politics, in business, in labor, in the church, or in education. So-called black leaders have considered themselves accountable only to the white man.
We were supposed to be happy and content because they were successful and could dress up and live in big houses and walk around acting like white men. Today, if a black man is exploiting the black community, he must be dealt with. We have no room for selfish individualists in politics, in business, in labor, in the church or in the professions.
CCAC also opened the 24-hour Black Star Shell Service Station at Linwood and Clairmount, several blocks west of where the Rebellion began. BENYAS-KAUFMAN PHOTO, COURTESY PAUL LEE, BEST EFFORTS, INC.,
That Slavery Softness Has Got to Go
We must be willing to accept the implications of this position. We have certain so-called leaders who disappear or have nothing to say when a crucial issue faces the black community. We must have one answer for this disappearing act. When election times come around, these so-called leaders must be put out to pasture.
This is more difficult than you imagine. When election time comes, a lot of us will hesitate. People will argue that it is better to have a weak black man in office than to risk no black man in office.
They will say that he is still some help just because he is black. This is not true. If a black politician does not recognize his accountability to the black community, then he is worse than nothing. It would be better to have someone in office whom we can recognize as an enemy than to have an enemy in office who appears to be our friend.
Legislators, judges, councilmen, congressmen, every black man who holds a political office must take orders from us. The moment he begins to think his job is bigger than we are, there is nothing for us to do but take him out.
We intend to demand that everybody who works in the black community recognize his accountability to us. When he strays from the straight and narrow path, we are going to talk to him. We will take a group of brothers and we will sit down and talk over his weaknesses and shortcomings.
We are going to do just what it says in the Bible. “If a brother strays, go sit down and talk to him. If he won’t listen to reason, take some more brothers to talk to him. If he still won’t listen, then treat him like a Gentile.”
In the Bible the Gentile is the white man. That means that if he will not accept his accountability to the black community, we have no alternative but to treat him like a white man — and put him out of the [Black] Nation. That is the Bible.
A lot of you are not really ready for this. You have still got a lot of that soft slavery weakness in you. This is because you don’t take seriously the simple fact that we are fighting for survival. If a brother is betraying the Nation, he must be put out of the Nation.
We are holding everybody accountable because we are getting ready for confrontation. We can’t afford any halfway people messing us up. We are preparing for all kinds of conflict.
Don’t think we had a bad summer and everything is going to be pleasant from now on. Get yourselves ready. That old slave psychology, that softness, has got to go. We must know that if we are going to move, it is going to be by confrontation.
Theresa Pearl, mother Blanch, and Thomas Perry. Names based on birth dates and the other photo.
Hugh Marion b. 1910. Thomas Perry b. 1916. Theresa Pearl b. 1914. Anna Roberta b. 1908.
Recently I received a scan of the photograph on the left from my cousin Jan. The reverse side of the postcard type photo says “Theresa Pearl’s Birthday March 10, 1919” The handwriting looks as though the same person who wrote on the back of this photo Christmas card of Theresa Pearl. I am not sure that the woman in the photo is their mother, Blanch. I am checking. I hope I am right because I have no other photos of her.
Note: Yes, that is Blanch Celeste Reed Averette, the mother. I was able to confirm it with some of her descendants.
Below is a photograph of my father Albert at about 3 years old in a little dress. Younger brother Louis is sitting on the chair in a long gown. It was taken in Kalamazoo Michigan about 1916.
