Tag Archives: #Albert B. Cleage Jr

How Many Monsters Did You Create Today?

Cleages, Investigations, , ,
Rev. Cleage/Jaramogi

My friend, historian Paul Lee, asked me to publish the following article after a rash of violence in Detroit by young black men. The original articles were written by my father, Albert B. Cleage Jr/Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, in 1968. It is depressing how the more time passes, the worse things seem to get.  All photographs, aside from the first, are from The Illustrated News and were taken by photographer Billy Smith during the early 1960s. KCW

Following the call made by the Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr. (later Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman), students commemorate Malcolm X Day in front of the old Northwestern High School, Detroit, Feb. 21, 1969.  (Detroit Free Press Photo/Courtesy Paul Lee)

The following article is excerpted from a report on two columns by Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, then known as the Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., which were originally published in The Michigan Chronicle on May 4 and June 29, 1968, respectively.

Jaramogi Agyeman was the charismatic founder and pastor of the Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church (PAOCC) and the father of Black Christian Nationalism (BCN), its sacred-secular creed of Black Power, or self-determination, which was proclaimed on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967.

The Shrine sought to reclaim the African roots of Christianity and, at least until the passing of its founder on Feb. 20, 2000, to restore the historic sovereignty of black people, who were considered the scattered “Black Nation, Israel,” by forming a “black nation within a nation,” which included governing majority-black communities.

During his half-century in the black liberation struggle, he was called the “Apostle of Youth” because of his deep concern for and involvement with the education of young black persons, particularly with regard to addressing their inculcated sense of self-hatred, or “Acceptance of Black Inferiority” (ABI).   From the 1960s to the 1990s, he was aided in this concern by the substantial percentage of Shrine members who were teachers.

The report and two of his weekly “Message to the Black Nation” columns dealt with ideas that he presented at “Project Salvation,” a Black Ministers-Teachers Conference sponsored by the Black Teachers Workshop at the University of Detroit-Mercy on April 27, 1968.   It was attended by 300 conferees from across the country.

While much has changed in the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) since then, much has remained the same, or gotten worse, including the anti-democratic takeover of DPS by a black Emergency Manager imposed by Michigan’s white, racist, right-wing governor, who’s doing the bidding of corporations.

In light of the deplorable state of our schools and the dangers posed by young “monsters” here and across the country, many of Jaramogi Agyeman’s insights and prescriptions remain relevant. — Paul Lee

How many monsters did you create today?

A message to black ministers and educators

By Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman
(Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr.)

[Monsters are persons who prey on others because they have no sense of social or human identity.]   Both the schools and churches have created these monsters.   They have taught black children to hate black people and therefore to hate themselves.

Now that they have seen what white people are like, they also hate white people and have abandoned the integration dream which sustained the older generation.   With nothing to attach themselves to, a whole generation of lonely, vicious youth is now running up and down the streets, grabbing pocketbooks, knocking down old women, taking anything they can lay their hands on, concerned only with their own individual selves.

Unless the black church can give these young people a positive self-image and something to attach themselves to, they will destroy not only themselves but all of us.

* * *

…black churches do not play any important part in the education of black children other than the destructive one of handing down the white supremacy power symbols of a white Jesus and a white God.

The school is a white institution which perpetuates and hands down the white man’s interpretation and conception of the world.   We clean up our little children, tell them to study hard and send them off to school where almost everything they learn is a distortion of the truth.

White-dominated schools teach white supremacy. …   In school libraries the books are predominantly white supremacy books.   In every book about Africa, “the native” has a bone in his nose.   They say that they are changing the books but you stop and look.   The bone is shorter, that’s all.

The books and the personnel are still teaching the same point of view:   white people have done everything in the world that was worth doing and poor primitive black people have been the kindly white man’s burden.    This destroys our children.

The problem is with us

[Many teachers and preachers] are overly optimistic about black parents.   They seem to think that black parents are fed up and want a basic change.   I do not think that black parents are fed up.   If they were, they would keep their children out of school until the schools are changed.   We can change the schools any day that we decide that black children are important enough.

Perhaps the most pitiful thing is the fact that many black parents still believe that white folks know best how to educate black children.   When they see too many black teachers in a school, they are upset.   “This school is entirely black,” they say and begin looking for a place to move where they can get their children into an integrated school.   It is pathetic.

Basically the problem is with us.   We cannot expect white folks to be seriously concerned about educating black children.   Why should we expect them to be?   We know how they treat us in employment — keeping us in the poorly paid jobs at the bottom.

We know how they treat us when it comes to selling a house — charging $19,000 for a house they would sell a white person for $15,000.   Why should they be any more democratic when it comes to education?    I am not surprised at them but I am surprised that it takes us so long to wake up and do something to change an educational system that our tax dollars support.

Our children are being destroyed by the schools and we are doing nothing to prevent it.   Some of you will say, “Our children are not so bad.”   But you know as well as I do that our black children will knock an old black woman down, rape her and take her purse containing 50 cents.

These are not just “bad kids.”   These are children in a white civilization who do not have any sense of identification with anything and who do not believe in anything.   These are black children who have been destroyed by the black church and the white[-dominated] school.

Do you know what saved some of you older people when you were growing up?   You had a dream.   Your mother told you that if you studied hard, you could rise above other black folks.   She told you that if you washed your face, stood up tall and walked proud, white folks would accept you.

So you spent your time trying not to be like black folks and trying to be like white folks.   In a sense that saved you.   As asinine and ridiculous as it now sounds, that is what saved a lot of older black people.   It was a foolish dream but it was a dream.    It was something to hang on to.

We hated ourselves.   We did all we could to escape from ourselves.    In church on Sunday we tried to shout our way right out of our black skins.

What dream do our children have?

Now let me ask you, What dreams do our children have?   They know that the old integration dream is dead.   They know that the white man does not want them and they do not want the white man.

Those who belong to the Nation and attend the Shrine of the Black Madonna reject the old integration dream just as black children do.   But we have something to put in its place. We are working to build a black community that we can be proud of.   We have a new dream to take the place of the old dream that is dead.

But most of our young people don’t have anything.    They hate themselves.   They hate white people.   They hate everybody.   They have been psychologically murdered by the black church and the white[-dominated] school.

Look at the black community.    What does a black child have to identify with?   When he goes to church, he sees white folks in Sunday School lessons, white folks in the stained glass windows, and a white Jesus up front over the altar.

When he rejected the integration dream and white folks, he rejected all of them, and he is not going to come into a black church and make an exception for a white Jesus.    So you don’t see our young people in churches.   The church doesn’t have anything to offer so young people stay away.

Our children are mad, evil, lonesome.   They feel cheated and left out.   They strike out at the world in anger and frustration.   This is the basic task of the Black Nation.

The only thing that can save a black child is a Black Nation that they can come into.  For a black child it is the difference between life and death.   For a black child this is the only thing that he can come into that will give him a sense of identity.

Out there on the street, he has nothing to believe in and having nothing to believe in is psychological death for any child.

* * *

We feel that most ghetto schools today destroy children rather than educate them.  The teachers and administrators serve as power symbols and kill a black child’s self-image. Their influence, their lack of concern, and in many instances their contempt make it impossible for a black child to learn.

So, we are insisting more and more that in a school for black children … its curriculum be reoriented to cover the culture of black people; that the present textbooks, which are essentially lies, particularly in the area of social science and history, be thrown out and that textbooks explaining the history and cultural background of black people be substituted.   We are not insisting that white schools teach the truth, but we do insist that schools in black ghettos teach the truth.

______________________________

This column was edited by Highland Park scholar and Michigan Citizen historical features writer Paul Lee, who indicated omissions with ellipsis (…) and paraphrases and clarifications with [brackets] and separated the Michigan Chronicle report and columns with asterisks (* * *).   The subheadings are the Chronicle’s.

I’d like to thank Sala Andaiye (Adams) and Peter Goldman for their helpful proofreading,  and Baba Malik Yakini for his sage counsel. — Paul Lee

Editorial Matter Copyright © 2012 by Paul Lee

Four Boys and a Cannon – 1918

Cleages, Photographs, sepia saturday, ,
The prompt. To see more Sepia Saturday offerings,
click!

The two photographs below were taken in 1918 and feature my father, two of his younger brothers and a family friend. The water in the background of the second photo made me think they were taken on Belle Isle or perhaps across the Detroit River in Canada. I thought that I would be able to place the photos by using the cannon in the second picture. I was able to find several cannons in the Detroit area, unfortunately none looked like the one in the photo.  The presence of a family friend makes me think it was taken in Detroit and not on a family trip to another state. At least it was labeled with names and dates.

Henry Cleage, Cornelius Henderson, Louis Cleage, Albert Cleage.
1918 Detroit.
Louis Cleage, Cornelius Henderson, Albert Cleage, Henry Cleage.

The Black Star Co-op – 1968

Cleages, Detroit, sepia saturday, ,
My father standing across the street from the market.  Courtesy Paul Lee, Best Efforts, Inc.

In 1965 the idea of the Black Star Co-op was born at Central United Church of Christ. In 1968, the year after the Detroit riot, a grocery store was opened a block from the church. Due to a variety of reasons – inexperience of management and staff, costs of keeping enough stock, high prices –  the store did not last long.   Later the church operated a long running food co-op. Several people would go down to Eastern Market early Saturday morning and buy produce which was shared by everybody who paid $5 that week. There was no overhead and no paid staff. Later the church had a farm in Belleville, Michigan and the food for the co-op came off of that farm. Below is a short photographic story of the Black Star Market.

Sign on window.
Edward Vaughn and Norman Burton with the information and sign up table for the cooperative set up after church service. The photograph in the background is of the 1963 ‘Walk to Freedom’ in Detroit. Over 100,000 people marched down Woodward Ave.
Flyer for church members hand cut by my father on one of those blue stencils and run off on the church mimeograph machine.
Future home of the Black Star Market. Misty church steeple in the background.
Renovated store, ready for business.  Courtesy Paul Lee, Best Efforts, Inc.
My father with women who worked in the store and a customer soon after the opening.  Courtesy Paul Lee, Best Efforts, Inc.
The block where the store stood is now vacant land. The church is still there.

To read more about the church and the street it stand on, click on these links: “L” is for Linwood (About the street of Linwood), “H” is for Linwood and Hogarth (About the church).

For more Sepia Saturday offerings about stores or other things, CLICK.

Cleage Printers

Carnival of Genealogy, Cleages, Family History Through the Alphabet, , , ,
Click on this and other photos to enlarge. Scenes from Cleage Printers – 1960s. Most of these photographs were developed in the plant dark room. I wish I’d learned more about photography while there was that great dark room available and all those wonderful cameras.

My uncles, Henry and Hugh Cleage owned and operated Cleage Printers for about a decade, from the late 1950s until the late 1960s.  It’s difficult to pinpoint the time they started printing.  They published a newspaper called The Metro in 1956. I’m not sure if they printed that themselves or put it together and had it printed elsewhere. On the March, 1960 marriage license for Henry and my mother, he listed his occupation as Printer/Lawyer. The plant, as we called it, was located behind Cleage Clinic at 5385 Lovett, near McGraw on Detroit’s Old West Side.  Henry was an attorney and Hugh worked at the Post Office before they started printing. I don’t know if either of them had any experience printing before that.  I asked my husband, who was also a printer for a number of year without much prior experience. He said it’s not that hard to learn while doing. Maybe armed with “In business with a 1250 Multilith” they were able to set up shop and learn on the job. I still have the book. Uncle Louis, the doctor, put in the start up money for the press. Later when they had to upgrade Henry said that family friend, Atty. Milton Henry, contributed that money.

According to the memories of family friend, Billy Smith and my aunt Anna, they went into business for themselves because they wanted the independence of being their own boss and Henry had always been interested in printing. They had several long term employees and a number of young people who worked there for a short period of time. My aunt Barbara worked there for awhile.  My sister and I worked there the summer I was 16. I learned to run the small press and use the Varityper described below.  I remember Ronald Latham keeping up a running story about being a Venusian now living on Earth. Henry kept our first weeks wages of $10 to make it like a real job. He was supposed to give it to us at the end of the summer, when we stopped work but we never saw that $10 and we didn’t bring it up.  If we had, I’m pretty sure we would have been paid.

 They made their money by printing handbills for neighborhood markets.  In addition to that they printed up flyers, newsletters, magazines for various radical black groups, materials for the Socialist Workers Party and the Detroit Artist’s Workshop.  The printing plant was a place where people came to find discussion of the issues of the day and in the 1960s there were plenty of issues to discuss.  My Uncle Henry loved to hold forth on a variety of topics and his arguments were always well thought out and convincing.  Hugh didn’t talk a lot but he would have something to put in, maybe just a quiet shake of his head over what Henry was saying. If Louis came back he would join in with his sarcastic comments and distinctive laugh.

Various flyers printed at Cleage Printers
Four pages from the October 6, 1962 issue of The Illustrated News. They printed it on pink newsprint left over from the market handbills so it was often called the “pink sheet”. My uncles published it from 1961 to 1964. It started off as a weekly and eventually went to bi-weekly and consisted of 8 pages of commentary about local and national events of concern to the black community. My father wrote many of the article.  My uncle Louis had a biting, humor column called “Smoke Rings” on the back page.
In addition to grocery store circulars and race literature, Cleage Printers printed a variety of other alternative materials, such as a series of poetry books for the Artist’s Workshop in Detroit, headed by John and Leni Sinclair.
I found this at The Ann Arbor Library. You can see that Cleage Printers is mentioned as a part of the Trans-Love Engeries Unlimited co-operative in the 2nd line of the 3rd column, of this April 1967 copy of “The Sun”. I wonder that I never heard about that.

Sometimes there would be things that had to be collated in the evening and all of us cousins and our mother’s would be down there at night putting whatever it was together.  After the 1967 Detroit riot so many stores went out of business that they couldn’t make enough to keep going.  Henry went back to law and worked with Neighborhood Legal Services.  Hugh held on for another few years, printing for the church and teaching young people how to run the small press. Finally, he too left.  I wish in all those photographs that were taken, one or two had been of Cleage Printers in it’s prime. All I have is a photograph I took in 2004 of the way it looks now, deserted and overgrown.  I wish I had interviewed and taped Henry and Hugh talking about their experiences.

The building that housed Cleage Printers as it looked around 2007.

This was written as part of the 120 Carnival of Genealogy hosted by Jasia at CREATIVEGENE.

Baseball, Summer of 1922- Sepia Saturday #136

Cleages, sepia saturday, , , ,

I have posted this photograph before as part of my discovery of the numbers on photographs as a means of sorting and dating them. My father’s cousin, Theodore Page, is ready at the bat while my father, “Toddy” seems oblivious to the fact that he could have his head knocked off when Theodore goes to hit the ball.  The photograph was taken in the summer of 1922, probably at Belle Isle, an island park in Detroit.  The day was an outing for the extended Cleage family.

My uncle Henry loved baseball and often described the game in terms that made it seem like a work of art or a piece of music. My mother’s mother used to listen to games on the radio. I never liked playing the game – I could not hit the ball. I didn’t like watching it, compared to basketball, baseball games seem so long and slow moving.

Another photograph from the same outing. Starting from the left, are two headless women and I don’t know who they are. The little girl is my Aunt Barbara, next to her is my Uncle Hugh, Uncle Louis, Uncle Henry, Theodore Page (who looks like he has a double), my uncle Henry’s daughter, Ruth, who is holding the same ball the catcher is holding in the action shot.  Behind them are, an unknown man, my great grandmother Celia Rice Cleage Sherman, her son Jacob, my father Albert “Toddy”,  three people I don’t know then my grandfather Albert B. Cleage Sr.  In the background are some other people.  I don’t know who they are.

Some other posts about this day at the park:
Albert and Pearl (Reed) Cleage
More information about Yesterday

Click for more Sepia Saturday photos of baseball, cricket and more.

“K” is for King Street

Biography, Cleages, Family History Through the Alphabet, Houses, , , ,

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. Click on the link to see links to posts by other participants in this challenge.  It’s too bad the streets in my life weren’t alphabetically and chronologically coordinated because the years are all out of order. Here we go back to the beginning and my first home – 210 King Street.

Past over present. My mother, Doris Graham Cleage, is standing on the proch.

 My father became pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield Massachusetts in the fall of 1945.  The parsonage at 210 King Street is pictured above. This is the house I came home to when I was born in 1946. I was the first child of Rev. Albert B. Cleage and Doris Graham Cleage. We moved from King street before my sister Pearl was born in December of 1948. I was 2 years old and I don’t have clear memories of the house. I found the description below online.

I was born around 10 PM during a thunderstorm. That’s what I heard.
Me and my mother. Photo by my father.

1947 – on the steps with my mother. What is she holding that I am so excited about?

1948 – I spent a lot of time cooking. This is from the crumpling pages of an album my father kept. He wrote captions on most of the photographs. I have scanned the pages that are left. The photographs are fine but the pages are not.

My father and his congregation were involved in a church fight at this point. A former Minister had separated most of the churches property from the control of the church when he retired. My father and members of the church were trying to get it back or get the church compensated. Before my sister was born, they did sell the Parsonage and we moved into the Parish house. It was right next to the church and we lived in 4 room (plus bathroom) on the first floor, along with church offices, a big meeting room and I don’t know what else. There were roomers on the second floor.  In 1948 they were trying to get $7,500 for the house. Today it is selling for $47,000. From reviews the neighborhood is crime ridden and drug infested so I don’t know if they will get that or if that is a low price for a 100+ year old house in that neighborhood of Springfield.

My parents spent $8 a week for ice before they, with help from my grandparents, were able to purchase a refrigerator.

My mother describes the purchase of the new GE refrigerator in a letter to her in-laws below. She says that I am completely recovered. In an earlier letter she described my bout with roseola.

I don’t know if these are the refrigerators my mother and I saw that day in 1948 but they were both 1948 models. The one I remember had one door, like the Philco.

The refrigerator was still working fine in 1962. My mother standing in front of it 14 years later.

Father and sons – Atkinson 1952

Cleages, Photographs, ,

My grandfather, Dr.  Albert B. Cleage Sr, Uncle  Atty. Henry Cleage and my father, Rev.  Albert B. Cleage, Jr. (aka Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman)

Here is a photograph that has quite a bit of damage but still, it is one of my favorite pictures of my father. It was taken on the front porch of my grandparents house at 2270 Atkinson.  Today would have been my father’s 101 birthday. He has been gone for 12 years.

I Met My Husband in the Library – April 25, 1966

Biography, memories, sepia saturday, , ,

In late April of 1966 I was 19 and a sophomore at Wayne State University in Detroit.  Northern High students walked out of school on April 25 to protest the way they were being (or not being) educated.  Several other inner city high schools walked out in sympathy. Northwestern organized a supporting boycott and my sister, Pearl, was a leader. My father and others were providing adult support.

I usually studied in the sociology room of the Main Library, which was in the middle of Wayne’s campus.  As I was leaving to go to my next class that day, a guy came up and asked if I was Rev. Cleage’s daughter. I said I was.  He asked if I was leading the Northwestern boycott and I said no, that was my sister.  We made arrangements to meet after my class on the picket line in front of the Board of Education Building.

We aren’t in the photo but this was the demonstration.

We did and afterwards sat around for several hours talking in the “corner” in the cafeteria at Mackenzie Hall. The “corner” was where black students congregated. I felt strangely comfortable with Jim.  Strange for me, anyway, since I didn’t feel comfortable with anybody, unless I was in a political discussion. He tried to convince me to join a sorority and convert the members to revolution.  There wasn’t a chance I was going to do that.  He also told me that he was “nice”.  I asked if he meant as in some people were “revolutionaries”, he was “nice”.  He said  yes, that’s what he meant.

Michigan State Police
Additional Complaint Report
Page No. 2 Complaint 99-133-66 file 1.15 Date 4-25-66

(note: seems to be continued from a lost page)…students take part in the meeting and form plans by themselves. Representatives from the following Detroit High Schools were present and pledged to back the walk-out, Cass Tech, Central, Chadsey, Cooley, Denby, Mackienzie, Mumford, Northwestern, Southeastern and Western.

Advisers to the students at this meeting were; Reverend Albert Cleage and Reverend Cameron Wells MED. The school representatives most active at this meeting were; Micheal Bach____, 17, Negro male of Northern HS, Pearl Cleage, 17, Negro female of Northwestern HS and Stanley Parker, 17, Negro male of Southwestern HS.

April 25, 1966: The “Freedom School” session (sic) were held in the day. No police incidents.

At 4:oo PM a demonstration and picket line formed at 5057 Woodward Avenue, the Board of Education building. The demonstrators carried signs demanding upgrading of the education at Northern and other inner-city high schools.

There were about 75 persons demonstrating. About 14 adults appeared to be parents of students, about 12 young people appeared to be high school students, the remainder of demonstrators were persons identified as members of such groups as SNCC, Young Socialist Alliance, Detroit Committee to end the War in Vietnam, Students for a Democratic Society and persons seen at Socialist Workers Party Forums.

The following persons were identified in the picket lines: _____ Allen, Kenneth Cockerel, Edward D’Angelo, Todd Ensign, Robert Higgins, Derrick Morrison, Marc ____, David Neiderhauser, Sol Plafkin, Micheal Patrick Quinlin, Harvey Roes, Sarah Rosenshine, Charles Simmons, Mark Shapiro, Tom____, Peter_______, Jackie Wilson and James Winegar.

April 26, 1966: The students met at the “Freedom School” at 8:00 PM a meeting was held.  They returned to the classes at Northern High School. Representatives of the students and the school authorities are going to continue meeting to improve conditions.

__________FAST FORWARD TO APRIL 26, 2012_________

Today, April 26, 2012, I received this email from a community organizer in Detroit about a student walkout yesterday.

“Today, 180 students  were suspended for walking out of Western HS yesterday.  Their cell phones were taken from them and messages and numbers were gone through by security. The police deleted numbers and messages from the students’ phones.

This month, Frederick Douglass Academy students walked out over constant turnover of teachers and shortage of supplies. The principal being fired was the catalyst in this student lead walk out. The secretary of the school was ultimately fired, as well.

Mumford HS students walked out, refusing to have Mumford put into the Educational Achievement Authority (failing district). The students were suspended and the teacher who told them they are not failures was fired for allegedly encouraging them to walk out.“

To read more about the present walkout on huffpost go to Detroit Student Walkout.

To visit a website with information by the involved students about the freedom school that starts today (Friday, April 27) and more, click Southwest Detroit Freedom School. The article is on the left side and there are more links at the bottom of the article. I’m cheered to find organizing going on in response to what happened. Almost makes me wish I was in Detroit.

For more Sepia Saturday offerings, click.

There is no May Pole in this post but there are a couple of Demonstrations that I think will represent May Day.

1940 Census – Where We Lived in Detroit

1940 Census, Cleages, Grahams, , , , , ,

Several days ago Cassmob’s of Family history across the seas blog had an interactive map of places she’s been writing about in Papua, New Guinea. I immediately went to Google Maps to figure out how to do it myself. Below is a map of places my family lived during the 1940 Census in Detroit. If you click on the blue markers it will tell you who lived there and how they are related to my grandparents.


View 1940 Detroit, Michigan – Where we lived in a larger map

Detroit is divided by Woodward Avenue into Westside and Eastside. My Cleages are all clustered close on the Westside, which is also where I grew up. The Grahams are more spread out on the Eastside. Plymouth had a vibrant youth group program in the 1930 and that is where my parents met. The old Plymouth Congregational Church was urban renewed in the late 1970s and moved location but in 1940 it was located at Garfield and Beaubien, right in the middle of what is now the Detroit Medical Center.

There is a way to insert pop up photographs too which I am going to figure out next.

1940 Census – The Albert B. and Pearl (Reed) Cleages

1940 Census, Carnival of Genealogy, Cleages, Investigations, , , , , , , ,
Albert, Pearl, Albert Jr, Louis, Henry, Hugh, Barbara, Gladys, Anna.
6429 Scotten, Detroit, Michigan

In 1940 my grandparents and family were living at 6429 Scotten at the corner of Moore Place. They owned the house and it was worth $5,000. They had lived in the same place in 1935 and in fact had been there for over 20 years as all the girls in the family were born in that house.  My grandfather was a medical doctor in private practice at the Cleage Clinic.  The amount of money he made in 1939 was a crossed out number, replaced with “0”. He was the informant, that is he is the one that talked to the census taker and gave them the information on the form.

My grandfather was 56 years old, born in Tennessee with plus 5 years of college. My grandmother was 50, born in Kentucky with 4 years of high school. My father was 28, born in Indiana, had plus 5 years of college and was absent from the home. All the other children were born in Michigan. Louis was 26, had plus 5 years of college and absent from the home. Henry was 24 and had 5 years of college. Hugh was 21 and had 2 years of college. Barbara was 19 and had completed 1 year of college. Gladys was 17 and had completed 4 years of high school. Anna was 15 and had completed 2 years of high school.

All of the children were in school. Anna was still attending Northwestern High school. Gladys had graduated in 1939 and was a freshman at Wayne State University. Henry, Hugh and Barbara must have been at Wayne. Louis graduated from Wayne State medical school in 1940 and was doing a residency at Homer Philips in St. Louis. My father graduated from Wayne in 1938 and was in the seminary at Oberlin College.

Source: 1940 U.S. Census. State: Michigan. County: Wayne. City: Detroit. Ward 14. Enumeration Districe: 84-787. Sheet number: 11-A. Head of household and informant: Dr. Albert B. Cleage.  To see the census sheet for the Albert Cleage family click HERE.

I hadn’t realized that one of my grandmother sisters and all of my grandfather’s living siblings lived within walking distance of their house.  I have labeled their houses, Northwestern High School, Wingert Elementary School and the Cleage Clinic.  I sort of knew this, but I didn’t realize it until I mapped it out after finding everybody in the same neighborhood.  In future posts I will share what I learned about each household in 1940.