Tag Archives: #Albert B. Cleage Sr

The Steamer “Eastern States”

Cleages, Detroit, Grahams, Great Migration, sepia saturday,
Mershell C. Graham

Both of my grandfathers worked on the Great Lakes steam ships. My maternal grandfather, Mershell Graham, worked as a steward for the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Company when he first came to Detroit in 1917.  He had previously worked in the dining cars of passenger trains. After several years he got a job at Ford Motor Co. where he remained until his retirement 30 years later.

My paternal grandfather, Albert B. Cleage, Sr, worked for the same company in 1909. He was a medical student in Indiana and earned money during the summer by working on the Eastern States cruise ship as a waiter.  The excerpts in this post are from his letters.

Most of the photos and clippings about the Eastern States were found in the Great Lakes Maritime Database.

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DTWCLE1904

June 19 1909
I left Indianapolis last night at 7:25. Stayed all night in Hamilton Ohio. Am now in Toledo at 10 AM. Will leave for Detroit 2: 15.

June 20, 1909
Arrived in Detroit yesterday at 4:00 PM, and left for Buffalo via “Eastern States” Star. on which I am at work. Was lucky.  Am well,  found two old school friends on same boat!

June 20, 1909
I am sitting in an old ware-house door on the wharf at Buffalo, – tell me there isn’t an element of romance in my location to say the least. I will be in Detroit again tomorrow and will see many of the boys whom I know there. You can imagine how worn out I am – just stopped traveling this morning, and if the boat ever comes into dock again I shall go immediately to bed. I went uptown to get some things and it went up the Lake and left me, but it will return soon. 

Albert B. Cleage

June 24, 1909
Lawrence has come and we are working together.

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June 27, 1909 (On board the Steamer “Eastern States” – Lake Erie)
This is Sabbath night about 10:00 o’clock and we are about six hours ride out of Detroit and about twelve miles from land in the shortest direction. Surroundings are such as to impress one with his insignificance and emphasize the fact that he is indeed kept by Jehovah’s care. I shall first endeavor to acquaint you with the boat on which I am working. It’s name is “The Eastern States” and runs from Detroit to Buffalo. We leave Detroit one day at 5 PM and arrive in Buffalo the next morning at 8 o’clock, staying in

main

Buffalo all day we leave again for Detroit in the Evening at 5 PM you see we spend one day in Detroit and one in Buffalo. Today we were in Detroit and would it interest you to know how I spent it? Well, if it will interest you; after breakfast was over about 9 am, I went down to our “quarters” (I suppose you have only a faint conception of what that word means – I describe it later.) and slept until 11:30 – served lunch, after which Aldridge and I walked up town for about 2 hours – smoked some cigars, came back to the boat and took a couple of hours more of sleep. So you see I am putting in plenty of time sleeping. This stuff I’m sure does not interest you and I will not bore you longer but as I promised to say something about our “quarters”

It is one large room about 35 x 40 ft. in which are 32 beds – just think of it!! Those beds or better bunks are arranged in tiers of three and I at the present time am sitting on my bed (the top one) and there are two other fellows below me. What ventilation we get comes through six small port holes the diameters of which are about 6 in.

The fellows are a cosmopolitan aggregation, men from everywhere and at any time you can hear arguments and discussions on all subjects – Sensible and nonsensible. There are several students on board – boys from Howard University, Wilberforce University, Oberlin University, Michigan, and Indiana and out of them there are some very fine fellows to know…  I could talk all night about the desirable and the non-desirable features of my Steamboat experience.

This isn't the dining room of the Eastern States but the City of Detroit was a sister ship so it was probably similar.
This isn’t the dining room of the Eastern States but the City of Detroit was a sister ship so it was probably similar.

July 3, 1909 (Enroute to Buffalo, Steamer Eastern States)
Yesterday while Lewis and I were walking up the street in Buffalo, whom did we see standing on the corner (as if lost) but Miss Berry of Indianapolis, her brother and his wife and a Miss Stuart an Indianapolis teacher. Well to be sure we were surprised and they too seemed agreeably so. We spent the day with them taking in the zoo and other points of interest. They visited our boat and we showed them through it. That was experience number one.

Secondly – our boat was in a storm last night I awoke last night amid great excitement in our quarters and found that it was only possible for me to lie in bed with quite a great deal of effort. The old boat was being mightily tossed and driven and the angry waves were rising a high as your house or higher. We were sometimes on top of them and again between them at all times with a feeling that we would every minute be swallowed up by them. Great excitement prevailed. Most of the waiters got up and put on life preservers thinking they would have need of them. I neither was afraid or sick. Nothing serious happened and we arrived in Detroit only a few hours late this morning.

We are tonight taking over to Buffal0 a 4th of July Excursion. A large crowd is aboard. A great number of extra waiters are aboard and an extra amount of noise is present and unfavorable to letter writing accept the effort…

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After WW2, automobile travel replaced steamer travel and gradually the ships were retired, burned and scrapped. Here is a timeline for the Eastern States from the link above.

  •    Laid down as EMPIRE STATE.
  •     1902, Jan Launched Wyandotte, MI.
  •     1909 Owned Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Co, Detroit, MI.
  •     1930 Owned Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Co., Detroit.
  •     1950 Laid up, Detroit.
  •     1956, Jun 21 Owned Lake Shore Steel Co & Siegal Iron & Metal Co, Detroit.
  •     1956, Dec 12 Burned as spectacle, Lake St. Clair.
  •     1957, May 6 Scrapped.
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A Church and Two Brothers – Two Splits

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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.

1953_Church_split2The 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.

Left to right: Albert, Josephine, Edward. Back L Henry, back R Jacob
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 away 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.

Dr. Cleage Made City Physician – 1930 Detroit, MI

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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”.

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“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.”

———————–

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.”

_________________________

Grandfather in a Boat

Cleages, Photographs, sepia saturday

A photo of my grandfather, Dr. Albert B. Cleage jr. standing in a very heavy looking row boat. It was taken at Idlewild, Michigan in the early 1920s. Because my grandfather has the same tie and the same tired expression in both photographs, I believe they were taken on the same day. My aunt Gladys appears in the group photo and appears to be 2 or 3 years old so that would place it at 1925 or 1926.

I recognize my father in the back row with the cap on the far left. Next to him is his cousin Helen Mullins, and my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage, two people I don’t know and my grandfather is at the end of that row holding a cigar. My aunt Barbara stands next to him. My aunt Gladys appears to be brushing her teeth and my Uncle Henry is chewing tobacco.

The three photos below were taken earlier. My father and Henry look several years younger than they do in the photograph above.  These two were part of a batch of photos all with the number 671 written on the back.

Henry, Louis, Helen Mullins , Evelyn Dougles, Cornelius Henderson (who appeared in last weeks post), Toddy (my father) I don’t know who Helen Mullins is holding. Maybe my aunt Barbara? Neither can I identify the dog.
I recognize Henry with his arms over his head, standing on the left and I see my grandmother peeking around another ladies hat.  The dog in the boat photo also appears as a blur on the far left.
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Baseball, Summer of 1922- Sepia Saturday #136

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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

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Idlewild 1953

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Front – Pearl and me. Back – my grandmother, Pearl Cleage, uncle Henry and grandfather Albert B. Cleage sr.

We were at my uncle Louis’ cottage in Idlewild.  I remember my grandmother reading to us from  the book “Told Under the Red Umbrella” that summer. The electricity went off during a storm once and she read to us by the kerosene lamps until the lights came back on.

Father and sons – Atkinson 1952

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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.

1940 Census – Where We Lived in Detroit

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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.