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.
Back in November of 2011 I wrote Moving – Springfield to Detroit 1951 for Sepia Saturday 102. I mentioned that I remembered the little girls in the photograph, but I couldn’t remember their names. Well, I found them!
Moving day (note the boxed up stuff behind me) L to R: Kristin (me), Lynn, Sherrie, Pearl and in the back is Mrs. Johnson. I still have the rocking chair back there.
Left to right – Kristin (me), Lynn, Sherrie and Pearl
During February, I was working on a post about turtles I have owned, when I came across the photograph below.
Mr. and Mrs. Funn with me (Kristin) in front and my mother in the middle holding sister Pearl.
I recognized them as the Funns and realized that the other man’s name that I remembered from Springfield, “Lindsey”,must be the name of the father of the girls in the photographs. How could I find the last name? I decided to Google “Lindsey St. John’s Congregational Church, Springfield, MA”. The first item that came up gave me his last name, Johnson. I Googled “Lindsey Johnson, Springfield, MA” and came up with several articles. This was them! Sherrie was the oldest daughter, the one who poured milk in my dinner on that day so long ago. Below are some of the articles I found and some photographs of the Johnsons and also an article about Mr. Funn. Goggle and newspapers – it’s hard to beat them sometimes.
Articles about Lindsey Johnson and family. The house they talk about is the one I visited with my father in the winter 1968. Click to enlarge and read.
To see more posts about boxes and other things, click!
This is the 28th and final post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. Today I will write about this photograph which appeared in the Ebony Pictorial History of Black America, Vol. III. It was taken at the Association of Black Students Symposium at Wayne State University in Detroit, February of 1968.
“Wayne State University in Detroit was the site of one of many student conferences on racism in the educational field.” Photo from Ebony Pictorial History of Black America Vol. III Pg 142.
I remember when this photograph was taken. The photographer asked some of us to gather around Lonnie Peek and look interested. Lonnie is in the middle, wearing a striped dashiki. Back in February of 1968, nobody was selling authentic African print fabric in Detroit. We went and bought regular fabric, made our lapa wraps and head wraps with that. I made mine out of a green paisley print and the top was a thin green fabric that I folded over and sewed into a blouse without a pattern. Later, I tuned the skirt into a dress. By the next year, I was sewing garments out of African fabric at the sewing factory.
I didn’t really work with the Association of Black Students. I remember helping on some of the layouts for posters or brochures. I was using insta-type – letters on sheets that you rubbed onto the paper. It has been years and years since I have seen anyone here. Some are dead.
On the far left, in the background is Beverly Williamson. He did security duties for my father for several years. The man leaning in with glasses was Rufus Griffin who became a judge in Detroit. Brenda, with the stripped, draped skirt, later married Rufus. Next to her is Bell. He was a tailor and was framed by a drug dealer and spent time in prison. Then we have Lonnie Peek who is now a Baptist Minister. Cynthia Washington is wearing a striped lapa and polka dot blouse. She graduated from Wayne and returned to Mississippi. Behind her, you can just see the top of Homer Fox’s head. He became a lawyer and is now dead. Next to Cynthia is Nana Kwadwo Oluwale Akpan, then known as Gerald Simmons. He was a photographer, among other things. He died in Ghana several years ago. On the end is Kathy Gamble. She moved to New York and died there a few years ago. I am next to Kathy and right behind her, you can see part of my father’s head. He must have given a speech.
I don’t know who the man watching us from the balcony was.
1968 – At home after the Symposium
Wearing my dress made from my lapa, holding 2 month old Jilo – 1970.
The photograph for today was taken during the Black Arts Convention in Detroit. It was 1966. I was 19 and Jim was 21. This was LaSalle Park, which was located a few blocks from my father’s church on Linwood. I don’t remember why this session was held at the park, but I do remember walking back to church where other closing activities were held.
Black Arts Convention 1966 at LaSalle Park, Detroit. That is Jim and me over in the lower left corner.
Me looking adoringly at Jim. Click to enlarge.
During that week, from Thursday through Sunday, The Black Arts Convention was held at Central United Church of Christ. There were workshops on the visual arts, theater, literature, religion and politics. There were arguments and sincere discussions. People from all over the country attended. I was going to write it all up, but I cut my finger last night while cooking dinner and typing is s-l-o-w today.
I am linking to this article, A Report On the Black Arts Convention, by Dudley Randall from The Negro Digest, Aug. 1966, on Google Books. It is a very good description of the convention.
A letter of thanks from “Forum ’66”, the group that organized the Black Arts Convention.
Camp Talahi was associated with the Congregational Church (later the United Church of Christ). It was located on 180 acres beside Lake Chenago, about an hour from Detroit.
My father was a minister in the United Church of Christ at the time and sometimes he was there as a counselor at the same time that my sister and I were there. In the camp photo above, my father, my sister and I were all there the same week. I recognize some of the girls in the crowd as those who skipped activties and stayed in the cabin playing cards one year. I was a part of that group. At the top of the photo you can see one of the crafts we did. It’s a circle of leather with a piece of lanyard attached. I guess I wore it. The crafts were not Camp Talahi’s strong point. Lots of braided Lanyard.
The lodge.
The craft workshop was on the lower level through those double doors. Upstairs was the screened porch where we took all meals. There was a large interior room with a stone fire place. The daily Bible study workshops were held here too. There was a show later in the week with all cabins contributing a skit or some talent.
Pearl standing outside of her cabin on the last day. 1958.
Camp sessions lasted a week. We arrived on Sunday afternoon and left on the following Saturday afternoon. There were 6 cabins for girls and others for the boys. Each cabin was divided in half. You entered through a door like the one Pearl is holding open, and you were either on side A or B. There were 4 0r 5 bunks on each side, plus a cot for the counselor. I always tried to get an upper bunk by the window. The windows were screened with shutters you controlled from inside with a rope. There was no glass. The toilets and sinks were in the cement block building to the left in the above photo. I don’t remember any showers.
This is a postcard my father sent me in 1962. He had a strange sense of humor. The classes were just as bad as I thought they would be. They were usually about the Apostle Paul. Every evening there was a vespers service on a hill. We sang some camp songs. Somebody did a Bible reading. We had a quiet meditation.
We never went camping or slept outside, although the boys did. We had one cookout when our cabin went to the prepared campsite and cooked a hamburger, potatoes and carrots in foil on a fire. We went on one walk in a piney woods once and I remember the wonderful smell.
Me taking my suit off of the line.
We went swimming once or twice a day. We had buddies and when the lifeguard blew the whistle, we had to hold hand up, together. We hung our towels and suits on a clothesline outside of the cabin. They hardly dried from use to use.
On the way to the car, Pearl in back and my father in front.
There were two black churches in the United Church of Christ in Michigan. Both were in Detroit. Ours was one and Plymouth was the other. Usually there were a few kids from our church. I don’t remember any from Plymouth. Sometimes there would be a lone black kid from a small town who attended a mostly white church.
The directorship of the camp rotated between the ministers in the denomination who were actively involved. Except for my father. He was never asked and was not included because he was black. As far as I know, there was no unpleasantness between my father and other staff or campers. He was quite popular with the campers. I never experienced any racism. Mainly, girls would ask “Why is your hair like that?” To which I answered, “Because that’s the way it grows”. As years passed, I asked why their hair was so straight. That just confused them.
Front: Marilyn with Barbara & Pearl behind her. Back: my mother Doris, my aunt MV, cousin Dee Dee and me. 1956.
At the end of each summer my sister, cousins, mother, aunt and grandfather, Poppy, took a trip to the Detroit Zoo.
Kris, Poppy, Dee Dee – 1959.
Sometimes the four older cousins spent the night before at our grandparents. We slept on a foldout cot in Poppy’s room. We went to bed first and I was always asleep by the time Poppy came to bed. That worked fine, unless I woke up in the middle of the night. He had the loudest snore and it was impossible to get back to sleep until he turned over and stopped snoring.
My grandmother, Nanny, never went with us. As I write this, I realize there are so many things I don’t remember. I suppose our mothers drove across town with Marilyn, to meet us in the morning. Did we take two cars – my grandfather’s and my mother’s? I don’t think so. I think we all smashed into one car, three adults in the front and 5 children in the back, with Marilyn sitting on someone’s lap. Nanny probably made us a picnic lunch to take. I can’t imagine buying hot dogs and french fries with Poppy along.
Marilyn, still in the front. Me, Barbara, Pearl taking a picture of the photographer, Dee Dee. In the back are Connie Stowers (my mother’s friend) and my mother. 1959.
Looking at the photographs I can see that Dee Dee was way ahead of the rest of us in cool. Even in 1956, when she and I both wore our plaid slacks, hers fit and look good. Mine are baggy. Luckily, it doesn’t seem to bother me. That year Marilyn is so little and unaffected.
Poppy with camera – 1959. He was 70 years old.Mary V and Marilyn – 1956.
By 1959 Dee Dee is 16. I’m amazed she still accompanied us to the zoo. It must have been a very important part of our year. I was 13 and still not at all cool. That expression on my face is one I recognize from other photos through the years, unfortunately. I would say the sun is in my eyes but it doesn’t seem to be bothering anybody else. And why am I wearing that skimpy outfit? The hats that Connie and my mother are wearing were some my mother bought for Pearl and me. White sailor hats were the rage for awhile. Unfortunately, those were the cheap version and did not look like the popular ones. I don’t think we ever wore them. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have been squinting at the camera. Little Marilyn looks a lot more blasé in 1959. I believe she is wearing one of the little sundresses my mother made for Pearl or me when we were that age. It was yellow with lace on top.
It is probably Sunday, because my mother is still in her bathrobe. And who reads the Saturday paper so avidly? I think the bathrobe was light pink, but I’m not sure. The couch was an old one that my mother brought from Sally and Ivy’s mother when we lived on Calvert. They moved out to Southfield, near the zoo, and bought new furniture. I remember going to visit once and hearing the lions roar.
The couch was old. My mother had a slip cover made. It was blue with a blue design. I patched it once, in a fit of fix-it-up. It has been a long time since I have read a newspaper offline. I wonder what we were reading about.
The couch and more of that corner of the living room. My uncle Henry took the photos.
There was an end table with a lamp and a brass ash tray. Both my mother and Henry smoked. The table had a fake leather top and a big drawer. One of my daughters has that table now. The lamp was white with red flowers and green leaves painted on it. There were gold lines at the top and base. The old television, in a wood cabinet ,was still working. Later it died and for awhile there was a smaller TV, that worked, sitting on top of it.
The walls were beige. When we moved in, they were covered with wall paper. As soon as she could afford it, my mother had Mrs. Bruce’s brother come and paint it a clean, beige color. There is no art work above the couch in this photograph. When I graduated from high school and began studying art at Wayne State University, my mother would tack one of my drawings up on the wall. Later on she had me frame them for her, badly. I never could cut the mats right. You can’t see the rug here but it was a faded wine colored pattern. It was wall to wall and never replaced while we lived there.
2600 Cascade Rd. SW in 2010. We lived on the right hand side. I loved that screened in porch.
This is the 20th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. This week I cover places where I have lived that weren’t covered in the Alphabet Challenge last year. Today I remember 2600 Cascade Road SW in Atlanta.
We moved to Atlanta in September of 1972. I was about 2 months pregnant. That would be a recurring description of me off and on over the next 10 years. Jim had been talking about moving south and my sister lived in Atlanta so that is where we went. Pearl found us a duplex on Cascade Road not too far from her house on Willis Mill Road.
Jim alternated between Detroit and Atlanta until just before Ife was born at the end of March, 1973. My sister helped me get a job at the Institute of the Black World (IBW). Part of the statement of purpose of IBW read: “The Institute of the Black World is a gathering of black intellectuals who are convinced that the gifts of their minds are meant to be fully used in the service of the black community. It is therefore an experiment with scholarship in the context of struggle.”
I, however, was hired to do clerical work and was not a member of the intellectual staff. I typed, organized a small library, ran off the IBW newsletter on their off-set printing press, helped with mailings and sometimes transcribed tapes. As I remember, the in-house staff was small, less than ten people. When the Watergate Hearings started, we worked around the conference table as often as possible to enable us to watch the hearings on TV. Sometimes educational meetings were called when interesting people came to town. They talked to us about the struggle where they were.
While I worked, my daughter Jilo attended the Martin Luther King Jr. Preschool. It was several blocks from IBW and had an afro-centric curriculum. Ruth, a fellow employee at IBW, drove by our house on her way to work. She stopped and picked us up each morning. From work I walked Jilo to school. After several days of crying when I dropped her off, my two year old daughter settled in and seemed to enjoy the program.
I remember the surprise baby shower the IBW staff gave me at some friends house. I thought I was going to dinner until everybody yelled “Surprise!” Three days before the birth, it felt like it was time to stop working. I mostly slept those three days and then delivered my second daughter, Ife at Holy Family Hospital, with Dr. Borders in attendance. It was a natural birth and Jim was there. All went well. Ife was a big baby and fussier than Jilo had been. She went to sleep best when Stevie Wonder was singing “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”.
Jim got a job printing at the Atlanta Voice Newspaper. I stopped working outside the homes. We got our first full sized washing machine! I sold a poster I made using a woodcut to a group recruiting black students for historically black colleges and designed a sign for the Emergency Land Fund and I got paid.
The Atlanta Voice was a weekly newspaper so Jim was often working at night putting out the paper. Ife had decided that the middle of the night was the time to get some one on one time with me. That spring there seemed to be a constant stream of severe thunderstorms moving through the area in the middle of the night. Always while Jim was at work.
I sewed most of the children’s clothes. Those I didn’t sew, I bought second hand. I started my first garden. The yard was a bit shady, but I did get some tomatoes and green beans. We got a dog who ran out into the street and got hit by a car. The across the street neighbor’s dog had puppies under the other side of the duplex neighbor’s car. Jilo played outside all the time. It was the first place we lived that had a yard. There were plenty of kids near us and they often played at our house. I formed a baby co-op with two friends and we got a little bit of free time without kids. I can remember walking down the street after dropping off Jilo and Ife but I can’t remember where I went or what I did.
We didn’t have a car. Jim drove the Atlanta Voice truck to and from work. I took the bus or walked or my sister sometimes gave me a ride. I remember walking up to the Salvation Army on the corner of Cascade and Donnelly; walking to Adams Park to take the children swimming; walking to my sister’s house on Willis Mill. Jilo would be walking and I’d push Ife in the Umbroller. The only bad part of walking was that there were no sidewalks in the neighborhood, so all walking was done on the side of the street. There was much less traffic back then and I didn’t feel like I was taking my life in my hands. There was a pasture across the street from my house in 1973, now there are condos.
My father decided to open a branch of his church in Atlanta so we saw him as he came down to prepare the way. Other family and friends passed through Atlanta on a regular basis. Looking back it’s hard to remember why we felt the need to move on but we wanted to get out of the city. In 1974 Jim got a job with the Emergency Land Fund and we moved to Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.
When Jim received his FBI file several years ago, we found the memos below included.
ATTN INTELLIGENCE DIVN
REF JAMES EDWARD WILLIAMS AKA AKBAR LEE, NM (note: stands for Negro Male), THIS OFC DESIRE ALL AVBLE INFO AND PHOTOS IF POSSIBLE ON THE ABOVE INDIVIDUAL, WE HAVE INFO THAT THE ABOVE SUBJ IS ENRTE TO OUR CITY TO ESTABLISH A CONSULATE FOR THE REPUBLIC OF NEW AFRICA. PLS FWD ALL INFO TO LT WW HOLLEY ATLANTA PD(Note: stands for Police Department) INTELLIGENCE DIVN 165 DECATUR ST ATLANTA GA 30303.
This is the 19th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. This week I am doing four posts describing some of the places I have lived that I didn’t cover in the Alphabet Challenge last year. Today I am remembering 3203 Glendale Avenue, Detroit.
Me, tired revolutionary librarian.
In the spring of 1970 the Black Conscience Library was evicted from 12019 Linwood so that the League of Revolutionary Black Workers could have the space. We temporarily moved into the basement of friends, Stu and Gloria House. They had been members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and worked for voter registration in Lowndes County, Alabama.
Two views from Google Maps of the house on Glendale. Back in 1970 none of those little trees and shrubs were there. Neither was the chain link fence.
That summer, we had high school students working with us. One of their tasks was to sell the Malcolm X posters you can see on the wall behind me in the photo above. Sometimes on Saturdays there was an organized trip to the rifle range so people could learn to shoot. I never went due to being in the last months of pregnancy. I remember all those steps from the basement to the attic and how many times I climbed them. We had received a grant from somebody and that summer two of us got paid.
Not the actual fridge, but this is what it looked like. Except it was painted in maroon with patches of other colors. I don’t know who painted it.
Our living quarters were in the attic. I was about seven and a half months pregnant with my first child. My bedroom was in the cedar closet up on the third floor. It was large enough for a bed and the baby’s little crib later. I remember the light from the streetlight on the trees below my window those warm summer nights. There was another bedroom towards the front of the house. Phil had that room. Phil was a former Black Panther who worked with the library. He kept playing “Bitches Brew” by Miles Davis all summer long.
There was a claw foot bathtub and a window that looked into the neighbors attic. We had globe top refrigerator and a hotplate in the hall that the two bedrooms and bathroom opened out to. I babysat the 2.5 year old when his parents were at work or school. There wasn’t a lot of library work to do aside from running off flyers and newsletters because we weren’t really open to the public. I remember lots of meetings. Meetings between the people that shared the house. Meetings between members of the library staff. Meetings about meetings.
Usually the house was full of people but the night that I went into labor, nobody was home. Jim was teaching a “Survival and Defense” class somewhere else. I don’t know where the other 5 adults and the 2 year old that lived in the house were. I waited and walked around and waited. Finally I called my doctor to say the contractions were 5 minutes apart and he said to come to the hospital. It was 10 PM. I called my mother and she came and drove me down and waited with me until Jim arrived. Baby Jilo wasn’t born until noon the next day so I could have waited a bit longer.
One night soon after I came home with Jilo and everybody had gone to bed, neither Jim or Phil were there, but the downstairs people were. A woman started to scream for help from the alley behind the house. Stu came upstairs looking for one of the rifles from the trips to the range. As I remember they had been broken down and cleaned but not put back together. He went back down and hollered out of the back door that he was going to come out there with a “30 aught 6” and shoot somebody if the woman wasn’t released. She was and she came into the house and the police were called. I learned this later because I was upstairs in the bed with my new baby girl thinking about the dangerous world and glad that Stu had been there to shout out the door.
Part of the cast of characters. Jim was taking the photos so he was not in the pictures, unfortunately.
“I was happy to hear that Jim and Chris (sic) were well. In the times when I question my own dedication to the struggle i remember them up in that loft, with the child, cooking dinner on a hot plate. It is something i can never forget and it brings me back home when i begin to trip too hard. It is a constant source of inspiration.”
We were there about 6 or 7 months before a new location was found for the library. By that time everybody was happy to get their own space again.
