This is the 18th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. I am doing four posts about some of the places that I didn’t cover in the Alphabet Challenge last year. Today I am going to remember 4315 Third Avenue, Detroit, where my husband, Jim, lived for several years while I was a student.
Jim’s apartment was right before the sign that says “BAR” on the right.
When I met Jim in 1966, he was sharing a flat near Wayne State University’s campus with Eizo. Eizo was slightly older than we were, taught math at WSU and was an artist. He was a Japanese American who had spent part of his childhood in a concentration camp during WW2. Jim and Eizo met when they were both members of the Congress Of Racial Equality. They organized tenant strikes and demonstrations against absentee, ghetto landlords. The store front downstairs was empty. One of Jim’s friends, Cebie, an art student and friend from Missouri, lived in the basement for awhile before he moved out and into the Artist’s Workshop.
The flat on Third in 2004. A religious group has a mission for addicts there now. It looked a lot less spiffy in 1966.
One Friday, Jim asked me to go to a party with him but first he had to go do a radio play he was working on. We went to his flat and he left me there while he went for an hour to practice. This was the first time I had been there. When the phone rang I was afraid to answer it, not only because it wasn’t my place, but because I was half sure my mother knew I was there and was calling to fuss. It actually was Jim trying to call and tell me it was going to take longer than he thought.
As I was waiting night came and his roommate, Eizo, came home and asked if I was waiting for Jim or Bernard. Bernard? I didn’t know who Bernard was. While we waited for Jim to return he showed me his drawings. I said they reminded me of Cuba. He asked if I’d been to Cuba and I had to admit I hadn’t. I had just spent my high school years reading about and dreaming about it. His drawings were of California.
That summer, I worked at the Center for Applied Science and Technology. It was several blocks from Jim’s flat. Every morning before work I went by his house and everyday after work we would meet either at the student center in Mackienzie Hall and play chess or sit around the snack bar or at the Montieth Center, an old house that served as classrooms for Montieth College and also had a mimeograph machine and a lounge area. A friend of ours and fellow member of the African American’s Action Committee was the person in charge for the summer. We published A Happenin’ using their equipment.
The back porch. There used to be piles of newspapers out there.
I remember standing at the back door watching the kids come home from the swimming pool at the rec center down the street and the winos looking through the bottles in the alley for one that still had a sip in it. And the man in the apartment across the alley practicing the trumpet, badly.
I remember the colorfully painted wall over the kitchen table and the squash left in the oven way too long. I can see the room full of television sets in the little room with the skylight, that Jim was going to repair.
On August 30 I turned twenty. That evening I was at Jim’s, he had once again invited me out to a party. There were other people there too, five or six. After awhile he told me that he had planned to give me a surprise birthday party but not enough people had come. We sat around and talked for a bit and then all went to another party.
At the beginning of September there was a trip to New York planned. Several people were driving over for something. I wanted to go but my parents said absolutely not. Jim went and the people he was riding with had car trouble and he ended up stranded there. I don’t remember how he got back but I do remember I was waiting and waiting for him to get home. I was at his flat and his friend, Cebie was there. While we were waiting, Cebie made some mashed potatoes and we ate them with olive oil instead of butter. Finally Jim called and he had gone straight to the AAAC meeting without coming home first.
In the fall of 1966 Eizo moved out and got another place where he didn’t have to be surrounded by Jim’s bizarre friends. Not including me, of course. At that point Jim moved in some of Cebie’s cousins who, he says, were Robitussin addicts. They worked in downtown hotels. After they moved in, I stopped going by. Eventually Jim resorted to drastic measures to get them to move out – he stopped paying the heating bill. By that time it was November in Detroit and cold. One night he decided to build a fire in a trash can to heat the place up. Amazingly, it didn’t burn to the ground but there was so much smoke that he coughed his way outside. He made it across the freeway to the student housing at the edge of the Jefferies projects and found refuge with a couple of student sisters. That takes us to a whole different chapter of the story that we won’t be covering here.
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.
This is the 16th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge. Today’s prompt includes a turtle tortoise. None the less, I am going to write about my experience with turtles. My sister and I owned several turtles when we were growing up. We always named them PJ and Pete and they always got soft shells and died. They lived in a little plastic turtle scape much like this one. We added small, colorful rocks to the bottom.
Their bowl sat on top of our bookcase in the bedroom. The room was bright but there wasn’t any direct sunshine there. The turtles were fed a diet of dried food that came in an orange little container. Sometimes we supplemented it with a fly we caught, or some lettuce. As the shells began to go soft, we would try to get them to drink some cod liver oil and moved their island home into the sunlight. All to no avail. They all died. I don’t remember any turtle funerals but there might have been at least one. Perhaps my sister will remember. Pearl says, yes we did bury some of them. I don’t remember being upset, or even minding, when they died.
Our mother didn’t want any real large pets, like cats or dogs, because nobody was home during the day. Maybe because both of her childhood dogs died rather sad deaths too. She was happy to buy us fish and turtles. I think the turtles replaced the fish because it was easier to keep their habitat clean. Once my sister and I took them out on the porch for a walk with strings tied around their shells. Not a big success.
I have since learned that turtles are salmonella carriers. Luckily we never had that problem. My children never had turtles for pets but my husband used to find turtles trying to cross the road and bring them home for them to see before releasing them into the nearby woods or lake. After writing this, I have to wonder if they were disoriented from being moved like this. In fact, this whole thing sounds like the torture of turtles.
My sister Pearl and I pretending to race on the upper front porch of the flat on Calvert. This was the house and the ages we were when we had turtles.To see more turtles and other stuff, CLICK!
No photos of me in the blizzard but this one of my sister and me was taken before I left. I’m the tall one with the blue scarf. Nanny is peeking out the window behind us.
This weeks prompt is fittingly snow. Forty four years ago today I was in the middle of the New York snowstorm of February 9, 1969. I was nearing the end of my cross country after college trip during which I was looking for somewhere to be besides “home”. I had just about figured out that I could be in Detroit without moving back home. As soon as the planes were flying again, I caught one back to Detroit. As I was riding the bus in from the airport I thought Detroit was the dirtiest city I had seen during the whole trip. Within a month I was out and on my own. Here is a letter I wrote home while the snow fell.
February 11, 1969 Sunday 3:30PM During a Blizzard
Dear Mommy and Henry,
I’m staying at the YWCA. It’s O.K. The room here is smaller then the one in San Francisco. The address is
YMCA Morgan Hall 132 E. 45th Street NYC, New York
Right now there’s a blizzard going on outside. I was out earlier to wash and I got soaked.
You can’t hardly see a block and it’s already at least 5 inches (maybe 3) and giving no sign of stopping. I talked to Pearl and she’s sending me a letter from you. She’s o.k. in case she hasn’t written. My job is o.k. dull though. I’m thinking of returning to Detroit in about a month but I’m not sure, I’ll let you know more about that as it happens. I discovered I’m spending all my time figuring how to meet people like those I already know at home and that didn’t make sense.
I think housing here is worse than anywhere else and so expensive for a condemned bldg. Even if I do come back to Detroit I’m glad I left and went all those places because now I know what they’re like and can quit wishing I was there and spend my time where I am. It’s like getting my ears pierced. For about 7 years I spent half my time wishing I could get them done then when I did, I didn’t have to think about it any more. How’s school? Write soon. Don’t worry about me. I’m not crazy or depressed.
Love, Kris
For other photos and stories of blizzards, snow storms and other interesting topics…
Nightgown & Undershirts – Pee Wee and Winslow. Sleeper – Grandmother Cleage. Pop beads, music box, rings, boat, rattle – Ma and Henry. Poppy $10 Louis $10 Barbara – back carrier. Silver spoon – Gladys. 2 sleepers & clutch ball – Martha. Jim out of town (St. Louis) . Xmas eve at Miriams. Living at Bro. Johns. Xmas, went by Grandmother’s. first time she saw Jilo. Dinner and spent the night at Ma’s. Jim back on 30th. Party at BCL (ugh). Man across the street from Miriam’s hollering for help (“I’m not kidding Help!”) Pearl and Micheal didn’t come home for Xmas.
Holding my oldest daughter, JiloJilo and great grandfather Mershell C. Graham.
Front row: Jan and Dale Evans Middle: Pearl Cleage, Warren Evans, Ernest Martin Back: Me (Kristin Cleage) If only Ernie had stepped a bit to the right you would be able to see both of our faces. Why is Dale making that face? Must be because he’s 8.
My cousin Warren always had a party on his December 30th birthday. All of the Cleage cousins gathered at his house where his mother, my aunt Gladys, made a punch of Vernor’s ginger ale with orange sherbert floating on top. There was ice cream, chips, party favors and of course, cake. His cake, shown below, looks like a product of Detroit Awrey’s Bakery. My cousin Jan corrected me and said it was probably a Sanders cake. Sanders also made cakes and the best chocolate miniatures ever. But I digress.
Because I count 11 candles on the cake, I’m going to say it was his 10th birthday which would make it 1958. The 11th candle would be 1 to grow on. There is no sign of his youngest brother who wasn’t born until July of 1959.
Unlike the Sepia Saturday prompt, there is no bus and no Santa in my photo but the people are sitting facing each other and it was taken during the 1950s.
To see more Christmas Sepia Saturday offerings, CLICK!
I thought of this card when I saw the prompt for this weeks Sepia Saturday. There is no kiss but there is water and a boat. Reading the card made me remember that I had written up my trip to Norway years ago, I didn’t have to write it from scratch. Hence this post.
This article first appeared in Catalyst Magazine in the Summer of 1990.
In June of 1981 I was 34 years old, three months pregnant and on my way to spend seven weeks in Norway with my then ten-year-old daughter Jilo. I left behind my husband Jim and three younger daughters, Ife 8, Ayanna 5 and Tulani 2. There were also several milk goats and a flock of laying hens on our 5 acres in rural Simpson County, Mississippi. It was my first time outside of North America.
I had been corresponding with Sister Peg Dunn, a nun, about our mutual interest in Sigrid Undset, Nobel Prize winning Norwegian author of “Kristin Lavrensdatter.” I had become intrigued after reading that she wrote her novels while raising six children. Sister Peg arranged for me to attend the International Summer School at the University of Oslo. Jilo and I traveled to Norway with her.
It is now 1990, nine years later. I’m 43, the yet-to-be-born-baby is 8 and Jilo will be 20 in June. We now live in Michigan. The goats and chickens are gone, but we’ve got rabbits and the garden grows larger every year. When I think about that trip these are my memories, excerpts from my journal and from letters I wrote home.
I remember wondering if those men wearing fatigues waiting to board my plane were hijackers. The pain in my ears as the plane descended. Hearing Danish spoken over the airport loud speaker.
June 16, 1981, Airport in Denmark Dear folks, We are drinking orange juice in Denmark and waiting for the plane to Oslo. Ten hours is a long ride! Only two more hours of dark and I am sleepy. More soon. Love, Kris
I remember the marigolds and petunias in the window boxes of the apartments and houses everywhere we went. Walking up0 five flights, seventy steps to the apartment we stayed in. Looking out of the kitchen window at the grass, women hanging out wash and children playing in the yard below. Walking, walking and more walking.
June 17, 1981 Wednesday, Oslo, Norway Dear Jim, We are staying with the lady poet that I met in Chicago. She gave me 2,000 koner ($400) in the bank here. Jilo and I walked all over and never got lost. Everyone does speak English so far. Women wear backpacks instead of carrying purses. Tomorrow the three of us will take a train to Trondjem – a seven hour ride, where we’ll stay in a youth hostel until Monday. I miss you. Love, Kris.
I remember taking the train to Trondjem. How at one point, everybody (except us) got up and turned their seats around to face the opposite direction. How tired we got of the bread and salami and bread and salami and bread and salami, we had packed to eat. Mistakenly jumping off of the train before it pulled all the way into the station and then having to jump over the wires and cables to get to the station.
June 19, 1981, Dombas Norway Dear Jim, We are staying in a valley surrounded by snow capped mountains tonight. We walked a mile or more from the train station to the hostel with our backpacks. Was I glad not to have a suitcase! Love Kris.
I remember not being afraid to walk around at any time of the day or night. The long days. At midnight it was dusk. Riding the train through glacial mountains. How low the clouds were. Seeing a waterfall in the mountains. Gudbrunsdal Valley. How hard it is to strain to catch a work you understand in a new language. How it is even harder to come up with one and say it. My discomfort at entering the World War II Museum of Resistance and being greeted in, surprise, Norwegian by the welcomers. How they saw my expression and tried French then, to my relief, English.
June 21, 1981, Monday, Dombas, Norway – journal entry.
Jilo and I walked around Dombas in the morning. There was a field full of the biggest, bright yellow dandelions I have ever seen. Someone was growing tomatoes under plastic covers…there were bus loads of middle-aged German tourists. Can’t help wonder what they were doing during WWII.
June 23, 1981. Wednesday. Oslo, Norway – journal entry.
A warm sunny day. Today we went out to Blinern University on the trikk (subway). Took a tour of the campus. Met a friend of Sister Peg’s for lunch in the cafeteria, Liv. She has a research fellowship here. Is married and has an almost two year old son, Mangus. She had taught a few years in Chicago. Had read and seen “The Women’s Room” on TV recently. Especially remembered the part where the woman is trying to quiet the two children and put them to sleep and the husband staggers out going to his mother’s where he can “get some sleep.” She said the wife should have thrown one of the babies at him.
We walked home, a half-hour, pleasant walk through a camomile covered field. At dinner preparation time (Jilo cooked) we blew the stove fuse and couldn’t figure out how to change it so had to eat cold leftovers.
Then we caught the trikk to another friend of Sister Peg’s. She lived in an apartment made from the second floor of her parents’ house. She taught English to adults and Norwegian emigrant children. She also had seen “Women’s Room” and liked it, although she said, it didn’t deal with the problems of her generation. She told us about the social discrimination against emigrants, poor people on the east side of Oslo (where the tour buses never go) and different dialects in Oslo and having her passport stolen from a basket she carried in the store. Those things didn’t used to happen, she said. She had been going to Poland. There was a candle on her table and along with wine, coffee, chocolates, nuts, coffee cake, Christmas cake, butter and goat cheese. Jilo drank solo (grape pop) She gave Jilo a snowflake pin and showed her a bunch of English books. One poetry book included the poem “Give you son forty licks, beat him when he sneezes.” She told us how she used to drag her younger sisters around by their feet when she was left in charge and they would act up.
I remember watching Ethiopians playing soccer in the field of camomile. Celebrating Jilo’s birthday in the mountains with whipped cream topped apple cake. The Folk Museums with old, old houses, stave churches and guides dressed in national costume. The festival day at school with the fiddler father, singing mother and dancing daughter. How they seemed to really be enjoying themselves. Eating lefse, roumergroten, flat brod and brown goat cheese, Jilo walking and riding the trikk all over Oslo, by herself, not speaking Norwegian and never getting lost or having any trouble.
June 29, 1981, Monday, Oslo – journal entry.
Today began cloudy and rainy but ended up nice and sunny. Met a Californian in the laundry room. A student from last year passing through, doing her clothes and reading Don Juan. Trying to lose her past. She asked if I’d found rules to live by. I told her my sister had. She also mentioned the fox in “The Little prince” and being responsible for what you love.
I remember the children’s party. Organized by a Mexican married to a Norwegian and a Bulgarian. The kids tossing balloons around. The Bulgarian complaining about her young chuildren catching colds so often at day care and balancing the children, her ex-husband and job. The Mexican singing “Las Mañanitas” for the son of a Norwegian woman who worked in the kitchen. Hearing the Royal British Wedding on television in another room while I washed clothes.
July 3, 1981, Friday. Oslo – journal entry.
Started out a very sunny, warm day until after lunch, ended up being cold and rainy. Jilo and I went with some students to the theatre. Before the play started a tall man came up and said that he should have written a synopsis and did I know the story? Then he started telling it to me. A fairy tale about a princess, a would be prince who had to get three feathers of a dragon to win her. Very good…I even understood a few words. The theater was old and big. We had to to to a small room up in the top or the play. Afterwards we went in the cold rain to a kiosk and got sausages, french fries and ice cream. We had agreed to talk only in Norwegian. Whew! I was cold with a dress, bare legs and sandals. But a good evening and it’s nice to be back in the room and warm!
July 2, 1981, Oslo Dear Ayanna, This morning the Norwegian woman who cleans my room, washed the floor and was speaking Norwegian to me about my flower, but I couldn’t understand what she meant. I guess I have to study harder. Love, Mom.
I remember realizing that the woman had put a saucer under the plant for me. Walking to the park past a mental hospital. The man people told me had been brilliant who stepped from one square to another square for hours at a time all day long when they let him out of the hospital. Seeing topless sun bathers. Vigelandsparken Sculpture Park with nude statues of all stages of life but, strangely I thought, no pregnant woman. The garden section, blocks and blocks of tiny houses for drinking coffee and eating cakes, surrounded by flower and vegetable gardens of those who lived in apartments. The strange feeling of living where Nazi soldiers had lived when they occupied Norway. Hearing my mother’s laugh coming from a group of students gathered on the steps below my window. Watching day by day as a young man worked on repairing the stairs…the girl that came and watched him, talked to him. just wanted to be with him.
July 19, 1981 Lillehammer, Norway Dear Jim, We did get out alive from Sigrid Undset’s bed and house. It was very strange. Reminded me of one of those Public TV mysteries where suspecting travelers are taken in and treated kindly by weird folk who later murder them in their beds. I discovered how Sigrid Undset wrote a Nobel Prizewinning novel “while raising six children.” She left the two step-daughters in Oslo and moved to Lillehammer with her two young sons and a nursemaid. There she wrote the first book of “Kristin Lavernsdatter.” She was tired after this because she had to keep interrupting her work to cook, clean, etc., so she brought tow more old houses. One small one for her husband (an artist) to paint in when he came out from Oslo and one for herself to work in. It is this one that we slept in and it is connected to the original house by an added on corridor. She also hired several maids and a cook., in addition to the nursemaid. She then left the kids and the servants in the original house and proceeded to write her masterpieces. She later had a third child and for many years later served as a foster mother to two Finnish war orphans…Her daughter-in-law, Christianna, was odd but very talkative and nice to us. She gave me two children’s books by Sigrid Undset (in Norwegian) and she got her young neighbor to drive us out to Undset’s grave about 15 miles away. There was a weird little man, about her age who she referred to as “the young man.” He tried to be pleasant, spoke no English and was always leaping around smiling. One time he was supposed to open a bottle of wine and he couldn’t find the corkscrew. He kept popping into the room and finally she sailed out after him. I expected to hear a loud smack as she boxed his ears, but she found the corkscrew and opened it. I could understand a lot of the Norwegian they spoke and that was encouraging. I had given up hope. Love, Kris
I remember how awful it felt to be back in school studying Norwegian and how much I felt I was missing by sitting in the classroom when real Norwegians were all about talking real Norwegian and wonder still why I kept going to class.
July 22, 1981 – journal entry.
Homework very hard. Feel overwhelmed by busy work. Decided to skip class tomorrow and go on field trip with another class. Miss Jim. Interviewed by the newspaper, Aftenposten. Very poor English by reporter, better by photographer, nonexistent Norwegian by moi. Rather embarrassing. Jilo got us some Norwegian deodorant. It doesn’t work a bit.
I remember the lady from Denmark who sat next to us on the plane ride home and talked about how bad things were getting, she had to lock her doors now when she left her house, not like the old days. How dirty everything looked when we got back to Chicago and how good it was to see my family and eat home-cooked food again.
Six months pregnant wearing overalls and Jim pulling up his sock.
We moved to Simpson County, Mississippi in November of 1975. Jim was in charge of the Emergency Land Fund’s Model farm. Our daughter Jilo was 5 and Ife was 2.5. I was 29 and Jim was just about to turn 31. This was before we had goats, chickens or rabbits. The greenhouses weren’t in production. I remember several of the farmers Jim worked with gave him gifts of money for Christmas. It didn’t amount to more than $30 total but it paid for all the gas we used.
A gift from my mother-in-law that Christmas.
We decided to drive up to share the holidays with Jim’s family in Rock Hill, MO. They lived at #1 Inglewood Court, right outside of St. Louis. Seventeen year old Micheal, fifteen year old Monette and twelve year old Debbie were living at home. We made the eight hour trip in the little gray Volkswagon that came with the job. We took food to eat on the way, left early and drove straight through. I don’t remember anything specific about driving up. As I recall we got to St. Louis before dark. Jim’s parents gave us their bedroom. They were always so nice about that. Jim and the kids and I shared the pushed together twin beds. There weren’t presents for us but Jim’s mother looked around and came up with some. I don’t remember what she gave Jilo and Ife but she gave me two copper vases and Jim two glass paperweights. I don’t remember what we took as gifts.
Jilo, Ife and Debbie Williams.
I remember going to see Jim’s brother, Harold, at one of his jobs. He had several, just like his father always did. We also stopped by his studio where he made plaster knick knacks. Or was it cement bird baths? Or both? There was a Salvation Army or Goodwill store nearby and we stopped and I got some shirts for the kids and a dress that Ife wanted. Mostly we stayed around the house and visited.
Three of Jim’s brothers – Micheal, Chester and Harold Williams at Harold’s place of work.
We stayed until New Years Eve and left in the evening. There is never enough food or time to prepare it for the return trip. We stopped at Howard Johnson’s somewhere on the way home and I remember getting fried oysters. It was cold and dark and clear. There were stars. And there are always trucks. We listened to the radio and talked and maybe sang some. The kids eventually fell asleep in the backseat and we welcomed the New Year driving through the night.
To see more people in overalls and other work related outfits CLICK!
I was 16 and my mother was 39 in this photograph. We were getting ready to go bike down Old Plank Road. I was bare footed. We used to bike past the neighbors on the hill and down to a pond that was small and weedy. Sometimes we skated there in the winter. The neighbors had two big dogs that were often outside and we would peddle fast to get past before the dogs got to the road. We’d take enough time riding to the pond and looking at the water for them to go back up and then we’d repeat the ride back to the house. The dogs never got to us.
Barefoot biking.
I got my first bike on my 8th birthday. It was a basic, blue bike. I didn’t know how to ride and it took me so long to learn that my mother finally threatened to give the bike to my cousin Barbara if I didn’t learn how to ride. I don’t remember anybody holding the bike and running with me. I do remember practicing in the driveway of the house on Chicago until I learned to ride. At that point I only rode around the block.
When I was older, I remember going bike riding all around the neighborhood with my cousins, Dee Dee and Barbara. We rode in the street, which I wasn’t supposed to do. My sister and I used to go bike riding too but we usually had a destination – the library or my grandmother’s house. I lost that bike when I left it unchained outside of a store on W. Grand Blvd. We were on the way home from the Main Library. Later it was replaced by a three speed bike. I had that one up at Old Plank until we sold the place and then I had it in the Detroit. It too was stolen when my husband left it unchained on a porch one night.
When we lived in Idlewild, from 1986 to 2007, I used to ride my Uncle Hugh’s old bike. It had a bigger than average seat which made it more comfortable for me to ride, however it was old and had been through a lot and the tires were sort of crooked. I enjoyed riding it the 4 miles around the lake and for one memorable 5 mile ride into town with my daughter, Ife. She was going to work so she had 6 hours between her rides. I had to turn around and ride 5 miles back. If the streets around my house here were flat and I didn’t see rottweilers trotting down the street alone, I would get a bike and ride now. I know I am not going to take a bike to a park to ride.
Linwood was woven through my life from the time we moved on Calvert, between Linwood and Lawton, 1954 until I moved from Detroit in 1972. If I have done blog posts on the spot already, I will provide a link to the earlier post.
To view Linwood, Detroit in a larger map, click on the blue link.
Me
13211 Linwood – Toni’s School of Dance Arts I was about 9 when we started taking Saturday ballet classes at Toni’s School of Dance Arts. They went on for several years. We wore blue tutus, black ballet slippers shoes and white ankle socks. There was a bar and a wall of mirrors. I learned the five ballet positions and to point my toe. Each year culminated in a big recital at the Detroit Institute of Arts. On the Saturday before the recital all the students spent the day at Toni’s so that the entire program could be gone through. Those not performing would wait outside in the walled in yard of the studio. It was crowded and hot. For the performance one year we wore white calf length dresses, net over satin fabric. The next year we wore net tutus. I had bright blue. My sister’s was bright green. My mother thought the costumes were getting too expensive. I don’t remember minding when we stopped going about the time we moved off of Calvert. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of myself wearing a dance outfit but I picture the me in this photograph wearing a black leotard and blue tutu, white anklets and black ballet slippers.
The Black Conscience Library building with photos. From L to R. My dog Big, Phil, Dewy (later Chimba Omari), Malik, Miriam, Jim, Me, Longworth. Downstairs was the deserted bakery that took up two spaces. I put our sign over one and a very small, poorly stocked grocery store owned and run by a Jordanian. He was robbed numerous times while we were there.
12019 Linwood – Black Conscience Library The Black Conscience Library was located here from the winter of 1969 to the spring 1970. In addtion to a small collection of books there were classes and movies related to black history, culture and freedom struggles in various parts of the world. For more read – Once I Worked In A Sewing Factory.
Me
Roosevelt Elementary School I attended 2nd through 6th grade here. My mother taught Social Studies there from 1954 through 1965. We also cut across the athletic field from Linwood to get to and from Roosevelt. The building is no longer there.
Durfee Junior High School I attended half of the 7th grade at Durfee. I learned to swim in the pool. The school address is not on Linwood but, the back of the school is.
Athletic Field We walked across here to get to school when we lived on Calvert between Linwood and Lawton. I remember a neighbor lost her boot in the snow cutting across this field in 2 feet of snow. Once my sister and I went with our mother to fly kites here.
We lived in the upstairs flat. This is how the house looked in 2004.
2705 Calvert between Linwood and Lawton. I lived here, from 1954 to 1959. We bought penny candy and fudgesicles (ice cream on a stick), from a store on the corner of Linwood and Calvert, walked to school down linwood and at times walked blocks and blocks to activities at church. Read more here – “C” Is For Calvert.
Black Christ at Sacred Heart Seminary
Linwood and Chicago Blvd. – Detroit Rebellion Journal – 1967. During the 1967 riot, this statue belonging to Sacred Heart Seminary was painted black. It was repainted white and then repainted black. It has stayed black right through to the present. You can also find more photographs of the statue here.
Street Crossing
Street crossing I crossed the street here at Linwood and Joy Road when I attended Brady Elementary School for kindergarden and part of 1st grade. There was also a block with the bank my mother used and the dime store we spent our pennies, one block down. The photo is looking across Linwood to Joy Road. Read more here “A” Is For Atkinson.
Central United Church of Christ
Shrine of the Black Madonna. Formerly Central Congregational Church. The church I grew up in, pastored by my father Rev. Albert B. Cleage,Jr/Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman Read more here – “H” is for Linwood and Hogarth.
