Tag Archives: #me

My Detroit Rebellion Journal – 1967

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My father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage & me.

I wrote this after the Detroit riot in July of 1967.  I was 20. I had been in Idlewild, MI at my Uncle Louis’ cottage with my Aunt Gladys and some of my cousins when it started. I ended up at my Grandmother Cleage’s house where my father, several uncles and cousins were also gathered. Her house was on Atkinson, about three blocks from the 12th street corner where the riot started. Aside from a little editing for clarity, these are my memories from 1967.

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 The fire siren that night in Idlewild went on and on and on. Gladys got a phone call that a riot had started. We left that morning. The sky was pink with smoke as we drove into the city.

During the riot, when it got dark, we turned off the lights, put on black clothes and waited. The shots that had been going all day got louder, closer, smashed together. We sat on the porch and watched the tanks go up and down the street full of white boys wearing glasses, aiming their guns at us.

One during the day went by in a yellow telephone repair truck. He rode in the elevated stand, pointing his rifle. We looked back at him.

Lights from helicopters whirred over us. Troops went down 12th, down 14th. The street shook. Afraid to sleep because somebody might shoot through the window, we stayed up until the sky got light. My cousins cleared out the furniture in front of the windows, so they could shoot.

Should they let them get in or shoot before they reach the porch? They lay there on quilts, looking out the window. Seeing soldiers and armored trucks in flowerpots and dump trucks. Dale asked how the gun worked. Ernie shows him by the hall light.

The guns sounded like they were in the alley. I sat on the landing. Thorough the window it was dark and unreal outside. Blair came up, scared, so we went in the basement and turned on a program about Vietnam, but then off to a horror movie nobody watched.

Daddy came down, with a drink, to use the phone and dictate demands to the papers. Ernie showed us how to bolt doors if someone tried to come in the window.

They tried to get Grandmother down to watch TV, but she wouldn’t. She stayed upstairs, watched TV and came out only at times to turn lights on and silhouette everybody hiding guns as the soldiers were pulled back.

On the police radio: Fifty policemen wounded in one hour. They were run out of the Clairmont Square again. A woman turns in her sniper husband.

Dale was left on the porch when they flashed light on the porch and summer-salted in. Bullets were so close I was afraid and went back inside.

Grandmother turning on lights with armed flower pots aiming at us.

Turning Vietnamese guns up loud to drown out theirs. Jan and I, sleeping on the hard scratchy rug. Ernie wanting just a ring to show he was there. Dale taping, taking pictures to show his children. Jesus painted Black.

All that Sunday cars full of white folks went down Linwood past the Church. Windows rolled up. Sightseeing. Long, slow lines, car after car, windows shut tight. Troop Jeeps going by pointing guns.

For other Sepia Saturday offerings click HERE.

Old Plank Road in Shadow – 1962 – Sepia Saturday #80

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Cousin Warren, Sister Pearl, Me and little cousin Blair

This photo was taken by my uncle Henry in 1962 at an old house we had in the country.  It was between Wixom and Milford Michigan and about 40 minutes or less from Detroit.  We had the old farm house and two acres, not including the impressive barn in the background. Maybe we were playing a trucated version of baseball. My cousin Warren seems to be coming in to touch base?  I seem to be hysterical.  Was small Blair in the game?

My Sepia Saturday tie in this week is not through the designated photo but through a fellow Sepia Saturday contributor who I got into a discussion with about racism in the USA today and in the past and somehow it came up that I have Canadian cousins and that one of them played football for the Eskimos until a recent achilles tendon injury.  TickleBear turned out to be a big football fan and when I mentioned my cousin and said he was now playing for the BC Lions and that his name was Kamau Peterson, he (Ticklebear) was quite thrilled.  I must admit that I’m not a sports fan of any kind and although I’ve kept up with my cousin’s growing family I have not really paid much attention to his football career. I had to go check his fb page and go to links to catch up. I knew he was doing well at it because that’s what we do, do well 😉 But I didn’t know the details.  Here is a photo of my well known Canadian Football playing cousin, Kamau Peterson.  He also has an awesome full back tattoo which you can see in progress here.  You can see other Sepia Saturday offerings here.

Time Passages

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Uri – Me – Phil – Miriam – Me – Miriam – Miriam – Miriam
Jilo, Tyra- Shirley, Jim, Ife, Jilo & Ife – Me, Jim, Ife, Jilo, Ife – Jim, Ife, Jilo, Tyra

While looking through a box of photographs the other day, I came across some negatives from the 1970s.

The first strip was taken in 1970, when I was a revolutionary librarian at the Black Conscience Library in Detroit.  I was pregnant with my first daughter, Jilo.  Uri grew up to be an engineer.  Phil later confessed to being a snitch, Miriam is Tyra’s mother.  I was 23.

The second strip was made in 1974 in Atlanta.  Shirley was visiting from Detroit, as was Tyra.  Jim, my husband, was a printer with the Atlanta Voice.  I was at home full time.  Ife, my second daughter, was about to turn one year old.  Jilo was 3.  Tyra was 2.  I was 26.

Although this is not a clock, which was the theme for this weeks Sepia Saturday, it does reflect time.  You can see more timely entries here.

Easter Memories

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Henry, Toddy, Albert Sr & little Gladys

Henry’s back, Hugh looking out of car.

Kris ((me) and my sister, Pearl at our Cleage grandparents house with our “mashies” and Easter baskets. 1953

Memories of Easter – dying eggs in my Graham grandparent’s basement on Easter Saturday with my sister and cousins.  Easter baskets with jelly beans and chocolate eggs and one big chocolate Easter bunny.  Tiny fuzzy chicks.    The year someone gave us 4 or 5 real chicks that died one by one in their box in the basement.  Sugar eggs decorated with wavy blue, pink and yellow icing and a little scene inside.  Reading the book “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes”, new clothes, going to church. Going by the Grandmother Cleage’s after church.  What I don’t remember is gathering for a big Easter meal like we did for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I wonder why?

I have some Easter hats here and although you can’t see them clearly, my sister and I are holding some stuffed bunnies.  To see other Easter or bunny Sepia Saturday offerings click here.

Memory from Christmas 1967

Advent Calendar, Biography, Christmas, memories,
"Pearl and Kris Christmas 1968"
Christmas 1968. L to R My sister Pearl, me, Nanny in the window.

I can’t find a picture from Christmas 1967 but I think we looked pretty much the same.   I bought that pea jacket at the army surplus in Santa Barbara when I was there for a student conference, summer of 1967.  I cut my hair that summer too, right after the Detroit riot.  Not sure if Pearl had cut hers yet in 1967.  I have looked at this photo many times but this was the first time I noticed my grandmother looking out of the window at us.  We had moved to the flat with my grandparents that fall, so it’s a different house, but it’s Christmas time and I look the same.   I had just graduated from Wayne State University with a major in Drawing and Printmaking and a minor in English.   On January 2, I caught the Greyhound to San Fransisco.  But that’s not today’s memory.  Here is something I wrote in 1967.

Christmas 1967

It was Christmas and cold.  Snow blew wet, sticking to my coat and hair.  We went to the shortest corner, down Northfield, past three Junior High girls laughing and cars sliding slow on the ice.  The sky was gray behind bare branches.  Snow fell quiet, without any wind.  My sister and I talked some about…I can’t even remember.  We crossed to Pattengill Elementary, went down past the school and stopped outside the empty play field.


I got out my new movie camera and told her to walk away, down toward Colfax, and not to act silly.  She started and I turned on the camera,  feeling silly myself, taking pictures like a country bumpkin in the city.  She started lunging to one side, sort of a half skip with some serious drag to it.  I told her to be serious.  She did, then walked back.  I tried to keep the camera from moving.  It stuck and I turned it off  twice with a heavy click, jarring, blurring the picture.


We went inside the playground.  I shot some more of her walking up and away.  A little boy was sledging down a driveway into the street.  She said, come on take some behind the trash cans.  It’ll be good.  I shot some more.  Discovered while she was behind the garbage cans I was out of film.


Both of us bent over the camera and tried to shut it off, but we couldn’t.  My hands were cold.  Red, wet and cold.  I put on my gloves and we unscrewed the battery door with her suitcase key to shut it off.


We walked back toward the far corner.  I wrote BLACK POWER in the snow, and then PATRIA O MUERTE and VENCEREMOS.  Pearl asked what else can we write but I didn’t know.  We went on out of the playground and down Epworth talking about how bad somebody can be to you and you still love them.  We went on down Allendale.  There was a dog sleeping on a porch.  Pearl said, loud, keep on sleeping!  And he did.


It was getting dark and still snowing.  Cold, wet, quiet snow.  Grey like the inside of a shell and quiet like when your ears are stuffed up from a cold.  Some girls went by across the street, talking loud.  We turned back down Ironwood and went home.