This is my tenth A to Z Challenge. My first was in 2013, but I missed 2021. This April I am going through the alphabet using snippets about my family through the generations.

Oscar Hand was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. He moved with his family to Detroit, Michigan after 1935. The family lived near to the Cleage family on Scotten and he became a lifelong family friend. Music was always very important to Mr. Hand and he studied and sang with the Robert N. Nolan Chorus for years. When I knew him he was the director of our church choir and I can still hear him singing in my mind. He had a very powerful baritone.

Oscar Hand, one of the founding members of the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroit. For many years he was the choir director at the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroit. In his later years he lost his sight due to glaucoma. Almost until the end, he still sang “Let Us Break Bread Together” now and then.

Mr. Hand was one of the founding members of the Freedom Now Party and ran for sheriff on that ticket in 1964. He was always active in the fight for civil rights, regularly picketing Sears and A & P during the 1960s, for jobs for black people. He was married to Frankie Warren Hand and they had one daughter. Oscar died at home on October 26, 1996.

This is the song Oscar Hand sang in the play described above.