“L” is for Linwood

Biography, Family History Through the Alphabet, Houses, , ,

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge.

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.

Two Views of Jilo – Sepia Saturday #135

sepia saturday

In 1973 my sister, Pearl, worked with the television program “Good Morning Atlanta”.  One day Susan and Big Bird, from Sesame Street, appeared on the show. There was an audience drawn from a local elementary school. My oldest daughter, Jilo, was 2.5 years old. Pearl invited her to come on the show too. She seems to enjoy sitting on Susan’s lap but be a bit skeptical of Big Bird.

Jilo sitting on Susan’s lap.

Jilo looking at Big Bird. His head seems to be tucked down.

Entry from Jilo’s Baby Book.

“Jilo meets Big Bird, Susan, Gordon on Pearl’s show.  She sang with them and will be on the show October 19, 1973.  Went right up to Susan just like old friends. Received a record, autographed.  Even Ife was quiet during the taping.”

Ife was about 7 months old.  So, Jilo did get a momento. After I read this I remembered how we played that record over and over and over, for a long time.

For more Sepia Saturday offerings, CLICK!  The theme for this week was “Two Views of the Health Fairy”.

 

 

 

 

“K” is for King Street

Biography, Cleages, Family History Through the Alphabet, Houses, , , ,

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. Click on the link to see links to posts by other participants in this challenge.  It’s too bad the streets in my life weren’t alphabetically and chronologically coordinated because the years are all out of order. Here we go back to the beginning and my first home – 210 King Street.

Past over present. My mother, Doris Graham Cleage, is standing on the proch.

 My father became pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield Massachusetts in the fall of 1945.  The parsonage at 210 King Street is pictured above. This is the house I came home to when I was born in 1946. I was the first child of Rev. Albert B. Cleage and Doris Graham Cleage. We moved from King street before my sister Pearl was born in December of 1948. I was 2 years old and I don’t have clear memories of the house. I found the description below online.

I was born around 10 PM during a thunderstorm. That’s what I heard.
Me and my mother. Photo by my father.

1947 – on the steps with my mother. What is she holding that I am so excited about?

1948 – I spent a lot of time cooking. This is from the crumpling pages of an album my father kept. He wrote captions on most of the photographs. I have scanned the pages that are left. The photographs are fine but the pages are not.

My father and his congregation were involved in a church fight at this point. A former Minister had separated most of the churches property from the control of the church when he retired. My father and members of the church were trying to get it back or get the church compensated. Before my sister was born, they did sell the Parsonage and we moved into the Parish house. It was right next to the church and we lived in 4 room (plus bathroom) on the first floor, along with church offices, a big meeting room and I don’t know what else. There were roomers on the second floor.  In 1948 they were trying to get $7,500 for the house. Today it is selling for $47,000. From reviews the neighborhood is crime ridden and drug infested so I don’t know if they will get that or if that is a low price for a 100+ year old house in that neighborhood of Springfield.

My parents spent $8 a week for ice before they, with help from my grandparents, were able to purchase a refrigerator.

My mother describes the purchase of the new GE refrigerator in a letter to her in-laws below. She says that I am completely recovered. In an earlier letter she described my bout with roseola.

I don’t know if these are the refrigerators my mother and I saw that day in 1948 but they were both 1948 models. The one I remember had one door, like the Philco.

The refrigerator was still working fine in 1962. My mother standing in front of it 14 years later.

Babies in Buggies

Photographs, sepia saturday, ,
Gladys and Barbara Cleage – Scotten Avenue, Detroit, 1923.
My mother Doris, Baby Howard and Poppy – Theodore Street, Detroit 1930..
Me and sister Pearl. King Street, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1949.
Daughters Jilo and Ife. Cascade Road, Atlanta- 1973
My daughter Ife with twins, Sydney and Sean -Hill Street, Seattle, 2004 .
To see other Sepia Saturday posts, click.

 

“J” is for Joy Road

Family History Through the Alphabet

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge.

Some Joy Road memories

My first elementary school, Brady, was on Joy Road and Lawton.  I remember walking  past Sacred Heart Seminary for a deserted Joy Road block to get there.

When I was in college I worked on several of my father’s political campaigns. I remember passing out campaign literature across from Brady Elementary school, where the voting was taking place. I was wearing a white shirtwaist dress I only wore as a freshman and it was hot so it must have been the 1965 election when my father ran for Detroit Common Council. He never won any of the offices he ran for and did it for educational purposes. There were no other people passing out campaign material.  I don’t even remember any voters. I do remember one man in a suit who tried to convince me that I could earn a lot of money as a prostitute. I told him I wasn’t interested and eventually he left. When my ride picked me up later I told them I was through for the day. I wasn’t afraid, but it was very weird and unpleasant.

Also in 1965 while a student at Wayne State University I attended a few Kiswahili classes that were held in a building on Joy Road at Grand River. My mother came to pick me up and said it was no place for me to be. That is why I speak no Swahili today. Robert Higgins was the only other student. The teacher was from Kenya and a very nice, soft spoken man.  I can’t remember his name.

Me in 1965.

Sometimes I took the Joy Road bus instead of walking home from the Dexter bus stop. The bus stop was right across the street from the Grand River-Dexter bus stop on Tireman. The bus turned down Beechwood and dropped me off two blocks from home.

I found this description in my journal from June 25, 1969. It is  the only piece I’ve ever written about a bus. I don’t know why I found the ride funny instead of being terrified.

June 25, 1969

Yesterday, on the way to a photo show, I was on the Clairmont bus on Joy Road.  the driver was crazy, he acted like he was taking a somebody to the hospital,  weaving the bus in and out between cars.  that was bad enough – old ladies rocking, weaving and falling, when suddenly a red light backs up traffic. He pulled belligerently into the lane of oncoming traffic, which lucky for us was empty at the time, and raced 2 blocks in the wrong lane to bully his way in front of some poor car when the light changed. I was cracking up. Other people weren’t, just me.  I couldn’t control myself laughing, mouth open, gasping for breath. they probably thought I had lost my mind. So ridiculous, can’t even imagine a regular car doing that. I just don’t know, I really don’t.


Idlewild 1953

Cleages, Photographs, , , ,

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.

Marilyn Makes a Trunk – 1956

Grahams, sepia saturday

When I was growing up my sister, my cousins and I always made a yearly trip to the Detroit zoo with our mothers and grandfather, Poppy.  My youngest cousin Marilyn was impressed by the elephants trunk this year and went around making her arm into a trunk afterwards.

For more Sepia Saturday posts, click!

“I” is for Inglewood Court

Family History Through the Alphabet, Williams

This post continues the series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge.

 This is the first street so far that has not been in Detroit. Inglewood Court is in Rockhill Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. My in-laws moved there about 1969 from Cabanne St. in the city.  The youngest 4 of the 12 children were still living at home.  We first visited in 1971 when our oldest daughter was 9 months old. Linda was 16 and passed her driving test. Micheal was 12 and getting some jokes ready for April Fools day. Monette was 10 and Debbie was 8. Mr. Williams had not started any of the major renovation projects that were ongoing, such as raising the roof and adding a bedroom, adding stairs and then moving them from one place to another, adding an eat in kitchen across the back of the house. Amazing projects that rarely were completed as he would think of a better way to do it before he finished.

The black and white photos (except the one on the bottom row, 4th from the right of my brother-in-law Chester) were taken on my first visit in 1971. The other were taken over the years at family reunions. Babies were born. We lost my in-laws and three of their sons. The grandchildren – my generations children – grew up and started another generation. We who were in our twenties and thirties when the reunions started are now older then my husband’s parents were. My children are older than I was then.

My husband crossing the lawn in 2004. Soon after, the house, along with all the others in the cul-de-sac were condemned so that a shopping mall and parking lot could be built.

Here is how the block looks now.  Very sad as there was nothing wrong with the houses. And there were already many stores and shops in the area.

“H” is for Linwood and HOGARTH

Biography, Cleages, Family History Through the Alphabet, ,

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge.

The church still stands on the corner of Linwood and Hogarth in Detroit.  It has gone through several names through the years, beginning as Central Congregational Church in 1953. It became Central United Church of Christ after the merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Churches in 1957. In 1967, after a large mural of the Black Madonna was painted for the Sanctuary, it became the Shrine of the Black Madonna.  My father was the minister.  I am going to write about my memories from the 1960s as I was growing up.

The Shrine of the Black Madonna on Linwood at Hogarth. Detroit, Michigan.

I remember many hours spent at church.   There were church suppers and political meetings. There were Christmas Eve services, Christmas caroling and my father’s annual “Little Patricia” Christmas sermon. He gave these for several years. They featured a little girl living in a cave with her family following a nuclear war. I think the last time he gave this sermon she had two heads. I remember a bazaar with booths of handmade items to buy as gifts and game booths with a shooting gallery. The year I remember best was 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of late October.  A nuclear war seemed all too possible. I was 16.

The Youth Fellowship early 1960s. That is me 4th from the right in the middle row. My sister Pearl is in the middle of the back row.

I remember Youth Fellowship meetings, where we talked about what was happening in the city, and around the country.  Afterwards there was a social hour. Standing next to the coke machine and not being asked to dance, while at the same time, dreading being asked to dance, is not one of my happier memories. Social hour became less stressful once a ping pong table was added for those of us who didn’t dance much. I remember Workdays for Christ where we spent the day doing yard work to raise money for international service projects. And the “Friendship Circle” where we held hands and sang camp song like “Tell Me Why The Stars Do Shine” and “A Friend on Your Left and a Friend on Your Right”.

The Sunday crowd was not usually this big. I don’t know what the occasion was but my sister and I are in the balcony, left side, front row, sitting with the Youth Fellowship.  here must have been something special going on.

The Choir.

I remember the choir director, Oscar Hand (far right above) singing  and the time he held the door open for someone stealing a typewriter because he thought it was the repair man. There was a wonderful production of “South Pacific” one year. There was the tragic and shocking murder/suicide of two married choir members.  They had been having a clandestine affair.  Mostly though I remember the good singing Sunday after Sunday.

A church dinner. My cousin Dale is third up on the left side of the table with his eyes closed. Cousin Ernie, Uncles Winslow and Henry at the end. On the other side is Aunt Anna and I can barely see little Cousin Maria.

There were lots of church dinners. All members were organized into Area Groups that raised money and sponsored events for socializing. Sometimes Area Groups  sold dinners  to take out.  I remember one such sale.  Nobody was coming in to buy the dinners until one of the women suggested burning onion skins. They laughed about it, but someone burned some onion skins and people actually started to come.

The Church was fully involved in the movement for equal rights and black power. There were always speakers and rallies and seminars.

The sanctuary before the Black Madonna painting was installed.

My parents divorced when I was 8. We lived with my mother but often spend the weekends with my father. He would start writing his sermons Saturday night.  He wrote at the kitchen table.  There were piles of old mail, old sermon notes and who knows what, piled up at one end of the table. There was enough space for the three of us to eat and for him to write. He wrote late into the night, sometimes taking breaks to come in and comment about what we were watching on TV or to order some shrimp from Jags up on 12th street. He never finished the sermon on Saturday. Sunday morning he would get up early and continue writing until the last minute when we would get in the car and drive down Linwood to church.  Sometimes there were slow drivers in our way or people had already parked in his usual spot so he had to park farther away.  At that time, he always parked on Lamothe, which was what Hogarth was called on the other side of Linwood. Service started at 11.   Sunday morning excitement – would we make it!? We always did.

My father preaching.  The Black Madonna mural painted by Glanton Dowdell is behind him.

The bulletin and sermon notes below are from Sunday, July 3, 1966.

My father’s sermon notes.

His sermons always spoke to what people needed to understand about their lives in the present day. And they were always timely. Someone once asked me if he planned and wrote them maybe weeks or months ahead of time. He didn’t. And you could tell because of the current issues he always included.

Me with three of my children and four of my grandchildren on the steps of the church, 2005.  Those little children are now just about as tall as I am. How quickly time passes.