A Brief Explanation for Eliza’s Story
Eliza Williams Allen – a photograph
Eliza and the people in her life
She was owned before the war by the late Colonel Edmund Harrison of this county
with names beginning with the letter Z. For this year’s April A-Z Challenge I have been blogging a series of sketches about the free people formerly enslaved on the Cleage plantations in Athens, Tennessee and their descendents.
For this year’s April A-Z Challenge I am blogging a series of sketches about the free people formerly enslaved on the Cleage plantations in Athens, Tennessee and their descendents. Click on any image to enlarge. Click on links for more information.
Yvette Cleage is my second cousin. I have not seen her since the 1960s when we both attended my father, then Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr’s church. The church was then called Central United Church of Christ, now known as The Shrine of the Black Madonna.
Yvette’s father, David Cleage, was my father’s first cousin, son of James and Josephine (Cleage) Cleage. James was the son of Jerry and Charlotte (Bridgeman) Cleage. Josephine was my grandfather, Albert B. Cleage Sr’s sister and the daughter of Lewis and Celia (Rice) Cleage. Lewis was the son of Frank and Juda Cleage. And there we are, back to the plantations of David and Alexander Cleage.
I found Ziggy Johnson’s obituary online at The Motor City Muckracker.
For this year’s April A-Z Challenge I am blogging a series of sketches about the free people formerly enslaved on the Cleage plantations in Athens, Tennessee and their descendents. Click on any image to enlarge. Click on links for more information.
John Cleage was born in Texas to Richard and Adeline Cleage, he was the oldest of 11 children, 9 survived to adulthood. The family returned to Athens before John was 1 and that is where he grew up. He completed 8th grade and was literate.In 1910 he was married for the first time to Annis Culberson.
Around 1912, John moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where the explosion mentioned in the article occurred. He later moved to Cleveland, Ohio. Here he married his second wife, Willard. They had one daughter, Evelyn. His mother and siblings moved north to Ohio.
Through the years John worked as a laborer, porter and a groom. He moved to Chicago about 1928 and lost touch with his family in Ohio for decades. (I have a news item describing this reunion. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find it in time for this post!) In Chicago he married for the third time to Cornelius Taner. John’s draft registrations describe him as light brown complexion, brown eyes, black hair (until it turned grey) short (about 5’4″) and slender.
John Cleage died on April 27, 1954 in Chicago, IL. He was 76 years old.
[From Paul Lee, “UPRISING! Rare testimonies and reports in the ’67 Detroit Rebellion,” Part 8, The Michigan Citizen, Oct. 14th-Oct. 20th, 2007, pp. A9-A11]
Rebellions Create Strange Leaders
By Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman
(Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr.)
Introduced and edited by Paul Lee
Pt. 8
This installment of our series on the ’67 Detroit Rebellion is the first not to be drawn from the records of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, or Kerner Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established on July 28, 1967, to uncover the causes of the annual urban uprisings and make recommendations on how to prevent or contain future disorders.
Unlike the reports, surveys and interviews submitted by commission field investigators and consultants in the wake of the uprisings, written, compiled and conducted to present “a fair and accurate picture of what happened” and lead to the formulation of new government programs, initiatives and experiments, the following document offers a decidedly partisan, pro-black analysis of the complex social and psychological roots of the rebellions and their potential to help bring about fundamental social changes.
Voice of the Black Nation
This penetrating and provocative analysis was offered by a 56-year-old veteran of the civil-rights and Black Power movements in Detroit: Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, then known as the Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., the bold, charismatic and visionary black nationalist pastor of Central United Church of Christ, formerly Central Congregational
On Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967, he launched the Black Christian Nationalist Movement, later church, known as BCN, and unveiled a striking 18-foot chancel mural of a Black Madonna and child. He called upon black people to reconnect with the African roots of Christianity, “resurrect the historic Black Messiah and stop worshipping a white Jesus who never existed” — thus making him the father of the black-liberation theology movement
Seeing no distinction between the sacred and the secular, he worked to bring the black church to the center of the burgeoning liberation struggle, believing that the only real security for black people was to build counter-institutions and a counter-culture — a “black nation within a nation.”
Central church was formally renamed Shrine of the Black Madonna #1 in 1970. In the early 1970s, two satellite churches were established in other parts of Detroit and churches were later founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., Atlanta, Ga., Houston, Tex., and Beulah Land, S. C., near Calhoun Falls.
Jaramogi Agyeman, who was interviewed at least four times by Kerner Commission field investigators, adopted his African name in 1972 and the BCN Church was succeeded by the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church (PAOCC) in 1978.
When the Rebellion occurred, he was the divorced father of two daughters: Kristin Cleage, who recently directed the organization of the vast, Detroit-based Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman Archives, and Pearl Michelle Cleage, a noted essayist, novelist, poet and playwright, both of Atlanta.
Exceptional analysis
Almost alone among political and religious leaders, commentators and social scientists during that period, Jaramogi Agyeman’s analysis saw the Detroit Rebellion, which was the most destructive to date, as a “logical” outgrowth of the modern civil-rights and Black Power movements.
Also exceptional was the fact that, unlike most moderate black leaders, he refused to blame such uprisings on or denounce black “hoodlums.” Indeed, he frontally challenged what sociologists termed the “riffraff theory” that the uprisings were the handiwork of a tiny “criminal element” among African Americans.
This theory, which reduced the uprisings to orgies of criminality, was first made famous in Violence in the City: An End or a Beginning?, the report of California Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown’s Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, better known as the McCone Commission after its chairman, former CIA director John A. McCone.
It examined the Aug. 11-16, 1965, rebellion in the mostly-black Watts district in Los Angeles, which was ignited by reports of police brutality following the arrest of an inebriated black motorist.
Jaramogi Agyeman’s analysis was made in a sermon delivered on Sunday, July 23, 1967 — only hours after the rebellion broke out following an early-morning police raid on a “blind pig,” or after-hours drinking establishment, near the corner of 12th Street (now Rosa Parks Boulevard) and Clairmount on Detroit’s near west side. The incident coalesced years of frustration and outrage over police brutality and other social injustices.
From the overflow
According to Kris Williams, “My father never read his sermons. After writing them out, he rarely even referred to his notes.” Longtime Shrine member Sala Adams recalls that he allowed himself to be led by “the overflow,” as he called it, in which he spoke freely and often powerfully from the spirit.
On the morning of the Detroit uprising, it appears that he intended to address the recent rebellions in Newark, N. J., Kalamazoo and East Harlem, N. Y., which he referred to in his sermon.
This made it easy for him to incorporate the fast-escalating events on 12th Street even before the press was ready to describe what was happening as a “riot.” The media felt bound at first by an informal agreement with the authorities to delay reporting the outbreak until the police could get it under control. But the agreement became unsustainable as the first reporters began arriving on the scene.
At 11:00 a. m., about the time that Jaramogi Agyeman began his sermon, Detroit Free Press reporter William (Bill) Serrin called assistant city editor Wayne King from a store on 12th Street. “Wayne, there’s a riot going on out here. …” King heard glass breaking in the background. “They just heaved a brick through the window,” Serrin explained, then hung up.
Prediction
Unlike most Detroit and Michigan leaders, Jaramogi Agyeman had seen the handwriting on the wall years before the explosion occurred. He even correctly forecast what might trigger it.
“Yes, I’m afraid that there might be violence in Detroit,” he said in reply to a question by a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television reporter in November 1965, four months after the Watts revolt. “I think you cannot continue to press a people without eventually some perhaps unforeseen accident sparking violence, such as happened in Los Angeles.”
Indirectly addressing the widespread belief that Detroit was a “Model City” in terms of its administration and race relations under the liberal leadership of the youthful Mayor Jerome P. (Jerry) Cavanagh and would be an exception to the ever-growing tally of nationwide rebellions, he continued:
“I think that the night before the violence in Watts, anyone in Los Angeles would have said, ‘It seems relatively unlikely that there will be violence,’ but the conditions existed there and the same thing [was true] in New York last summer” — referring to the first of the great urban uprisings, which occurred in Harlem from July 18-23, 1964 — “and I think the conditions exist here: police brutality, poverty, increasing unemployment, poor education.”
Alternative ignored
In contrast to most “militant” black leaders and activists, he did more than forecast doom and destruction; he sought to provide a constructive alternative to violence. In his view, the fact that violence did occur was due to the failure of the “white power structure,” which then controlled the city, to respond positively to his efforts.
“Do you think that your activities, your militancy, exacerbates rather than diminishes race tension?” the BBC reporter queried Jaramogi Agyeman in 1965.
“No,” he replied, “I think that my activities, my militant activities, are the only hope for peace in the city of Detroit. I think in Los Angeles and Watts, the danger was that there was no militant leadership, that the masses of people, having lost all faith in middle-class Negroes, had no one to turn to.
“I think in the city of Detroit, we have constantly kept some positive program available for the masses of Negro people — political action, protest, demonstration — but always with the idea that there is a hope that we can find a peaceful solution to the problem and that violence in the streets is unnecessary.
“So I think that without my militancy we would be in exactly the same position that the Negro in Los Angeles was. And I think I deserve more credit than the mayor for preventing violence in the city of Detroit because for a number of years I’ve given always a possibility for a positive program.”
Activist and innovator
During the 1960s, Jaramogi Agyeman was Detroit’s most outspoken advocate for black freedom, rights and dignity. He spread his message from the pulpit, rostrum and over the airwaves.
He wrote occasional articles for the militant Illustrated News, a small newsletter published by his family and friends, and a weekly column in The Michigan Chronicle titled “Voice of the Black Nation” in the wake of the Rebellion.
Church member and Detroit activist Grace Lee Boggs, wife of labor theorist James Boggs, prepared the column.
In an interview with The Michigan Citizen, Boggs explained that she took shorthand notes during Jaramogi Agyeman’s sermons on Sunday mornings and met with him Sunday evenings at the home of his brother Henry Cleage, an attorney, where “Rev.” looked over the text and made minor changes. On Monday mornings, she submitted the finished product to the Chronicle.
Beginning on Feb. 4, 1968, WCHB-AM, then a black-owned radio station in Inkster, Mich., carried a weekly broadcast of Jaramogi Agyeman’s sermons and speeches, recorded by church member Ollie (later Omari) McKinney, under the same name as the Chronicle series.
As a leading member of the black nationalist Group on Advanced Leadership (GOAL), he led campaigns for quality education and economic self-help and against job discrimination, police brutality and the forced removal of blacks from the inner city, which the government termed urban renewal and many blacks called “Negro removal.”
He called for and helped organize the mammoth “Walk To Freedom” down Woodward Avenue, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on June 23, 1963, and was a co-convener of the historic Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference, held at Mr. Kelly’s Lounge and King Solomon Baptist Church on Nov. 9-10, 1963, which featured a momentous keynote address by Malcolm X, then the national representative of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam.
He was also a pioneer in independent black politics. In 1961-62, he organized the famous “5 Plus 1,” “3 Plus 1” and “4 and No More” campaigns to support black candidates for elective office.
In 1964, he made an unsuccessful run for governor on the mostly-black Michigan Freedom Now Party ticket. He also made unsuccessful bids for the Detroit Common (later City) Council in 1965 and the Detroit Board of Education and the U. S. House of Representatives (13th District) in 1966.
Following the Rebellion, he considerably expanded his influence as the chairman of three organizations: The Inner City Organizing Committee (ICOC), which was essentially the political arm of his church, the Citywide Citizens Action Committee (CCAC) and the Federation for Self-Determination (FSD), two short-lived united-front groups that sought to bring about the “transfer of power” in Detroit from whites, who then held it, to African Americans, who were becoming the majority.
In 1973, he co-founded the Black Slate, which helped elect African Americans to local, county, state and national office, including Coleman A. Young, Detroit’s first African American mayor.
Jaramogi Agyeman passed away on Feb. 20, 2000.
Link to the journal I kept during the riot -> Detroit Rebellion Journal – 1967
For this year’s April A-Z Challenge I am blogging a series of sketches about the free people formerly enslaved on the Cleage plantations in Athens, Tennessee and their descendents. Click on any image to enlarge. Click on links for more information.
William Henry Cleage was born free on December 4, 1866 in Athens, Tennessee. His mother was Adeline “Addie” Cleage and his father was Nelson Cleage. His mother married Edmund Sherman shortly after William was born and for over 33 years of his life he used the name William Henry Sherman and was listed in the censuses along with the couples other children as a son of Edmund Sherman.
Until they died Williams grandparents, Henry and Jane Cleage, lived next door. William and his siblings all attended school and learned to read and write. In 1866, the Methodist Church along with the Freedman’s bureau started a school for black children in Athens. I was unable to find out much more but this is the school they probably attended. Grandfather Henry and stepfather Edmund worked as laborers and the women of the family worked as laundresses from their own homes, when they had paid occupations. Eventually his widowed sister Belle and her two children moved next door on the other side. His sister Sallie and her two children lived with their parents, Edmund and Addie. William lived for many years in the multigenerational family home. All three of the households owned their homes free of mortgage.
In the 1910 Census, 45 year old Williams was identified for the first time as a Cleage and as the stepson of Edmund. The grandparents were dead. Addie, Belle and Sallie were all taking in laundry and all of Belle and Sallie’s children were attending school. By this time the Athen’s Academy was up and running and that was probably the school they attended.
William married Laura Hall on June 8, 1911. He was 44 and she was 22. Laura died eight years later on August 21, 1919 from influenza. She had been ill for thirty days. The Influenza Pandemic was sweeping around the world. In contrast to other forms of the flu, this type killed more healthy young adults than any other part of the population.
I do not know if they had any children. I tried to find Laura’s sister’s households for the 1920 Census, but so far I have not found them. In 1920 William was working as a porter at a hardware store in Athens. Laura’s 18 year old brother, Clarence Hall, was living with him and attending school. William was renting a house on King Street.
In 1930 William was boarding with Joe and Emma Melton, an older couple who lived on Chester Street. William was a truck driver for a hardware store.
On June 5, 1937, William died of kidney failure. His occupation was listed as “Merchant”. He was 70 years old. The informant is listed as Silas Sherman. I wonder if they meant Sallie Sherman, William’s sister. Several names were misspelled on the death certificate – Nelson is spelled “Nelse” and Henry is spelled “Hewy”.
For this year’s April A-Z Challenge I am blogging a series of sketches about the free people formerly enslaved on the Cleage plantations in Athens, Tennessee and their descendents. Click on any image to enlarge. Click on links for more information.
Virgil Cleage was born free in 1884, the sixth of the nine surviving children of Jefferson and Rachael Cleage. His father was a coal miner in Rhea County, Tennessee. Virgil was literate and worked as a laborer, probably in the mines. The children in this family attended school.
In 1906 Virgil married Lillian Brown. In 1910 they were living in Anderson, Tennessee and Virgil worked in the coal mines there. His sister Emma and her family lived next door. Her husband was also a miner. Virgil’s first three children were born in Tennessee, Agnew was 3, Thelma was 1 and Beatrice was 7 months old. They rented their house on Wind Rock Road.
Their fourth daughter, Bernice, was born in 1916 in Kentucky. Perhaps they tried the Kentucky coal mines for a short time before moving to McDowell County, West Virginia. Here is a page about the West Virginia Mines, information and more photographs.
“West Virginia’s southern coal fields were not opened until about 1870, though they were known to exist much earlier. One of the major southern coal fields was the Flat Top-Pocahontas Field, located primarily in Mercer and McDowell counties. The Flat Top Field first shipped coal in 1883 and grew quickly from that time. Individual mining operations were consolidated into large companies, and Pocahontas Fuel Company, organized in 1907, soon dominated the other companies in McDowell County.
“On March 12, 1883, the first carload of coal was transported from Pocahontas in Tazewell County, Virginia, on the Norfolk and Western Railway. This new railroad opened a gateway to the untapped coalfields of southwestern West Virginia, precipitating a dramatic population increase. Virtually overnight, new towns were created as the region was transformed from an agricultural to industrial economy. With the lure of good wages and inexpensive housing, thousands of European immigrants rushed into southern West Virginia. In addition, a large number of African Americans migrated from the southern states. The McDowell County black population alone increased from 0.1 percent in 1880 to 30.7 percent in 1910.”
Virgil continued to work in the West Virginia coal mines for more than ten years. Three more daughters and a son were born there. Mattie Belle was born in 1922, Irene was born in 1924, Ophelia was born in 1925 and Harold in 1927.
The winter of 1927/1928 was a hard one for the family. A week before Thanksgiving Day on November 18, 1927, Virgil’s wife Lillian died of pulmanary tuburculousous. She was 44 years old. Her youngest child was not yet a year old. The oldest daughter was seventeen. In February of 1928 both Irene and Harold died of pneumonia. Irene was four and Harold was barely a year old. That same year oldest son Agnew married Grace Womac and moved to Columbus, Ohio where he worked in the steel mills.
In 1930 the family lived in Browns Creek, Mcdowell County. They seemed to have moved around a fair amount. They rented their house for $10 a month. Virgil worked as a coal loader in the mines. I found descriptions of the job of coal loader here Who Is A Coal Miner?
“Loaders, inside, bituminous.—Shoot or blast coal from veins or beds after it has been undercut by machine miners and then load the coal into cars with coal-loading machines. In some mines they do the timbering; that is, set props or timbers to prevent the falling of slate, stone, and earth into the rooms of the mines; also lay tracks in rooms of mines and keep rooms in good working condition.
“Loaders, outside, anthracite.—Load coal into railroad cars and refuse into mine cars.”
Virgil’s daughter Thelma had married a coal miner and lived next door to her father. The other four children lived at home. Beatrice was working as a maid. She had a daughter, Lunetta, a little over a year old. Bernice, 13 and Mattie Belle, 8 were in school. Lunetta died a month later. She was a year and eight months old.
By 1936, Virgil had moved to Columbus, Ohio where he lived with his son Agnew and family. The younger children remained in West Virginia with their older sister Thelma. Virgil Cleage died in on October 9, 1938 in Columbus Ohio. He was 54 years old.
________________
I had almost finished writing this when I decided to Google Virgil Cleage. Through that search I found Irene and Harold and marriages, children and deaths for the other children. I found several death certificates, freely available online. Now I guess I should go back and Google everybody else I have written about.
West Virginia Coal Miners and Coal Camps – Excellent photographs taken during 1935 – 1937 for the Farm Security Administration The exhibit features the work of two photographers, Ben Shahn and Marion Post Wolcott.
For this year’s April A-Z Challenge I am blogging a series of sketches about the free people formerly enslaved on the Cleage plantations in Athens, Tennessee and their descendants. Click on any image to enlarge. (Parts of this post were published previously on this blog.)
When I began looking for the Cleage free men and women after 1865, I found several men had enlisted in Company A, U.S. Colored Troops 1st Heavy Artillery Regiment based in Knoxville, Tennessee. Knoxville is about 60 miles from Athens, depending on which route you take. McMinn county is in the Appalachian mountain range, so it was not a straight, flat walk. I have identified 8 Cleage men who enlisted. They enlisted at different times and I wish I knew the story of how they decided to leave, how they got away and how they made their way 60 miles to Knoxville to enlist.
Overview: Organized at Knoxville, Tenn., February 20, 1864. Attached to 2nd Brigade, 4th Division, 23rd Corps, Dept. of Ohio, to February, 1865. 2nd Brigade, 4th Division, District of East Tennessee, Dept. of the Cumberland, to March, 1865. 1st Brigade, 4th Division, District of East Tennessee, to March, 1866.
Service: Duty at Knoxville, Tenn., till January, 1865. Operations against Wheeler in East Tennessee August 15-25, 1864. Operations in Northern Alabama and East Tennessee January 31-April 24, 1865. Stoneman’s operations from East Tennessee into Southwestern Virginia and Western North Carolina February to April. At Greenville and in District of East Tennessee till March, 1866. Mustered out March 31, 1866. From: The Civil War Archives– Union Regimental Histories.
Below, Mitchel Capel recites “W’en Dey ‘listed Colored Soldiers”. A poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. His father, Joshua Dunbar, was a member of the United States Colored Troops.
Here are the Cleages that joined the USCT in Knoxville. The names were spelled differently, often even within one man’s records. David Hamilton was married to Florence Cleage (She was a Cleage by marriage). Isaac Turk was formerly enslaved on David Cleage’s plantation and was married to Fannie Cleage. Jefferson Cleage was also in the USCT, although his name doesn’t appear here, it does appear in pension records.
| First Name | Last Name | Battery | Rank_In | Rank_Out |
| Abraham | Clegg | I | Private | Private |
| Charles A. | Clegg | A | Private | Corporal |
| George | Clegg | I | Private | Private |
| Hiram | Clegg | A | Private | Corporal |
| Philip | Clegg | A | Private | Sergeant |
| Abraham | Cleig | I | Private | Private |
| George | Cleig | I | Private | Private |
| Isaac | Turk | A | Private | Private |
| David | Hamilton | I | Private | Private |
For this year’s April A-Z Challenge I am blogging a series of sketches about the free people formerly enslaved on the Cleage plantations in Athens, Tennessee and their descendents. Click on any image to enlarge.
Tennessee Cleage was my great grandfather Louis Cleage’s younger sister. She was born into slavery about 1864 on Alexander Cleage’s plantation in Athens, TN. I found her living with my great grandfather, Louis Cleage’s family in 1880. My great grandfather Louis Cleage was 28. His wife Celia (Rice) Cleage was 24. They were farming in Loudon County Tennessee. They had been married for 8 years and were the parents of four children – 7 year old Josie, 5 year old Jacob, 3 year old Henry and 1 year old Edward. Their 5th and youngest child, my grandfather Albert, would not be born until 1882. Twenty year old Tennessee lived with them along with 5 year old Louseny. None of the adults could read or write. The children were too young to attend school.
The 1880 Agricultural Census Schedule that includes Louis Cleage is in poor condition. Parts of it are unreadable because they are blackened. Other parts are pale and blurry making them difficult to read. This is the information I could make out. He rented his land for shares of his crops. He had 15 tillable acres and 5 acres in woodland and forest. The farm, buildings, land and fences were worth $150. Farm implements and machinery were worth $125. The livestock was worth $125. He had 1 milch cow and produced 25 lbs of butter in 1879. I was unable to read if he had any swine, chickens, mules or horses, I hope he did. He had no working oxen. He planted 25 acres of Indian corn, yielding 100 bushels. He planted 5 acres of oats, yielding 25 bushels and 5 acres of wheat that yielded 25 bushels. I think that Tennessee would have helped on the farm.
Tennessee disappears for twenty years. The census record for Loudon County has many bad spots where it’s impossible to make out names and the rural area she lived in did not have a city directory, so she does not appear again until 1910.
In 1910, Tennessee lived with her sister Angeline Cleage Rhea and her husband Jacob in Loudon County, TN. Her age was listed as 46. Jacob did general farm labor. Angeline and Tennessee had no occupation given. Tennessee had no children and was single. She could not read or write. Angeline and Jacob were literate.
On April 19, 1912 Tennessee died of Inflammatory Rheumatism. This type of rheumatism causes the joints to become inflamed and eventually damages the internal organs. My grandfather’s brother, Edward Cleage suffered with it, as did one of his daughters. On the certificate Tennessee’s occupation is listed as “domestic”. The disease probably made it difficult for her to pursue any physical type of work in her later years. Her age was listed as 45.
This is another example of records giving contradictory ages.
