This is the 28th and final post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge.  Today I will write about this photograph which appeared in the Ebony Pictorial History of Black America, Vol. III. It was taken at the Association of Black Students Symposium at Wayne State University in Detroit, February of 1968. 

I remember when this photograph was taken. The photographer asked some of us to gather around Lonnie Peek and look interested. Lonnie is in the middle, wearing a striped dashiki. Back in February of 1968, nobody was selling authentic African print fabric in Detroit. We went and bought regular fabric, made our lapa wraps and head wraps with that.  I made mine out of a green paisley print and the top was a thin green fabric that I folded over and sewed into a blouse without a pattern. Later, I tuned the skirt into a dress. By the next year, I was sewing garments out of African fabric at the sewing factory.

I didn’t really work with the Association of Black Students. I remember helping on some of the layouts for posters or brochures. I was using insta-type – letters on sheets that you rubbed onto the paper.  It has been years and years since I have seen anyone here. Some are dead.

On the far left, in the background is Beverly Williamson. He did security duties for my father for several years. The man leaning in with glasses was Rufus Griffin who became a judge in Detroit. Brenda, with the stripped, draped skirt, later married Rufus. Next to her is Bell.  He was a tailor and was framed by a drug dealer and spent time in prison. Then we have Lonnie Peek who is now a Baptist Minister. Cynthia Washington is wearing a striped lapa and polka dot blouse. She graduated from Wayne and returned to Mississippi.  Behind her, you can just see the top of Homer Fox’s head. He became a lawyer and is now dead.  Next to Cynthia is Nana Kwadwo Oluwale Akpan, then known as Gerald Simmons. He was a photographer, among other things.  He died in Ghana several years ago.  On the end is Kathy Gamble. She moved to New York and died there a few years ago. I am next to Kathy and right behind her, you can see part of my father’s head. He must have given a speech.

I don’t know who the man watching us from the balcony was.

This is the 26th post in the February Photo Collage Festival and the Family History Writing Challenge.  The photograph for today is a page in a booklet advertising Camp Talahi. There I am reading quietly beneath a tree.

Camp Talahi was associated with the Congregational Church (later the United Church of Christ). It was located on 180 acres beside Lake Chenago, about an hour from Detroit.

My father was a minister in the United Church of Christ at the time and sometimes he was there as a counselor at the same time that my sister and I were there.  In the camp photo above, my father, my sister and I were all there the same week.  I recognize some of the girls in the crowd as those who skipped activties and stayed in the cabin playing cards one year. I was a part of that group. At the top of the photo you can see one of the crafts we did. It’s a circle of leather with a piece of lanyard attached. I guess I wore it. The crafts were not  Camp Talahi’s strong point. Lots of braided Lanyard.

The craft workshop was on the lower level through those double doors. Upstairs was the screened porch where we took all meals. There was a large interior room with a stone fire place.  The daily Bible study workshops were held here too. There was a show later in the week with all cabins contributing a skit or some talent.

Camp sessions lasted a week. We arrived on Sunday afternoon and left on the following Saturday afternoon. There were 6 cabins for girls and others for the boys. Each cabin was divided in half. You entered through a door like the one Pearl is holding open, and you were either on side A or B. There were 4 0r 5 bunks on each side, plus a cot for the counselor.  I always tried to get an upper bunk by the window.  The windows were screened with shutters you controlled from inside with a rope. There was no glass.  The toilets and sinks were in the cement block building to the left in the above photo.  I don’t remember any showers.

This is a postcard my father sent me in 1962.  He had a strange sense of humor. The classes were just as bad as I thought they would be.  They were usually about the Apostle Paul.  Every evening there was a vespers service on a hill. We sang some camp songs.  Somebody did a Bible reading.  We had a quiet meditation.

We never went camping or slept outside, although the boys did.  We had one cookout when our cabin went to the prepared campsite and cooked a hamburger, potatoes and carrots in foil on a fire.  We went on one walk in a piney woods once and I remember the wonderful smell.

We went swimming once or twice a day.  We had buddies and when the lifeguard blew the whistle, we had to hold hand up, together. We hung our towels and suits on a clothesline outside of the cabin. They hardly dried from use to use.

There were two black churches in the United Church of Christ in Michigan.  Both were in Detroit.  Ours was one and Plymouth was the other.  Usually there were a few kids from our church.  I don’t remember any from Plymouth.  Sometimes there would be a lone black kid from a small town who attended a mostly white church.

The directorship of the camp rotated between the ministers in the denomination who were actively involved. Except for my father.  He was never asked and was not included because he was black.  As far as I know, there was no unpleasantness between my father and other staff or campers.  He was quite popular with the  campers.  I never experienced any racism.  Mainly, girls would ask “Why is your hair like that?”  To which I answered, “Because that’s the way it grows”.  As years passed, I asked why their hair was so straight.  That just confused them.