Religion / Civil rights & activism
Albert Cleage Jr.
1911–2000 · minister, Black nationalist leader
Detroit minister who founded the Shrine of the Black Madonna and the Black Christian Nationalist movement, a leading voice of Detroit's Black Power era.
- Born
Indianapolis, Indiana- Died
- Birth name
- Albert Buford Cleage Jr.
- Also known as
- Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman
- Detroit years
- 1910s–1990s
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Albert Cleage Jr. grew up in Detroit, where his father, a physician, helped found Dunbar Hospital. He graduated from Northwestern High School, studied at what became Wayne State University, earned a divinity degree at Oberlin and served churches in Kentucky, California and Massachusetts before returning home in 1951. In 1953 he and a group of followers founded Central Congregational Church, which moved to Linwood Avenue. In the early 1960s Cleage was among the organizers of the November 1963 Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference, where Malcolm X spoke, and he ran for governor in 1964 on the Freedom Now Party ticket. On Easter Sunday 1967 he unveiled a painting of a Black Madonna in the sanctuary and preached that Jesus was a Black revolutionary; the church became the Shrine of the Black Madonna, the center of his Black Christian Nationalist movement, with later branches in Atlanta and Houston. In the 1970s he took the name Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman. He died in 2000.
Highlights
- Founded Central Congregational Church in 1953, later the Shrine of the Black Madonna
- Unveiled the Black Madonna painting on Easter Sunday 1967
- Ran for Michigan governor in 1964 for the Freedom Now Party
- Founded the Black Christian Nationalist movement, with shrines in Detroit, Atlanta and Houston
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Founded · 1950s–2000
Shrine of the Black Madonna
The 1925 church on Linwood where Cleage's congregation unveiled the Black Madonna in 1967; still the mother church of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church, listed on the National Register in 2021.