Albert Cleage

Albert B. Cleage, Jr. (1911–2000) was a Christian religious leader, political candidate, newspaper publisher, political organizer and author. He is founder of the prominent African-American bookstore Shrine of the Black Madonna Church and Cultural Centers in Detroit, Michigan and Atlanta, Georgia. Cleage, who changed his name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman in the early 1970s, played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement in Detroit during the 1960s and 1970s. He became increasingly involved with Black Nationalism during the 1970s, rejecting many of the core principles of racial integration. He founded a church-owned farm, Beulah Land, in Calhoun Falls, South Carolina, and spent most of his last years there, dying in 2000. He was the father of writer Pearl Cleage.

Albert B. Cleage Jr. was born in 1911 in Indianapolis, the first of seven children. During much of his later life, his light skin color would become a common feature of discussion. His first biographer, Detroit News reporter Hiley Ward said it left him with a lifelong identity crisis. Grace Lee Boggs would later describe Cleage as "pink-complexioned, with blue eyes, and light brown, almost blond hair.". His father graduated from Indiana School of Medicine in 1910 and moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan to practice before taking a position in Detroit. Dr. Cleage helped found Dunbar Hospital, Detroit's only hospital that granted admitting privileges to Black doctors and trained African-American residents. Dr. Cleage was a major figure in the Detroit medical community, even being designated as City Physician by Mayor Charles Bowles in 1930.

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