In Memory of

The Shrine of the Black Madonna™ an African based cultural center, is an institution built on the noble efforts of Jaramogi Abede Agyeman and Barbara Martin. The shrine is a branch of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church (PAOCC) founded in 1953; it serves as a center for the black community, functioning as an African American church, history museum, art gallery, bookstore, community center and forum for authors, historians, poets, educators and artists.

HISTORY & FOUNDATION

Albert Cleage was born June 3, 1911 in the state of Michigan to Albert Sr and Pearl Reed Cleage. Albert Sr was the first African American to practice medicine in Kalamazoo, later when the family of nine moved to Detroit; he became the first black to be appointed to city government. With a solid background established by both parents, Albert Jr. went on to study theology and grew to become a formidable leader and speaker for African American spirituality. In the 50’s he is said to have coined the phrase “Black Theology”. Cleage founded the Black Christian Nationalist Movement and made priceless contributions to the field by writing sermons, articles and essays that explore the history of African spirituality, expose the mystical distortions of Christianity and most importantly made the religion applicable to the African American community. His books The Black Messiah (1968) and Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church (1972) are required readings in seminaries and religious schools world wide.
In 1957 the 13th congressional District in Detroit was under redistricting, this decision would have prevented the area from having its 1st African American representative. Albert joined the FNP1 and a group of formidable supporters; over the years they succeeded in preventing the redistriction and were active in pioneering and maintaining a political presence for the African American community. The Reverend, later Bishop Cleage’s contemporaries include Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Albert ran for governor and several posts in city council and congress, and although he did not win, he was an active voice for issues such as racial discrimination, oppression and inequality in commerce, education and government, his efforts later helped establish Black Inc.
1 FNP - Harlem, New York-based Freedom Now Party

Albert B Cleage eventually changed his name to Jaramogu Abebe Agyeman meaning "liberator, holy man, savior of the nation" in Swahili. In the article Museums and the Late Victorian World, Steven Conn states, “The practices of collecting, classifying and displaying must all be understood as exercises in power.” It is the very recognition of this power that inspired Jaramogu in 1975 to found, The Shrine of the Black Madonna Church in Atlanta as a response to the physical, spiritual, and psychological needs of the African American people. The Shrine of the Black Madonna Church is the ninth congregation of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church – PAOCC.
PAOCC began its mission as a “socially conscious, religious institution… committed to transforming the spiritual emptiness, economic powerlessness and social disorganization that plagues the Black community”.
In addition to emphasis of the “Sacrament of Commitment” which encourages members to dedicate themselves to walk in the path of love, truth and community service, the PAOCC integrates training in the arts of Pa-Kua, which includes ancient practices of meditation, yoga, and tai chi chuan incorporated as part of spiritual doctrine this holistic approach and philosophy is deemed a necessary tool for healing the long-term fragmentation in the black communities seen as a result from the traumas of slavery.
“Not only was the enslaved generation rendered psychologically ill, the effects have been culturally transmitted from generation to generation down to the present. A mentally sick generation cannot but hand its sickness down to its children. This is especially true of a slave experience which never ended.”
—Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman
Under the guidance of Albert Cleage, Barbara Martin developed the Sudan Import Specialty Shop, which started with books, jewelry, African carvings, paintings, and fashions manufactured onsite by the Black Star Clothing Factory. The Sudan Import Specialty shop became The Shrine of the Black Madonna™ Cultural Center and Bookstore, a non-profit institution officially opened in 1970, functions as a vital extension of the PAOCC’s program for financial development in the Black community. In Cleage’s lifetime he saw the growth of each center to include a main church, the nation’s largest and oldest black-owned bookstores (containing over 15,000 titles), the Karamu Art Gallery™ and the Black Holocaust Museum™ and the institution also functions as community host for music/poetry events, political forum, and social service center providing workshops/classes on a variety of subjects including, income taxes, credit, computer literacy, and dance. The Beulah Land Farm Project in South Carolina is a shrine owned farm devoted to providing food for urban communities it embodies the shrines “values of self-sufficiency and communal living for African Americans”, future objectives include opening a retreat center and boarding school on the land.
The Shrine Cultural Center & Bookstore is “committed to serving as a community resource; providing a culturally-affirming environment which aids the transformation, unification, and empowerment of the African Diaspora; and enlightening all interested groups”. The church and adjacent cultural centers can be found in Atlanta, Kalamazoo, Calhoun Falls and Houston, with additional followings in New York, Philadelphia and South Carolina.


MUSEUM
Originally known as the Black Holocaust Exhibition, The African Holocaust Museum™ contains a rare collection of more than 100 documents and artifacts, as well as mesmerizing displays and images of the atrocities seen during slavery and the middle passage.
This emotionally charged collection includes bills of sale, wills, newspaper notices, letters, slave shackles and more. Thousands have seen the exhibition since it opened in Atlanta, in February 1991, its message has mainly spread through word of mouth. However, in 1995 as a result of an article published in the New York Times, Random House sales representatives approached Velma Maria Thomas (creator and co-curator of the exhibition) who was quoted in the article. After a brain storming session the decision was made to create an interactive, 3-dimensional book. Lest We Forget: The Passage from Africa to Slavery and Emancipation (1997) is based on the African Holocaust Museum™, has become a national best seller. It was named one of the 12 best books of 1997 by The Black Caucus of the American Library Association; the New York Public Library selected it as the theme for the 1998 Black History Month essay contest and it was recognized in Emerge magazine.
From 1997 to 1998, the Exhibit traveled to universities and colleges eventually returning to the Shrine of the Black Madonna™ Bookstore and Cultural Center where it is on permanent display, centers in Houston and Detroit have developed similar exhibitions. This remarkable tribute to African ancestors examines the life path and story of Africans in America.

AMERICA BLACK HOLOCAUST MUSEUM
The only other museum with similar features is the American Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The story behind the American Black Holocaust exhibition begins with James Cameron.
On August 6, 1930, James Cameron age 16, Tom Shipp (18) and Abraham Smith (19) were arrested for the robbery, rape and assault of a Caucasian couple in Marion, Indiana. During their time in Grant County Jail, a lynch mob came in and viciously attacked and murdered Shipp and Smith. The mob then came for James, after he was beaten and dragged out to the tree where his friends hung, James recalls, what he describes as an angelic voice above the crowd saying “Take this boy back; he had nothing to do with any killing or rape.”

Cameron served 4 years in prison, and then received an official pardon from Indiana Governor Evan Bayh. After he was paroled, Cameron moved to Milwaukee held several jobs including table waiter, laborer, construction worker, laundry worker, salesman, janitor, ditch digger, record shop owner, theater custodian, junkman, newspaper reporter, shoeshine boy and cardboard-box factory worker. He was active in the NAACP and upon retirement, he opened a rug and upholstery cleaning business.
In 1983, because he could not find a publisher, he took out a second mortgage on his home to publish A Time of Terror his autobiographical account of the 1930 lynching. Five years later he founded the America’s Black Holocaust Museum, Inc., a non-profit museum devoted to preserving the history of lynching and struggle of African Americans in the United States. The exhibition features artifacts recovered from the wreck of the Henrietta Marie, a slave ship that sank off the Florida coast in 1700.



IN THE MEDIA
A burst in publishing on slavery came about in the 1990s, with a record number of 53 titles published in 1998 (according to R.R. Bowker's Books in Print). In previous decades, the yearly output was less than 12 per year.
Most documentation dates slavery from 1619-1865, roughly 246 years though some historians note the actual time period might range over 400 years. Despite the fact that slavery had a significant influence on American history, industry and government; ultimately shaping the culture and future of an entire race, coverage on slavery, historical accounts in media and general education especially in public school systems provide relatively limited information and references on the subject.
Hein touches on the importance of museums as safe keepers of culture, “History museum have taken on the burden of reinterpreting their displays and collections to reflect modern re-examination of national and social history. Colonial Williamsburg added slave quarters (and even a provocative slave auction) to its public exhibitions and programs; Liverpool Museum has included exhibitions on the slave trade in its coverage of the growth of that city….”
The task of producing on a grand scale, accurate summaries and accounts of past historical events is no doubt a daunting task and would probably require a complete over haul and rewrite of history books. Innovations in technology such as virtual exhibitions and the ever widening pool of information available online are useful keys to breaching gaps in history records. The Shrine of the Black Madonna has a strong online presence and is especially valuable as a distribution channel and network for African American writers and publishers.
Neil Postman in his article states “A good museum always will direct attention to what is difficult and even painful to contemplate “… We (the) tool makers, symbol makers and war makers, are sublime and ridiculous, beautiful and ugly, profound and trivial, spiritual and practical. So it is not possible to have too many museums, the more we have, the more detailed and comprehensive the portrait of humanity.”
Falk & Dierking states of museums “They are places that both children and adults can leisurely browse to discover the past, present, and future of humanity, the natural world, and the cosmos, where the public can seek and find meaning and connection.”
This is why institutions such as The Shrine of the Black Madonna play an essential role in the fabric of American society. In a culturally rich melting pot such as the United States, the responsibilities of recording and preserving history often extends outside the view and reach of the general public. Cultural Institutions, Science Centers, Museums, historical foundations and preservations therefore all offer invaluable support in this area, serving as containers of the past, providing a visible platform for examining the numerous components of human experience.


SOURCES
Boyd, Marsha Foster. Self-Help in the Shrine of the Black Madonna #9 in Atlanta, Georgia: A Study of a Congregation and Its Leadership. (Ph.D. dissertation. Graduate Theological Union) Berkeley, California. 1995.

Conn, Steven. Museums and the Late Victorian World.

Dierking & Falk. Learning from Museums, Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning. Alta Mira Press. Maryland. 2000.

Hein, George. Learning in the Museum. Rutledge Press. New York. 2000.
Postman, Neil. Museums as Dialogue.

WEB SITES
http://www.pbs.org
http://www.shrinebookstore.com/
http://www.blackholocaustmuseum.org
http://www.directblackaction.com
http://www.emory.edu/
http://www.racematters.org/
http://www.suite101.com/discussion.cfm/african_american_history/
http://innercity.org/
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org