The Reverend Albert Cleage founded Central Congregational Church of Christ in Detroit in 1956. In the ensuing years, a racial struggle developed for control of Detroit's political structure. Many liberals saw Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh, who was elected in 1961 at age 31, as an effective white leader who could build an effective interracial coalition. Sustaining such a fragile coalition proved impossible and the riots occurred while he served a mayor. Gradually, a number of African American pastors, political officials and a few union leaders came to play a key role in mobilizing black voters to elect liberal African-Americans candidates. In 1973, they succeeded in electing Coleman Young as the first black mayor of Detroit.
During the Civil Rights decade—the 1960s—Reverend Cleage became increasingly Afro-centric in his thought. He changed his name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman and then developed an Afro centric version of Christianity, so he renamed his church, The Shrine of the Black Madonna. He contended that Christ and many of his disciples were African in origin and suggested that Europeans had captured and twisted Christianity to assist in their enslaving Africans. He argued strongly for African American control of their own fate.
Although not directly linked to the Republic of New Africa (RNA), his name and his church were often spoken in the same breath as the RNA. This organization was founded in Detroit in 1969 by militant African-Americans who demanded that blacks be given control of five states—South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana—and be paid 400 billion dollars in reparations for slavery. Many observers interpreted the rhetoric of this organization as suggesting that the RNA would use force to get their demands if peaceful strategies did not work. The FBI and other federal agencies targeted the leaders of RNA and arrested some of them.
Reverend Cleage moved on to found Shrines of the Black Madonna in Houston and Atlanta. When you look back at his programs and policies, you are reminded more of Marcus Garvey than H. Rap Brown. Reverend Cleage consistently emphasized the need for blacks to firmly and rapidly take control of the political, social and economic institutions that determined their fate. As a result, he was very active in trying to put African Americans in control of Detroit.
It is interesting to note that the Shrine of the Black Madonna is located on Linwood just west of Grand Boulevard. Just a few blocks down Linwood, you will find the Sacred Heart Seminary—the Catholic seminary for Michigan—with its prominent statue of a black Christ.