Summary
On Easter Sunday 1967 the Reverend Albert Cleage renamed his church in Detroit the Shrine of the Black Madonna. He preached that if man was made in God's image there was little chance that Jesus was white as most of the world's population is non-white. Reverend Cleage also pointed to the many depictions of black madonnas all over the world throughout history. Claire Bowes has been speaking to his daughter Pearl Cleage, a writer and activist, about her father's belief in black representation and self-determination.
Photo: Black Madonna and Child courtesy of BLAC Detroit. Archive: Thanks to the Chicago History Museum and WFMT for the Studs Terkel Radio Archive.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:29.2 | Hello and thanks for downloading witness history with me Claire Bose from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:40.4 | Today we're returning to 1967 when an African American church minister began |
| 0:47.3 | popularizing the idea of Jesus as a black revolutionary leader. |
| 0:52.8 | I've been speaking to Pearl Clegg, |
| 0:55.2 | daughter of the Reverend Albert Clegg |
| 0:57.8 | about his beliefs. |
| 0:59.6 | The Bible says that God created man in his own image and if God created man in his own |
| 1:04.2 | image and we look at the world black people and brown people and yellow people and |
| 1:07.6 | just a few white people obviously then God is not white. The Reverend Albert Clegg, speaking in 1967 about his soon to be |
| 1:16.7 | published book called The Black Messiah. My father was driven his whole life by a desire to help black Americans be free. |
| 1:28.3 | His daughter, Pearl Clegg. |
| 1:30.4 | And he talked about Jesus not as an individual savior so much as a revolutionary non-white leader. |
| 1:38.0 | In the mid-60s America faced increasing racial tensions. |
| 1:42.0 | The Civil Rights Act which outlawed segregation in the |
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