Monday, October 13, 2008

The Golden Leaf

I was at a wedding party for my friends Keith and Kim at the Potrero Neighborhood Center, known as The NABE, last weekend in San Francisco. I spotted a guy in a Red Wings jacket who turned out to be Albert Johnson, a NABE employee who was born at Hurley Hospital and went to Clark Elementary (left) in Flint. His parents, Jerry and Jimmie, still live on Providence Street.

We ended up talking about The Golden Leaf, one of Michigan's legendary black clubs. It’s still in business at 1522 Harrison Street, just across the school yard from Clark Elementary. It’s a membership-only club, just as it was when it opened in 1921.

“My dad liked to play cards there,” Albert remembered, before our conversation turned to how glad we both were that Matt Millen is finally out as the Lions GM.

The Golden Leaf is a well-known Flint landmark in my family. One of my mom’s best friends from the old days in Flint is Adrienne (Wilson) Oliver, who is the mother of Notre Dame assistant coach Jappy Oliver (left). Although it wasn’t unheard of for a black girl and white girl to be such close friends at that time in Flint, it was rare. And it was even rarer for a white girl to visit The Golden Leaf. But Ardrienne took my mom, Pat (McFarlane) Young, on several occasions.

“We never looked at Pat as being white or black. Pat was just Pat,” Adrienne told me during a recent conversation. “She was with me and she was my friend, so nobody thought anything of her going to the Golden Leaf.”

Except, perhaps, the girls' parents. Sometimes a little subterfuge was needed.

“We did some of the craziest things,” Adrienne remembers. “Pat would say she was spending the night at my house, then we’d tell my parents we were both going to spend that night at another girl's house, then we’d sneak out.”

Adrienne and my mom both remember Central High, where they graduated in 1948, as having good racial relations. Blacks and whites interacted and formed friendships.

“I remember there being more economic prejudice than racial prejudice at Central,” my mom says. “Students seem to divide over their neighborhoods and how much money their parents had.”

Ardienne adds: “At Central, everybody was wonderful, but there was a lot of prejudice hidden in Flint. Nobody came right out and said it, but it was there.”

And there was prejudice built in to the structure of Flint life. When performers like Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole or Lionel Hampton came to the I.M.A., whites went to a separate early performance, while blacks were only allowed at a second midnight to 4 a.m. show.

“That was terrible,” Adrienne says. “It’s sick to even think about, especially when most of the performers were black.”

The Golden Leaf was a popular destination before the midnight dances at the I.M.A. “You know, it’s just a hole in the wall, but we thought it was the greatest joint in the world,” Adrienne remembers.

Today, the look of the Golden Leaf is relatively unchanged. It’s owned and managed by Lottie Reid, who told me on the phone that it’s still the same long, narrow brick building with a dirt basement, a bar, and several tables, much like it was when Adrienne and my mom went there, not to mention more famous visitors like Sammy Davis, Jr., Dinah Washington, and Malcolm X. The age of the members ranges from 21 to around 80.

But the neighborhood has changed, starting with the massive I-69 — I-475 interchange that obliterated much of the community that once surrounded The Golden Leaf . And like many Flint schools, Clark Elementary is boarded up.

“There’s really nothing around us now,” Lottie Reid said. “There’s nothing but us on this block.”



12 comments:

  1. There was another club down on 14th or 15th St. near the old train station. It may have had an RC or old Pepsi sign. Anyways, I went by there once in the late 80s / early 90s and it seemed to be semi operational. Next time I went to check it out the entire block had been torn down.

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  2. Golden Leaf Club has some sweet old timey ornamentation.

    I dunno why Clark School is still standing. I'm not complaining, but you'd think it woulda went the way of Pierson, Stevenson, Old Northern, Emerson, etc etc.

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  3. You are doing some great reporting on here about Flint.
    This is a story that should be a feature in the Flint Journal. Hard to believe how in touch someone in S.F. is to his old hometown.
    Good work....

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  4. WOW...I never knew about this place while I grew up in Flint. This really amazes me that all those famous artists came to Flint! It makes me sick about that racist concert times though.The only time I went to the IMA was when I was taken to the circus or to see ELO when I was about 17 years old, circa 1976 I think.
    RoadsideDinerLover (CARA)

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  5. I'd love to hear more about this place, and some more about and from your mom!!!

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  6. I'm pretty sure this is the parcel information for Clark School, and according to it, it's supposed to be demolished.

    http://taxes.cityofflint.com/display.asp?parcel=41-18-411-005

    Bummer. I've always thought that place would be awesome to restore, though I don't have the time nor money to do it.

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  7. Great story.

    "The Future Lives in Flint!"

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  8. I'm trying to pry some more stories out of Mama Young. She is a temperamental artiste! Plus she's busy taking care of her 100 pound dog. But she's on a deadline now, so we should have some more material soon.

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  9. You've put your mother on a deadline??!! Ever the professor... Wonder if she'll tell you "the dog ate it" if she misses the deadline.

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  10. Her response might not be that polite, redgirl.

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  11. My wife looked for and found the tag for Golden Leaf because my family ran it in the 30's. Now that I know about the Golden Leaf and know that there are others interested, I'll keep on the lookout for the Golden Leaf to show up in family photos. My mother worked there at some time during her teen years, but I only visited Flint from Detroit for family get-togthers but if I come across any pics that are identified as being at the Golden Leaf, I'll share them here.

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  12. Walter,

    I'd love any photos or mementos you have of the Golden Leaf. Send me an email if you have a chance. It would be great to talk to you about your family:

    gordieyoung(at)sbcglobal(dot)net

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.