Two days later-- 8-26-09 -- Mercy Hospital

admitted with UTI, serious loss on cognition! Surgical procedure Sunday 7:15 am by urologist.... Ok mama...... Thank You Good Lord... for your blessings... and my family.

A Bright Bloomin Flower for today!

Had a KFC Lunch with Mama Saturday!

Lots of humor in this story... chatted with Wendell Sunday Night.... Rashaad Dee-Kali-Amy all doing well.

1825-2005 = 180+ Years of Family History

Six Generations from GGGparents to Jalen Anthony Kirk and Anayah Jordyn Shabazz. My Line, My heritage.

Sipuel's Family Found on 1880 Census

Mother Coffey was keenly interested... Tugbake

in Mission work in Africa and Haiti. ..... COGIC Missionaries stationed in Liberia at Tugbake Station was particularly satisfying... "I have begun the effort of supplying refrigerators for our Foreign Fields and she (Sister E. Collins) so gladly took up this task for me" Coffey wrote.

"On August 1, the contract was completed for the shipment of two refrigerators (operated by kerosene) to be shipped to Africa.... Mother Collins is now in the jungle soliciting for two dynamos (missionaries) that we might light up the jungles.... Oh what a happy day when the light be so bright on our various stations campuses that the wild animals dare not approach or harm our missionaries."

taken from Women in the Church of God in Christ by Anthea D. Butler

From this writing, I'd set the time frame of this missionary work/trip as being prior to 1950...

notably, Mother Coffee set up the COGIC Women's Convention (week-long) which was hosted by Bishop Samuel Crouch and his wife 04-24-1951 at Emmanuel Temple COGIC (Los Angeles, CA) Pretty high profile stuff.... she was photographed with California Govenor -- Earl Warren --the future Supereme Court Justice -- and his wife/

Gosh, now I'm learning even more vividly....

The keynote speaker was given by Dr. M. Bethune...their picture featured in the Sentinel --- at the convention... she arranged for women to March In! carry banners to accentuate the focus on missionary activities... she presented Bishop Crouch with $10,000 in cash in a paper bag as a donation from Women's Department for missions to COGIC.....

The plainly dressed women who rigorously studied the Bible, and rejected the trappings of the world had been replaced --- by fashionable, educated, and civically oriented women....

Tugbake Dining Hall

On this COGIC bullentin board.....

So now I know it had to do with a COGIC Missionary project into Liberia - Africa, County of Maryland..... town of TUGBAKE.

I can always learn something new.... via the Internet

TUGBAKE, Maryland County is a county in the southeastern portion of the West African nation of Liberia.

One of 15 counties that comprise the first-level of administrative division in the nation, it has two districts. Harper serves as the capital with the area of the county measuring 2,297 square kilometres (887 sq mi).[1] As of the 2008 Census, it had a population of 136,404, making it the seventh most populous county in Liberia.[1]

Named after the State of Maryland in the United States, it joined Liberia in 1857. The most populous city in the county is Pleebo with 22,963 residents

National Steering Committee

L-R: Anna Crockett Ford, Supervisor J.V. Hearne, Supervisor Mary Davis, Annie Bailey, Supervisor J.E. McFarland, Supervisor Jennie L. Hunter

Standing: Bishop W. E. Jefferies, Mother B. M. Lang

Mother Bailey & The Board of Seven. . . . COGIC Leaders??

Dr. Annie L. Bailey, National Supervisor COGIC, President Women's International Convention (Served 1964-1975)

Six names (Bishops) were pasted: Wyoming Wells, A.B. McEwen (Chairman Emeritus), J. Bailey, O.M.Kelly, J.O. Patterson (secretary) L. H. Ford

Second photograph is T.B. Sipuel (Oklahoma 1944-1946), ev. Carl Prather, Rev. John Goodman, Rev. Jone Kemp.

Right Up Under My Nose...... Rather

On a wall in my garage. . . there has been hanging for YEARRRRRRssss.. a COGIC poster hung by my daddy - Howard Huggins!

So, hubby pulls it down... I've taken the notes, recording each individual in the photos, several poems, and the 1919 Annual Convocation speech by C. M. Mason! The two great men of my heart are photographed... Bishop T. B. Sipuel and Eld. Howard Huggins

I visited Grandmother Huggins at St. Ann's Nursing Home yesterday evening.... she immediately said that Brent Butler gave this posterboard to your daddy... His mother made it. He didn't want to throw it away... and figured daddy would keep it.

This must have been in the mid-70's.....I notices in the 1987 St. John Church directory - a picture of Rev. Brent & Toni Butler worshipping there for a short time after they left Madison Street COGIC. Mama said he was now living in the Dallas TX area.

Another good instance of my mother's ability to recall and discuss. Just luvin every day she is alive and well and with us!

Dermott Township, Chicot County, AR

Arkansas was admitted to the Union as a slave state on June 15, 1836

Chicot County is located in Southeast Arkansas and is bordered by the following counties: Desha County, Arkansas * Drew County, Arkansas * Ashley County, Arkansas * East Carroll Parish, Louisiana * West Carroll Parish, Louisiana * and Washington County, Mississippi


The village along the tracks contained a rail station, a general merchandise store, a cotton gin, and a saloon. Before 1883, the first mercantile business was Morris & Kimpel, but, in the 1880s, more such stores, along with drug and grocery stores, were established. The town incorporated on August 20, 1890, with J. Tom Crenshaw as mayor. Agriculture was the main economic enterprise. In 1891, 2,500 bales of cotton were exported.

The first public school in Dermott was built for black children during Reconstruction. It was replaced by a state school known as Chicot County High School. In 1899, a boarding school, the Southeast Baptist Academy, opened. It evolved into Morris Booker Memorial High School and College by 1934. Under the leadership of Dr. York Williams, an alumnus who arrived in 1957, the school emerged into a first-rate academic institution. Students began leaving for integrated schools in the 1970s, and the academy eventually closed.

African-American families worked primarily in the agriculture and timber industries, but, as early as 1887, the town had several black doctors. According to an 1899 news article, prominent black citizens owned many businesses downtown.

Good facts running thru my mind! PLUS

FOR thirty years - I guess- that long ago.... my daddy hung a great big poster inside the Woodridge garage. About 40" x 60".... attesting to "...this is the Church of God in Christ!" I can hear the old song....."you cannot join in.... you have to be born in.... this is the Church of God in Christ!"

Quite a treasure.... I hopin it is still legible and not worn as the paper pictures are posted onto it. Where he got it from... I don't know. But I can see why I'm having this thirst to connect to those who have gone on before.

Anxious to get home and photograph the poster tonite. Really thinking of a way to scan and further preserve quite a few old papers daddy has on COGIC.

http://americanhistory.pppst.com/cottongin.html

Faulkner County was formed April 12, 1873 from Conway and Pulaski Counties. Conway is the county seat. It was named for Colonel Sanford C. "Sandy" Faulkner, composer of the fiddle tune, "The Arkansas Traveller."

Faulkner County courthouse is located at 801 Locust St., Conway, AR 72034-5330. Phone: 501-450-4910.

Cities and Towns in the county include: Conway--Damascus--Enola--Greenbrier--Guy--Holland--Mayflower--Mt. Vernon--Quitman--Twin Groves--Vilonia--Wooster

Her 83rd Birthday was Wonderful ! 07-25-2009

My Mama is a Mess...... Yippee ! !

She has sweet-talked an able-bodied young man into being her part-time chauffeur! Ya know, the Parker grandson -- Rodney. Rodney who.. Rodney Wright.

Here's the phone call 11am - Tuesday: "Beva, I want to go to Walmart. Rodney is goin to take me. when, what time, who? Rodney Wright, the Parker boy from Madison Church. At 1:00pm.. today. I've got money....... do u need me to go? or bring u some more money? No, I just want to get out of this place for a while!"

Ok- bye. I call Tana, she double checks. We tell the Nursing aide to put Rodney Wright on the approved list to take mama out.... what else can we say.

Ok -- so by 3-4 pm: Rodney tells Tana that "Oh she had a good time, no- no money to pay me back.... Oh, she wanted some Chic-filet." Then we joked... oh to see Mama eat in your car is a mess..... like she's never had a meal before.... Rodney said..yeah--well---... Tana said he likes to visit and adopts Helen whenever he misses his own grandmother..... How sweet!

So, I'm thankful once again, for Mama being as well as she is. Thank u Lord for each day.

Bury Me In A Free Land

MAKE me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.

If I saw young girls from their mother's arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.

I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.

Frances E. W. Harper

Dad Sipuels' Personal Experience and

background is reflected in COGIC dogma ..... Much like Mason -- our religious experience has sought to reached out and lift up Black Americans primarily in the 19020's from a rural setting -- exhorting them to seek an escape from the Jim Crow South and migrate/move Northward to seek a better way a life, although the 40's-50's and 60's presented harsh realities of urban life.

The primary thinking of the sanctified church has been "If you got individual souls saved, it would lead to transformation of the larger society"

A motto is oft repeated..." AChild Saved.... is a soul saved." (plus a life)!

"The COGIC is possibly the prime example of the self-help tradition in America," says general board member Ithiel Clemmons. "It is a people that started as the children of slaves—sharecroppers, farmers, oppressed people. They asked no one for anything. They migrated to the major cities of America and became successful. They felt that the experience of the baptism of the Holy Ghost took the apostrophe and the t from the word can't, so they could say, 'We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.' "

I Thessalonians 2:14 COGIC

(1897) “Church of God in Christ” was revealed to Bishop C. H. Mason, Little Rock, Arkansas.

COGIC (pronounced COE-jik) is an acronym for Church of God in Christ, the largest Pentecostal, and second-largest African-American church denomination in the United States. But more than being an abbreviation, COGIC has become a word of embodiment. http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj9/millner.html (except portion)

Akin to NAACP or GOP, COGIC conjures up images of the expressive and emotionally intense, hand clapping, foot stomping, tongues speaking, bible toting, joyous singing, body healing, Jesus professing, God fearing, Spirit indwelling experience of a group of black religious folk, collectively known as the sanctified church.

Scripture basis:
“For ye brethren became followers of the Churches of God which in Judea are in Christ Jesus: for ye have suffered like things of your own countrymen even as they have of the Jews.”

Family motto: T. B. Sipuel

Dad Sipuel lived his life under the inspiration of Micah 6:8

"He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is good,‑ and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

Recording My COGIC History - A Timeline

My husband, two daughters and my brother Wendell made a family trip to Lexington MS in June 2008: photos of the First-Historic COGIC.

In their book The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya wrote that because the Church of God in Christ was the only incorporated Pentecostal denomination in existence from 1907 to 1914 - - - - - it was the sole ecclesiastical authority which could ordain ministers.

By 1914, the realities of segregation caused white Pentecostal ministers ordained by Mason to organize the Assemblies of God.

By 1924, most white constituents of remaining interracial churches withdrew to form their own churches, leaving little contact between black and white Pentecostals.

http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/theses/available/etd-0328101-224926/