Part II, The Pioneers

Introduction
Part II is a biographical compilation of the key pioneers who helped establish
Our Lady of Victory. You will learn about Anna Bates, the founder of Our
Lady of Victory, and Fr. Alvin Deem, first pastor and a missionary priest. You
will learn about Fr. Hubert Roberge, who was the second pastor and first
archdiocesan priest to serve in an all-black church. The Oblate Sisters of Providence
were the black nuns out of Baltimore, Maryland, and they came to
evangelize and start the new school. Msgr. Ferdinand DeCneudt was the next
archdiocesan priest with a succession of priests to follow. The interviews with
Almeta “Dolly” White and the Carter family will reveal priceless secrets.
You will learn the history of the early pioneers of the mission church.
There were the board of directors of the Parish Credit Union; the appointed
church committee men responsible for certifying all financial and annual
reports and historical data. They include Thomas Lester, Riley Queen, Claude
Carter, William Callis, Edward Wilson, Park R. Thornton, Conrad Gordon,
Alvin R. Wrenn, John W. Luckett, Fred Carruth, Washington Leonard, and
James Anderson.
It is a fascinating account gathered from the archives, personal and telephone
interviews, and photos. So enjoy!

Madre Anna Bates, Founder
It is only fitting to talk about Anna Bates, since she is the reason that Our
Lady of Victory ever came into existence. She was an unassuming person, certainly
no one you would ever have expected to achieve greatness. Many of the
members certainly did not realize her greatness until after she had passed, and
a church wing was named after her. The church family called her Mother
Bates or Madre Bates, whichever they preferred to use. She was small in stature,
brown-skinned, and wore her hair pulled back in a bun and covered with a
tam most of the time. She looked more like a Native-American. She had a
high-pitched voice with a lyrical lilt.
She taught piano to the children in the church and in the surrounding
community. When you entered her home, you always got a whiff of whatever
had been cooking; the very strong, spicy smell permeated the entire house. It
was a small, warm, cozy home. She taught piano lessons in her living room to
all the children in the neighborhood, Catholic and other faiths. A daughter,
Hazel Marie (called Marie by those who knew her), and a grandson, Clifford,
lived with her, and they seemed to be a very tight-knit family. In the midsixties,
Marie was in failing health and moved back home to be cared for by her
mother. She died on March 9, 1967. Anna’s son Keith passed away on August
1, 1978. Both of her children preceded her in death. It seemed so tragic at the
time.

Anna Bates was born in the West Indies in the early twentieth century.
There is some conflicting information regarding the date and place of her
birth. It has been recorded in various articles that she was born Anna Allen on
December 26, 1904, in Bermuda. But research efforts of Philip Fortier, an
Anna Bates fan, reveal that she was actually born on October 9, 1902, in Port
of Spain, Trinidad, and it was believed that she grew up in Montserrat,
another Caribbean island,2 and arrived in Bermuda later on.
During Philip’s many conversations with Anna Bates, he discovered that
her maiden name, Allen, is an old family name from the island of Montserrat.
Her family appears to have had a long legacy in that region.
In 1943, through her own tenacity, she founded a Catholic mission, Our
Lady of Victory, in a little storefront on West Eight Mile Road and Cherrylawn
Street in Detroit, Michigan. Even more impressive was that a mere three
years later, this mission church moved into a facility built from the ground up
for the West Eight Mile Community. A local merchant who had an interest
in the development of the church and the area donated the land. The basement
was dug and a donated structure trucked in and set on top of the foundation.
The usual migration patterns didn’t fit what was happening in this little
community. Normally, black folks took up residence in existing communities
and took occupancy in existing Catholic churches that the white folks left
behind when they moved out of the city. Building the church for black residents
in the city of Detroit was a historic achievement and a tribute to the
resourcefulness of this one little woman who persevered and made it happen.
Madre Bates also founded the new church out of necessity since the nearest
Catholic Church, Presentation on Meyers Road and Pembroke Street, did not
welcome black folks.
Madre Bates immigrated to the United States, settling in Detroit when she
was seventeen and living for over fifty years in Royal Oak Township. At some
point in time, Madre Bates met and married Keith Smith and had two children,
Hazel Marie and Keith Joseph. Her son and his wife, Daisy Smith, had
seven children: Keith Joseph, Jacqueline, Ronald, Mark, Michael, Sonya, and
Clifford. Mother Bates had nine great grandchildren. Daisy resides in the
vicinity of the Madonna parish in Detroit.
There is no information about her marriage to Keith, only that the marriage
broke down and they parted ways. She met and married a minister, the
Rev. Cassius Clay Bates, who was living in Royal Oak Township. Then she
started going to St. James Catholic Church on Nine Mile and Woodward in
Ferndale. According to Daisy, her mother-in-law walked until it got to be too
much to cover the approximate five-mile distance going and coming every
week.
Those familiar with the area can tell you that walking from Royal Oak
Township to St. James was a tremendous undertaking. To do it each Sunday
was surely a test of one’s faith. Daisy said that was about the time that her
mother-in-law started conducting religious instruction in a storefront on her
own before Father Alvin Deem was assigned. Mother Bates contacted Sr.
Ann Molony at Marygrove to help her get started and kept calling the diocese
for a priest. Daisy had no memory of Sr. Ann’s last name but research efforts
of Richard Smith turned up Molony as the probable name.
Madre Anna Bates saw the large number of children in the neighborhood
and envisioned a parish with a school to educate them. That explains her contacts
with Marygrove College, where the nuns of the Immaculate Heart of
Mary (IHM) were living. However, because she was the only Catholic in the
area, their response was not too encouraging. Instead, the sisters referred her
to Msgr. John Ryan, director of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine of the
Archdiocese of Detroit. Again, because there were so few Catholics in the
area, Msgr. Ryan could give no assurances that a church would ever be built.
Madre Bates was not ready to give up on her vision. She saw a need for the
church’s presence in a protestant community in order to win new souls. That
was in direct opposition to Msgr. Ryan’s position that there had to be Catholics
to justify a church in that West Eight Mile Community. Just imagine this
little woman calling the diocese on a regular basis. It took guts and courage to
do it in that time of racial discrimination. The diocese could not continue to
ignore her. She wouldn’t let them.
With Madre Bates’s encouragement, Sr. Mary from Marygrove College
convinced Shelton Johnson, director of Birdhurst Recreation Center, to allow
the sisters to use the center for a summer school program. In the beginning,
there were seventy to eighty children. As word spread, the numbers grew.
On June 25, 1945, summer school opened, and four IHM sisters and the
administrator found 350 children waiting for them. As Madre Bates had predicted,
many children came for the classes, which included religious instruction.
Some of them had to be sent back home with notes stating that there
were not enough teachers to handle the large number of children that day.
Mother Teresa sent two more sisters from the motherhouse in Monroe to
help out immediately. When the summer ended, the parents’ enthusiasm did
not. They wanted the sisters to continue a program of instruction and to hold
classes for adults, as well. Edward Dickens of the Wyman School Board made
a building available to teach the classes. Events moved quickly as attendance
continued to grow.
In the second year of the program, again living at Marygrove, the sisters
were joined by Sr. Ann Maloney, and another nun, Sr. Juletta. Later, they
would be joined by other sisters as well as students from Marygrove and,
together with the dedicated laity, would lay the strong foundation for the
close-knit community of Our Lady of Victory.

In the fall of 1943, Archbishop Edward Mooney asked the Franciscans of
the Cincinnati Province to open a mission for the community at Eight Mile
Road. Fr. Alvin Deem, who arrived at Duns Scotus College in Southfield earlier
that summer, quickly volunteered for the project. Msgr. Ryan obtained the
store at West Eight Mile and Cherrylawn, which a group of seminarians and
brothers from Duns Scotus painted and repaired. When completed, the new
mission was christened Our Lady of Victory. Through the determination and
vision of one formidable woman, Fr. Alvin Deem celebrated the first Mass in
the mission on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi in 1943.
Mother Anna Bates helped Fr. Alvin recruit the McKenzie family. They
were one of the first pioneer families who were baptized and received their
first Holy Communion on May 28, 1944.
Fr. Alvin was moving very quickly to get a new church and school, because
it was becoming very crowded trying to keep Mass down to one service on
Sundays. If the archdiocese had acted in a timely manner, perhaps the land
that had increased in value from $800 to $7,500 could be purchased, anyway.
Indeed, Fr. Alvin wrote to Msgr. Ryan that the money was there. He indicated
in his letter, dated March 12, 1945, that the people in the area had
money and jobs. He made it clear that the money was there to start the process
of building the church and school. He had his pulse on the community and
tried to convey that to the archdiocese. This is part of a letter in which he discussed the cost fluctuation of the land:
I wish you would please tell His Grace before the final decision is made,
that I think it will be possible for the Mission to pay the $5,000—no, make
it $4,000—by June 1 instead of the $2,000.00 I mentioned in the last letter
and the December date. It is possible that by December we could pay the
whole balance between the $800 price once promised and the actual cost of
$7,500.
Of course, the archdiocese did not act on Fr. Alvin’s recommendation, so
an opportunity was missed to acquire land for the church and school in that
year of 1945.
As it turned out, the new church building was erected in 1946. The school
was built eight years later, and Anna Bates became known as the founder of
Our Lady of Victory Mission. Her interest in evangelizing Catholicism and
her concern for the education of children never ceased. Wherever there was a
religious, educational, musical, or cultural gathering, she was there.
The residents of the West Eight Mile Community became familiar with
the sight of Fr. Alvin and Mother Bates walking, visiting, and enlisting converts
for the Catholic Church. Mother Bates remained a source of inspiration
and strength in the community until the day of her death on May 23, 1983.
OLV Mission named its social hall Madre Bates Hall, in a tribute to her
memory, and the name carried over to Presentation’s west wing after the
merger in 1975. She was a woman of great faith and a role model to her community.
According to Philip, there had been, among people who were familiar with
her work, some talk of elevating Madre Anna Bates to the status of sainthood
after she was laid to rest. Certainly, she figured prominently in the history of
black Catholic affairs in the city, and many people recognized her holiness.

Next week: Fr. Alvin Deem