Shrine of the Black Madonna

01 / The story of this place

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The building on Linwood Street was built as a Congregational church in 1925, decades before it became a center of the Black Power movement in Detroit. Reverend Albert Cleage Jr. took over the congregation in the 1950s and steadily pushed it toward a theology centered on Black identity and liberation, culminating in 1967 when he unveiled a mural of a Black Madonna and child inside the sanctuary and renamed the congregation the Shrine of the Black Madonna. The move made national news and turned the church into a hub for Black nationalist organizing in Detroit through the late 1960s and 1970s, drawing figures like activist and later congresswoman Barbara-Rose Collins, whose politics were shaped in part by a Stokely Carmichael speech she heard here. Cleage led the congregation, later renamed the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church, until close to his death in 2000. The Linwood Street building remains the church's mother congregation and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021, recognizing its role in Detroit's civil rights history.

1. Built as a Congregational church in 1925
2. Albert Cleage Jr. unveiled the Black Madonna mural here in 1967
3. Founded what became the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church
4. Barbara-Rose Collins was politically shaped by events held here
5. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021