Black women in Ypsi have been supporting community for over a century through the Palm Leaf Club

Ypsilanti’s oldest African-American women’s charitable organization, the Palm Leaf Club, has been touching the lives of local children and families for more than a century. The club’s activities range from maintaining Highland Cemetery’s memorial honoring Black Civil War veterans to feeding hot breakfast to children during summer camp programs at Parkridge Community Center and offering college scholarships to local youth.

Paulette Dozier remembers her friend Valerie Eaglin’s mother telling both her and Eaglin 50 years ago that it was time to join the Palm Leaf Club. 

“Behind her back, we were like, ‘We ain’t doing it,'” Dozier says with a laugh. 

But the two women did join. Dozier says that though she received some peer pressure to join the club initially, what kept her coming back was the other women. The club currently has about 11 or 12 active members.

“We were mentored by some wonderful women, very strong women, women who were committed to the community, committed to whatever mission was set before, especially when it pertains to community,” Dozier says.

The Palm Leaf Club grew out of an earlier club established in 1904 as the Trustee Helpers of Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The group separated from the church to become its own nonprofit entity in the ’30s, changing its name to the Palm Leaf Club. It’s affiliated with the Ypsilanti Association of Women’s Clubs, Michigan State Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. 

Current members say they are not certain where the club’s name came from, but it may be related to the Palm Sunday Scholarship Teas the group has held for many years. Mary Eleanora McCoy, the wife of inventor Elijah McCoy, was one of the club’s founding members, but its membership has included many other notable women over the years. They include the first Black woman police officer in Washtenaw County, the first Black woman to serve as an Ypsilanti City Council member, and the first Black woman mayor of Ypsilanti.

The club’s mission is to support the development of the Black community, promote justice and peace, raise the standard of the home and the quality of family life, promote the education of women and girls, and support equal opportunity in all areas of employment.

Club member Judy Jackson says the club has implemented that mission in a variety of ways, from after-school tutoring to being “instrumental” in getting streets paved and streetlights installed on Ypsi’s Southside, as well as starting a community center on the Southside in the ’40s that eventually became Parkridge Community Center.

The club also established a scholarship fund in the ’40s, originally focused on African-American girls. The fund later expanded to include boys. The club still hands out several $1,000 scholarships to students in the Lincoln Consolidated and Ypsilanti Community school districts each year.

More recently, club members have run a Black History Month program at Riverside Arts Center for the last two years, with plans to do another this coming February.

Eaglin says that, while the club has changed its priorities a little to keep up with the times and has added some new duties, “the challenges that were being faced in the 1900s are the same challenges we face today. They just have a different coat.” 

She says the Palm Leaf Club began encouraging young people to attend college during a time when African-Americans were under-represented in higher education. Sadly, that under-representation is still a problem.

“That’s been going on for a while, and so one of the ways to [address] that was the establishment of the scholarship,” Eaglin says.

If there’s one thing Eaglin wants the community to know about the Palm Leaf Club, it’s that “the women in the community have been busy for a very long time, and Palm Leaf has been a very quiet organization.”

Dozier wants the community to know that the club is not all serious business. Some of her favorite memories are of having fun with fellow club members and crushing people’s misconceptions about what women in their 70s can do. She recalls fond memories of the club’s annual “Jeans and Pearls” event at Parkridge Community Center, where members do a dance routine every year to Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman.”

“We have our little choreography, and everyone loves it because, you know, some of us are very seasoned,” Dozier says. “People think when you’re in your 70s you’re old and you can’t do nothing, but then they look at us.”

The greatest challenge for the Palm Leaf Club today is the same challenge Eaglin’s mother faced 50 years ago when she asserted that Eaglin and Dozier would join the club: recruiting younger generations to keep the historic club going into another century.

Jackson says the club recently brought a handful of new, younger members on board, but recruitment continues to be a challenge. The club has traditionally brought on new members through existing members’ families and through churches, but they are now looking to other recruitment outlets, including Eastern Michigan University.

“We need to make sure we are keeping our eyes on the younger folks,” Jackson says. “We’re trying to future out how we reach out and expand our membership through the community. We’re definitely still doing it through the churches, but we’re trying to meet people where they’re at.”

To learn more about the Palm Leaf Club, listen to the Ypsilanti District Library’s “Ypsi Stories” podcast about the club here: https://www.ypsilibrary.org/2021/03/ys-ep5/