AACHM Oral History: Audrey Monagan

Sun, 07/21/2019 - 3:33pm

Audrey Monagan was born in Ann Arbor in 1941, and grew up in a close-knit, predominantly black neighborhood on North Fifth Ave. She remembers attending Bethel AME Church with her grandparents, spending time at the Dunbar Community Center, and helping raise her younger siblings. She attended Jones School and Pioneer High School before working for General Motors, where she was an inspector for eighteen years. Mrs. Monagan has been married to her second husband, Philip, for 48 years.

AACHM Oral History: Johnnie Mae Seeley

Fri, 09/20/2013 - 4:19pm

Please take a moment to take our Living Oral History Survey and let us know what you learned.

Johnnie Mae Jackson Seeley was raised in Sarepta, Louisiana and moved to Ann Arbor with her husband Howard M. Seeley in 1954. She joined the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor where she was later crowned a Deaconess, and soon she became known for her culinary skills and hospitality, which led to some of the community's largest gatherings, first at her farm on the outside of Ann Arbor and later on Beakes St. For years her garden provided food for Sunday communal meals and for the Human Service Project which donated food to homeless shelters.