From the archives: the Minisink Community Center and Ma Kline

On a mid-February day in 1957, Alberta T. Kline saw a project come to fruition. Her new youth center, the Minisink Community Center at 532 West 155th Street in Harlem, New York City, was dedicated on the 15th of that month.

The year before, a press release was published that featured a Religious News Service photograph. In the picture, Kline is seen standing in front of a set of large, ornate doors that belong to a community house that had just been purchased by the New York Mission Society. The plan was to renovate the building into a youth center, of which Kline would take charge. Kline served as the director of the New York Mission Society’s Harlem Unit in for 40 years.

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The New York Mission Society — known now as City Mission — was founded in the 1800s with the intent of assisting European immigrants. By 1919, this focus had expanded to include other communities in need. With the economic fallout of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 leading into what would become the Great Depression, the Society aimed its efforts toward the burgeoning Black population in the northern area.

Within a 20-year period, the Black population of Harlem had exploded in size— from 10% in 1910 to 70% by 1930. When the Society began assessing the Harlem area to see where they might expand their work, they noticed that significant work was being done amongst the adult members of the church communities. What was lacking, however, was youth ministry. 

Enter the Harlem Unit of the New York City Mission Society. 

By early 1957, when the community center was dedicated, the Harlem Unit was working through “13 churches, 4 community centers, and Camp Minisink near Port Jervis, New York, with a program aimed at building Christian character in boys and girls, young men and women.” This is gleaned from the backside of the dedication program for the Minisink Community Center, which also mentions that “the diversified program of education and recreation reaches about 7,000 young people each month under the direction of Mrs. Alberta T. Kline, Director for the past 34 years.” In a separate press release published the morning after the dedication ceremony, we learn that the Mission Society as a whole “conducts its total program of 47 programs at 44 locations in Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn and upstate New York.” 

The community center was not Alberta’s first project — and certainly not the last. She’d co-founded Camp Minisink, mentioned above, with Mission Society colleague Daniel Taylor, during the early years of the Great Depression. A historic sleepaway camp now located in Dover Plains, New York, Camp Minisink centered on the children of Black migrants from the South who had re-rooted their lives during the Great Migration in the post-Jim-Crow era. It is still active today, and its legacy lives on through the various Minisink alumni and friends of the group who have dedicated time and effort to uplifting and preserving the heritage of the camp and the programs that made them.

The building that became the Minisink Community Center was neighbor to North Presbyterian Church of Harlem, which collaborated in the project, as did the Church Extension Committee of the New York Presbytery. The building was “originally constructed as a parish house for the North Church,” but had gone unused for several years. Thanks to a $20,000 grant from the Heckscher Foundation for Children, the group was able to renovate the parish house for their purposes. 

Now picture this: more than 600 people gathered together to celebrate this new beginning, raising their voices together in recitation. When prompted by the Rev. David W. Barry, Executive Director of the New York Mission Society, “To thy service, O Lord —" The people answered: “We dedicate this center.” 

Barry had previously served with the National Council of Churches from 1950 to 1954 as director of research and with the Presbyterian Board of National Missions from 1944 to 1947 as director of urban research. On the evening of February 15, 1957, he guided the crowd at Minisink Community Center in the dedication speech. He continued, “To the building of bodies that are strong, and minds that are healthy, and character that is upright and honest —”

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The people answered: “We dedicate this center.”

Barry: “To the building of bridges and understanding and goodwill across barriers of race and language and differing faith —”

The people: “We dedicate this center.”

“To the open heart and open hand that reaches out to help each child that is bewildered or in trouble —”

“We dedicate this center.”

“To the training of responsible citizens who spend their lives not just for themselves, but for a better society of brotherhood and justice and love — To the beauty and truth that can be discovered in everyday life, in friendship and families, in recreation and work and worship, in the relationships of man with his fellow man — To thy service, O Lord, as we may be able to serve thee through service to our brethren —” 

“We here dedicate the Minisink Community Center.”

A few political figures were in attendance, including Assemblywoman Bessie A. Buchanan and U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, though not in attendance, “wired his greetings from Thomasville, Georgia … to Mrs. Alberta T. Kline.” The Rev. Paul Silas Health of the Presbytery of New York was present, as was the Rev. Theodore H. Thielpape, the minister of North Presbyterian Church, which had collaborated on the project.

Alberta Thomas Kline witnessed seven years of growth and success at her new Minisink Community Center before she passed at the age of 65. “Ma” Kline died at the end of February 1964. The New York Times announcement published the following Monday, March 2, shared that the woman known as “Ma” Kline “to thousands of Harlem youngsters,” died at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. Readers learned of her dedication to Camp Minisink, which began in 1930 with one camper and, by her death in 1964, had grown to accommodate 400 campers for two weeks at a time. 

“The Mission Society was her first and single life work,” the remembrance reads. In 1964, the Harlem Unit of the Society alone was reporting a monthly enrollment of more than 7,000. “Until illness forced her to slow down a few years ago,” the article continues, “Mrs. Kline directed a staff of 24 full‐time trained workers at the town house, the community center and at 19 churches and affiliated centers.” Gladys Thorne succeeded her as director in 1961.

"For those who are Harlem natives, the name Minisink carries memories of fellowship and excellence,” the website for The Friends of the Minisink Experiences, Inc. shares. “As the landscape of Harlem has changed, F.O.M.E. upheld a mission to embody the traditions and commemorate the history of Minisink programs.” F.O.M.E. is made up of past campers, counselors, and members of the Minisink community who share a mission of embodying the traditions and history of the camp. The Friends’ nonprofit has carried Mrs. Kline’s memory with them as they’ve upheld the Minisink legacy in her absence.

Eager to know more about Ma Kline and the Minisink sleepaway camp? Read the article "Somebody Bigger than You and I": The African American Healing Traditions of Camp Minisink, published in Genealogy in March 2021.

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