Remembering Janie Cousar Kinloch [10 JULY 2021]

Pallbearers Sons and Grandsons Flower Bearers Family Members and Friends Interment WOODLAWN CEMETARY 19975 Woodward Avenue Detroit, MI 48203 (Please turn your light on during the processional)

Arrangements Entrusted To SWANSON FUNERAL HOMES – NORTHWEST CHAPEL 14751 West McNichols Rd. Detroit, Michigan 48235 313-272-9000

Saturday, July 10, 2021 Homegoing Service: 11:00 a.m.

Triumph Church – East Campus 2760 E. Grand Blvd. – Detroit, Michigan 48211 Reverend Robert Smith, Jr. - Eulogy Reverend Lawrence G. Vaughan - Presiding

Acknowledgment of Appreciation It is with sincere appreciation that our family wishes to express gratitude for the outpouring of love demonstrated during this transition of our beloved. Special thanks to the Michael Kemp & New McFall Brothers Funeral Home, Bankole Thompson, LaShawn Jimenez, Sommer Woods and so many others for making this moment a celebration fit for a Queen.

Reflections

Celebration of Life and Faith for MOTHER JANIE COUSAR-KINLOCH Officiating

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Processional

Old Testament Reading

New Testament Reading

Prayer of Comfort

Community Tribute

Music Selection

BRIDGE OF

Pastor Lawrence Vaughn Pastor, Triumph Church (Flint Campus) Visiting Pastors & The Family Triumph Church Mass Choir Bishop Greg Davis Founder & Pastor, Celebration Church (Detroit, MI) Pastor Robert Bolden Central Baptist Church (Detroit, MI) Pastor Breonus Mitchell Gilead Missionary Baptist Church (Nashville, TN) Bankole Thompson Editor-in-Chief, The PuLSE Institute Columnist, The Detroit News Pastor John P. Kee Renowned Gospel Music Recording Artist Pastor New Life City of Praise (Charlotte, NC)

LOVE

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Portia Rainey

Civic/Clergy Tribute Acknowledgement of Cards and Condolences Family Tribute Musical Selection

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Psalm 23 (KJV)

Eulogy

Recessional

Various Elected Officials, Community Leaders and Visiting Pastors Staci Williams Triumph Church (Detroit, MI) Robin Kinloch (The Kinloch Family) “As Long As You’re There” Triumph Church Praise Team Rev. Robert Smith, Jr. New Bethel Baptist Church (Detroit, MI) “Your Tears” Triumph Church Praise Team

Janie Cousar-Kinloch: Honoring The Life Of A Black Cultural Matriarch

Reflections

The remarkable and formidable life of Janie Cousar Kinloch did not come to an end on July 3, 2021, but opened a new chapter for her family to build upon her redemptive legacy of faith, love, generosity and justice. She was the fabric and glue that kept the Kinloch family together.

Any definition of the history of the struggles of Black women — and women in general — is incomplete if it fails to capture the contributions made by women such as Janie Cousar Kinloch throughout the great pipelines of history and especially in the Jim Crow South.

A proud daughter of the American South, Janie Cousar Kinloch, commonly referred to as Mother Kinloch, was born on March 7, 1943 in Dillon County, South Carolina, a state that is central to the Black experience because of its deep and sordid history as one of the major anchors of slavery, and a founding member of the Confederacy.

Born to Archester “Tang” Cousar, Sr. (1900-1975) and Copearl Cousar-McCall (1914-1978) just two years before the end of the 1945 Second World War II in a state, where the American Civil War began, and where the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter in 1861, and in Dillon County, Mother Kinloch, understood that life wasn’t going to be easy as she toiled from dawn to dusk on the cotton fields of South Carolina.

Despite the weariness, uncertainty and the hardship she faced picking cotton in Dillon County, whose economy was largely based on agriculture as cotton remained one of the dominant products, Mother Kinloch, was determined to rise out of the Jim Crow South and join the Great Migration to the North. She embarked on that journey to Detroit in 1967, the same year that the race rebellion rocked the Motor City to join her late husband, Solomon W. Kinloch Sr., who had just settled in the city months earlier.

Coming to Detroit as part of the Great Migration was a pivotal moment in Mother Kinloch’s life as many Blacks started leaving the South in 1916 because of the unbearable conditions, and the migration in search of greener pastures continued throughout the watershed era of the Civil Rights Movement. As the renowned African American historian and author Isabel Wilkerson noted poignantly in the Smithsonian Magazine, “The rivulet would become rapids, which grew into a flood of six million people journeying out of the South over the course of six decades. They were seeking political asylum within the borders of their own country, not unlike refugees in other parts of the world fleeing famine, war and pestilence.”

Any approach to fully understanding the hardships that Black women went through before the suffrage movement began must first appreciate the contributions of Mother Kinloch, whose wisdom remained a fountain of power in raising and caring not only for her children and other immediate family members, but also those who were connected to them. Her admonishment had prophetic resonance, prevailing on her children and grandchildren to reckon with the great ideals of justice, fairness, charity and love.

A talented seamstress, Mother Kinloch, used her skill of sewing clothes for her clients to earn an honest living because she believed that there is dignity in labor. One of the few vocations that were available to Black women who were confined at the bottom of the social order during and after the Antebellum period, seamstresses used their marketable skills to lead autonomous and productive lives. They were a stabilizing force in the Black community because they found freedom in the work they did as dressmakers. Consequently, they asserted control over their own entrepreneurial destiny in a vocation that would become a rewarding enterprise for Black women who came out of bondage.

One of the enduring qualities of Mother Kinloch’s life, which shed light on the promise of freedom and the strength exemplified by Black women like her whose experiences were rooted in the history of the cruel of the

institution of slavery, was her courage and resilience. She demonstrated courage at every turn of her life, and did not allow herself to be subdued by the conditions that defined her birth. Determined that her destiny won’t be shaped by the environment she was born into, Mother Kinloch, refused to give in to a distorted perspective on Black life. Instead, she instilled strong racial pride and confidence in her children by exhorting them to “never walk around with their head down,” but rather to “always hold your head up.”

When Sojourner Truth, a former slave, and one of the leading abolitionists of the 19th century, delivered her consequential “Ain’t I a Woman,” speech at the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, she was speaking to a future generation of Black women such as Mother Kinloch, whose courage would shape the essence of Black womanhood and humanity in their communities. She simply upheld the virtue of courage.

Mother Kinloch was the Sojourner Truth of the Kinloch family. She did not urge her children to run away from difficulties but to learn to confront and overcome challenges and the indignities of life. She told her children: “always be a leader, not a follower,” insisting that they lead meaningful and exemplary lives that would enrich their community.

Like Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Mother Kinloch gave voice and authenticity to her children during their formative years and in their yearning to live a socially conscious and admirable life and helped them find their own rainbows in the clouds. Her life was guided by the dictates of what Angelou once said that, “when it looked like the sun would not shine anymore, each of us has the possibility of being a rainbow in the clouds to somebody else.”

Mother Kinloch was the tree that stood tall with flowers of love for the entire community to benefit. She demonstrated this as a benevolent cook. She understood that cooking was essential to the human spirit and that it can be used to bring people together around the table of life, ensuring that our shared humanity matters more than the personal and sometimes trivial matters that have no redeeming value for the public good. Through her cooking, she was able to weave together the strands of personal history in connection with the dynamic essence of a collective history.

Mother Kinloch understood that she would not live forever. She saw the truth in the writings of William Shakespeare. He said: “All the world’s a stage. And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances.”

Mother Janie Cousar Kinloch crossed every Rubicon with grace and dignity. She found her place in history and showed her family and the community what one individual can do. She was a tremendous force for good and a phenomenal woman that the Kinloch family and Triumph Church have lost to the ages. Nothing can replace her principled voice and her powerful wisdom.

Mother Kinloch was preceded in death by her husband, Solomon Willie Lee Kinloch Sr.; son-nephew, Carl McInnis; sisters, Sally Wade, Reatha Pearl Adams and Sue Williams; as well as brothers, Archester Cousar Jr., John Wesley Cousar and Harold Cousar. She is survived by two remaining sisters, Addie Cousar and Dora Dunagan, and five children: Lana Kinloch, Jonathan Kinloch, Shantellia Kinloch, Rev. Solomon W. Kinloch Jr. (Robin) and Melissa Kinloch. She leaves behind thirty-three grandchildren, great-grandchildren and a host of nieces, nephews, family, and friends.