Brian Ellison and his mother, Clida Ellison, toured parts of the world visiting religious spots, left photo. Clida Cora Martinez Ellison’s sons stand by her gravesite (from left to right): Brian Ellison, Keith Ellison, Anthony Ellison, Leonard Ellison and Eric Ellison.
Photos courtesy of Brian Ellison
Longtime Detroiter Clida Cora Martinez Ellison was truly a woman of the people.
As a dedicated child advocate, social worker and devoted wife and mother of five accomplished men, Martinez Ellison didn’t take her foot off the gas as she navigated through life full speed ahead giving all that she had to those who needed it most.
Martinez Ellison, who passed at 82 years of age on March 26, 2020, due to COVID-19 complications left a legacy that is one for the books.
The matriarch leaves behind her beloved husband, Dr. Leonard Ellison Sr., and their five sons: Dr. Leonard Ellison Jr., Rev. and Attorney Brian Ellison, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Attorneys Anthony Ellison and Eric Ellison – who were all were impacted by her shining light, according to her obituary.
Martinez Ellison, described as the “bedrock of her family,” was a dedicated member of Gesu Catholic Church of Detroit on the city’s northwest side.
Proudly hailing from Natchitoches, La., she had deep Creole roots and knew her way around the kitchen when she routinely threw down and made her famous gumbo.
“Mom was a cook, a very good cook — she made everything. When you think of Louisiana creole food, she made it very good,” one of her son’s Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said, listing off succulent dishes she made including shrimp creole, gumbo and red beans and rice.
As a graduate of Xavier University of New Orleans in 1959, Martinez Ellison earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in medical technology. Martinez Ellison raised five sons while working with her husband as the office manager of his medical practice, according to her obituary.
Keith Ellison told the Michigan Chronicle that his mother was so many things to him, including a storyteller and a jokester who had shared stories over the years of her life, including growing up on a farm in Louisiana with her sometimes-temperamental horse named Pocketbook.
“One time he wouldn’t let her on – she had to walk back … and was crying all the way [home] to her grandmother, who played a key role in raising her,” Keith Ellison said, adding that on that particular day her grandmother had made some biscuits for her. “That made her happy.”
Martinez Ellison’s food was so flavorful that she was featured on a TV cooking show and through her accomplished works and kind heart, she has a notable paper trail online.
“Google her — she has her own sort of persona out there,” he said, adding that his mother, most of all, had a big heart that enveloped all the multifaceted aspects of her life. “[She was] proud of her family.”
Raising her five sons who turned out to be pillars of society was something Martinez Ellison did with her husband at her side and God in her heart.
“It was her,” Keith Ellison said of his mother’s keen eye to draw out a person’s best qualities. “She was the one who taught us how to fight back; how to not back down. She was the one who taught us Black history, Black pride. … That is my ma.”
At 11 a.m. November 27 a memorial is slated for Martinez Ellison at Gesu Catholic Church, 17139 Oak Dr. In Detroit, and open to the public.
Keith Ellison (the first Muslim person to win election to a statewide office in the U.S. and the first African American elected to a Minnesota statewide office) said that his Catholic mother was not only accepting of his religious conversion but she supported him with humor only she could possess.
“One day she was going on about how good her Thanksgiving ham was and how I need to have some ham,” Keith Ellison said, adding that he reminded her he was Muslim. “She said, ‘You sure? that’s good, more ham for me.’ It was never an issue.”
Keith Ellison — who keeps a Quaran gifted from his mother on his desk to this day — said that his mother never let people’s different ways be a blockage to her loving them but rather an “inclusive soul.”
“She was an absolute pillar of the church,” said Jesuit Fr. Robert Scullin, former Gesu’s pastor from 2009 through 2017 in a Detroit Free Press article about Martinez Ellison.
Martinez Ellison also served Gesu as a eucharistic minister, a youth group co-founder, and led a life driven by example, according to the article.
Martinez Ellison’s son, the Rev. Brian Ellison, a pastor and lawyer, told the Michigan Chronicle that his mother was always putting her faith at the forefront.
Rev. Ellison shepherds Church of the New Covenant in Detroit, a stone’s throw away from Gesu.
“It is literally a half a mile away from my church – we did a lot of fellowshipping; Catholics and Baptists,” Rev. Ellison said, adding that he and his mother often went on religious pilgrimages together. “I was able to share in a very intimate way my mom’s Christian faith and we traveled the world together.”
Rev. Ellison added that their bond was one that many other people experienced as well with his mother going the extra mile for so many in the community as a social worker.
“[She] took her mothering of five boys and applied it to Wayne County — she was loved,” he said, adding that his mother’s love for her family also spoke volumes, especially when she cared for her sick husband who suffered a debilitating stroke decades earlier. “She had a rippling effect — generational and consequential.”
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