In 1967, Cleage and the Central Congregational Church commissioned local Black artist Glanton Dowdell to paint a mural of the Black Madonna, replacing a stained glass window depicting the Pilgrims (left from the old Brewster-Pilgrim Congregational Church). The mural was unveiled in Easter Sunday, and polarized the church congregation, with some who were unsympathetic to Cleage's Black Nationalist views leaving the church. However, the 1967 Detroit rebellion accelerated Cleage's activism, and he renamed his church after the mural of the Black Madonna.