Aug. 5, 1955, Cleveland, Ohio

By Mansfield B. Frazier

Few men, I would venture to guess, can — upon reflection years later — recall the instance or incident whereupon they started to become men; where, when and what happened that caused them to take their first, tentative, mental step onto the bridge that would ultimately lead them across the yawning chasm that separates soft, carefree puberty from the onset of the hardening of eventual manhood. Fortunately for me I can recall the time and date of the beginning of my personal transition with such an evocative clarity I swear it seems as if the vignette played out only yesterday.

It was not something I did but rather something I, in the waning moments of my childhood, was about to witness. It was to be one of those father/son lessons that have been transmitted down from generation to generation since the beginning of time. The type of lesson that is taught by doing, not by telling — the type which becomes permanently ingrained on the psyche of the young person on the receiving end in such an indelible manner that it lasts a lifetime. A lesson learned simply by the witnessing of it; not by being told how to be a man, but by simply watching a man be a man.

It had been a stiflingly hot midsummer day in the neighborhood where I was born, at home, above the pool room that sat next door to the tavern and barbecue joint owned by my father. It sat on the northwest corner of Scovill Avenue and E. 31st Street, on the land now occupied by Jane Adams High School on the renamed Community College Avenue.

The corner across 31st Street was occupied by the only fairly new building in the area, Silks Bar. Old man Bob Roberts had built it and his son, a foreman with the city sanitation department, ran it. Silks was definitely more upscale that my father’s joint, King’s Tavern and Grill … which was pretty dumpy by comparison, but never seemed to lack for customers. Due to the proximity of the two watering holes — and the pool room to boot — this was one of the busiest corners on the entire eastside of Cleveland back in the day. At times it literally teemed with street people.

Day was fading to early evening and the “Corner,” as it was called, was crowded with people just out trying to get some relief from the heat. After all, it was Friday, and this was where everyone hung out. I was leaning on the fender of my father’s Oldsmobile that was parked directly in front of the tavern, talking to him. He was telling me about a fishing spot he was going to take me and my brother (and usually a bunch of other kids from the neighborhood) to the next day. It was someplace we’d never been to before. Always regaling me with yarns and tall tells, he’d said that the fishing there was so good that you had to hide behind a tree to bait your hook.

Oftentimes during the day and early evening hours — while there was still light enough to see — there would be a crap game on the 31St Street (my bedroom window was right above it so I learned colorful and salty language at an early age) but the police never caught anyone shooting craps since there was always a lookout posted on Scovill to shout “raise up” before a cop car got within two blocks of the corner. But this night there was no crap game, just people trying to cool off.

So there was no need for anyone to yell “raise up” when the cop car pulled up on the corner, and actually jumped the curb with two wheels, forcing people to scramble to get out of the way to avoid being hit. Two big, beefy Irish cops got out of their car and began walking though the crowd of people, swinging their nightsticks at people’s knees to make them move.

“Move it, move it,” the cops said, and people began to slowly move away, or at least out of the range of the nightsticks. Some of the men, and a few of the women, were grumbling (albeit, half under their breath) as they moved that no one was breaking any laws, so why were they being dispersed? I automatically began to move, even thought the cops were not that close to us yet, but they certainly were heading our way. My father, who had huge, strong hands, grabbed me on the upper arm and said, “Where are you going? Don’t move.”

Now, even though no laws were being broken, no one was going to openly challenge the authority of the police; in my neighborhood, when a cop said move, you moved.

The bigger of the two cops came our way, and I was, as the saying goes, feeling trapped between a rock and a hard place; between my father who has told me not to move, and the cop, who is telling everyone to move. While I feared the cop, I respected my father, and respect won out over fear. I didn’t move.

“You too, Mansfield,” the cop said to my father (his name was Mansfield too, I’m a junior). “Move it.”

My father, who had been looking dead ahead, not to the side from where Murphy was approaching, turned to face the cop and in the calmest of voices, but loud enough for everyone to hear, and looking directly into the big cop’s eyes, said, “Murphy, I’m leaning on my car, in front of my business, talking to my son, and if you try to hit me on the knee with that nightstick I’m going to take it from you and shove it up your ass.”

My father then slowly turned his head away from the Murphy (who was beginning to turn a bright shade of beet red) in a dismissive manner, as if to say, “Go ahead, take your best shot, do whatever you got the guts to do, cause I ain’t scared, I didn’t mumble and I definitely ain’t moving.”

My whole universe froze; everyone who had been moving away stood stock still, as if transfixed, waiting to see what would happen next. I’d never seen anyone challenge a police officer before, and I doubt if any of the other folks on that corner that evening had ever witnessed it either, at least not with the person living to talk about it. This was uncharted territory we were about to enter, and no one knew what the outcome would be … but, if the past were to serve as an indicator of what was about to happen next, it was about to get real ugly on the corner of 31st and Scovill. White cops just didn’t take that kind of talk off a black man, any black man … no way, no how. And my father clearly was not in the mood to take anything off of any white cop. Something was going to have to give … or explode. My father always had an army-issue Colt 45 automatic in his pocket under his bartender’s apron.

Being largely sheltered — at least to that point in my young life — from the sting of racism by a strong black father, I didn’t have the pent-up hatreds boiling inside of me that the black adults who were witnessing this event unfold must have harbored. Hatreds spawned by the daily insults — both large and small — that had to be stoically endured by virtually all African Americans just to make it through the day if they functioned in the white owned and controlled world. Society had taught them that it was safer to “take low,” as the old folks used to say, to be non-threatening, to cast your eyes down, and, when you are told by someone in a position of authority to move, you moved.

But my father wasn’t moving. His stand on this hot summer night wasn’t — I don’t think — planned or premeditated; and he certainly wasn’t seeking to become some kind of martyr, living or dead. No, I think, these many years later, that he was — consciously or unconsciously — teaching me a lesson about manhood by simply being a man.

Murphy, who was taken completely aback, was totally at a loss as to what to do. They didn’t teach this at the Police Academy … niggas just moved when they were told to move, that was how it went down in the ghetto. And then, after what seemed like an eternity, Murphy turned on his heels, and with as much gruffness in his voice as he could still muster, said to his partner, “Let’s go,” as if they had very important business elsewhere.

It was at that moment that I started to grow up. It was from that point forward that I began to measure all of my actions in life by one simple question: What would my father do? And, while I have certainly at times strayed from the path that he would have wanted me to take, I have never lost sight of the values, the pride, and the sense of manhood that he implanted in me. To this very day (even though he is now 25 years in his grave) he — as it should be— remains my guiding light, my conscience, and my bright, shining hero.

Of course the incident became part of the lore and legend of our neighborhood, growing exponentially over the years with virtually each retelling: the time that Mansfield stood up to the police. While he might have done this as a lesson in how to be a man for me, everyone there that evening (and some people who weren’t even there) claimed it … he was doing it for them, for each and every one of them. He had, by simply standing his ground, reclaimed for them a little piece of their dignity, some of their humanity that is lost, sacrificed to the ugly gods of institutionalized racism on a daily basis.

I would see my father stand up for himself — and for others — many times over the years in the rough-and-tumble Cleveland neighborhood we lived in, but this was the incident that, at age 12, marked the beginning of my journey into manhood. The date was Aug. 5, 1955, and slightly less then four months later, on Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks would refuse to give up her seat on a Birmingham bus. Looking back over the 50-plus years I often wonder if the two events were somehow, in some metaphysical or spiritual way, connected … at least I like to think so.

Mansfield B. Frazier is a former newspaper editor and columnist who resides in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife Brenda and their two dogs Gypsy and Ginger. Since his retirement he devotes his time to writing only what he is passionate about and interested in.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 | Email This Post

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