I'm Not Afraid of the Black Man Running

I may have related this story before on my old (extinct :()) MySpace blog, but I want to say it again, because I find it funny, and I miss my Dad, even though he's still alive:

So, Dad was living in New York. He was probably engaged at that point to my Mom, or at least they were seriously dating, because he was living in New York, and they moved to Jacksonville after the wedding. (Yawn.) Anyway, Dad went to watch the second Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston fight with a co-worker, who was black, in Harlem. Very important to the story.

(They didn't watch it in person -- I believe it was in Lewiston, ME -- but it was also the 1960s, and they didn't have HBO or Twitter or anything, so they went to an auditorium to watch it on closed-circuit TV).

So, it's the mid-60s, Kennedy's dead, black militarism is on the rise, Clay/Ali is a visible proponent of the Nation of Islam, wokka wokka wokka. Great time to be white in Harlem. My father is particularly blessed, because he is the only non-black person in the auditorium.

Before the fight, they play the National Anthem. My dad's friend (he's black, remember) was also a veteran like my Dad, so he stands up in respect of the anthem. He's the only one. In the entire crowded auditorium-place they are in. Again: They're in Harlem, in the mid-1960s, and standing up for the National Anthem just wasn't something you did if that's where you lived back then. Dad didn't live there, but he's a pretty sharp fellow, so he realized he probably shouldn't stand up, either.

Dad's friend, however, gets mad. He begins to yell at the people around him (I picture him in my head as the best-possible street-corner crazy in the TL), "STAND UP! STAND UP!" and begins motioning with his arms for them to stand up. Dad becomes terrified for his life because he's white and sitting with a guy who's antagonizing a black crowd in the mid-1960s before a fight featuring a nascent, athletic-version of Malcolm X.

But the people around them are also terrified for their lives, because crazy black people scare everyone, I guess, so they stand up.

The fight was over halfway through the first round.