Smokin' Joe

by Mark Kram, Jr.

  Blacks with arrest warrants became so fearful of injury at the hands of the Philadelphia police that they arranged to turn themselves in to Philadelphia Daily News columnist Chuck Stone, a former Tuskegee Airman and speechwriter for the flamboyant Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell. From 1972 until 1991, more than seventy-five suspects paraded into the newsroom, checked in at the receptionist desk, and surrendered to Stone, who would summon the police and see to it that no undue harm came to them. Gene Seymour, his nephew, worked as a reporter at the Daily News for a period during those years and remembered, “When one of them came in, the newsroom clerk would say, ‘Here comes another one.’ They would have to find Charlie, who would come in from wherever he had been and accompany the suspect to the Roundhouse for booking.” Although Stone said that he and Rizzo had “some riotously fun-filled lunches together” and that he found him to be “charming, generous, gregarious, and a delightfully quick mind,” he hammered him as a public servant, calling him “a political exercise in dishonesty, an apologist for police brutality, and a destructive manipulator of city government.” While Stone only knew Frazier in passing, he lamented how Joe and Ali had become divided by ideology. Yet he added in 1974: “Joe Frazier knowingly made his choice, and the black community will never let him forget it.”

  Letters to the Daily News during the 1970s came down hard on Frazier as a surrogate for the white establishment. A letter in November 1970 said Frazier “has done nothing to help blacks become shareholders in Cloverlay” and that he could “never be respected by his people like they respect Muhammad Ali.” Hand rebutted that in a letter a week later, saying that “many” of the 870 shareholders were black and that Frazier and Cloverlay “do many fine and commendable things in the community to further a deeper love and understanding between the white and black race [sic].” When Frazier showed up at campaign events held by Rizzo the following spring, he was excoriated by a reader who claimed, “Joe Frazier is an Uncle Tom campaigning for the white man. His head will be the first Rizzo beats when he gets into office. . . . What is the world coming to?” The reader added that he did not consider Frazier either “a black brother or a soul brother.” Raged another reader, “Frazier, you have some nerve to want Rizzo as mayor. Don’t you know what he would do to us?” In an interview with Hochman on the subject of Rizzo, Frazier said he had attended some dinners for him “because I consider him a friend. If a black candidate had invited me, I would have gone to his dinners.” Frazier argued that he had endorsed no one.

  Even if he had not done so officially, it was clear where his loyalties lay. Of the coziness that existed between Frazier and Rizzo, Lester Pelemon observed, “I never liked it, but I would have never told Joe that. He was the boss.” Closer to home, his political leanings were met with tongue lashings by his sisters Mazie and Bec, whose daughter Dannette would remember them howling, “You dumb-ass, what are you thinking?” And Joe would reply, “Come on now, none of that.” Although Rizzo was then a Democrat (he would later become a Republican), he was unlike any of the Democrats favored through the years by Mazie and Bec, both of whom were savvy and politically active women. In the days when Bec worked as a union organizer in the South, which always seemed to place her in some precarious circumstances, Frazier would occasionally accompany her, if only to keep her clear of harm. He knew the dangers that existed for a black man or woman in the South and had come to understand that it was no better in the North, where he would always sleep with a loaded gun under his pillow. Denise remembered years later, “Joe always had guns around.”

  Gang activity was on the upswing in Philadelphia in those days, despite the pledge by Rizzo to clean it up. The Black Mafia crime syndicate had established a foothold in the city, specializing in drugs and extortion, and would operate in conjunction with the Nation of Islam out of Mosque No. 12 on North Broad Street, only a few short blocks from where Cloverlay opened up the gym for Joe in the spring of 1970. Due to what his business manager Gene Kilroy called a tendency to be “gullible and naïve,” Ali brushed up against these criminal elements during the three years he lived in Philadelphia and Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Major Coxson—whom Ali had jokingly referred to as his “gangster”—would be gunned down with his wife and two children by members of the Black Mafia during a home invasion in Cherry Hill over an apparent drug deal gone wrong, less than a mile from where Ali had purchased a house from Coxson. Headed in Philadelphia by Jeremiah Shabazz, the NOI had been at odds with Coxson over his chummy relationship with Ali, despite the fact that Ali remained under a one-year suspension by Elijah Muhammad for his March 1969 announcement on The Tonight Show that he was willing to fight for money again.

  Even as Mosque No. 12 would become a haven for young boxers who lined their pockets with the spoils of criminal endeavor—the trainer George James said he worked with a handful of them—Frazier was spared any interference from Shabazz or his ilk, perhaps to some extent because of the “firewall” that Joe had created by aligning himself with Rizzo. According to Frank Rizzo Jr., “Franny,” who later served for sixteen years as a Republican member of the Philadelphia City Council, his father would call Joe if he or one of his men spotted him with the wrong people and say, “Hey, Champ. You gotta act like the Champ.” Rizzo hated Shabazz, and years later he would accuse him of being behind a fire on South Street that had been set during a robbery by elements of the Black Mafia. Joe Hand said Rizzo confronted Shabazz in a restaurant and told him, “I know what you did, and I am going to get you for it, you son of a bitch.” Hand would remember that Rizzo had a Black Panther agitator hauled into the Roundhouse, sat him down in a chair, and barked, “If I ever again see you cross that bridge from New Jersey, those boots you are wearing are going to be filled with blood.” Hand said simply, “Nothing was going to happen to Joe.” Of Joe’s relationship with Rizzo, Pastor Kenneth Doe added: “His momma Dolly would probably have said, ‘The Lord put that white man there to protect my boy.’”

  Beyond whatever protection he received from Rizzo—which included the loan of his personal bodyguards as needed—Frazier seemed to enjoy the easy access he had to power. Franny told me it was not uncommon for Joe to drop in unannounced to see his father. He remembered, “Even if Dad was in a meeting, he would stop and say to whoever was in his office, ‘Would you like to say hello to Joe Frazier?’ And he would wave Joe in.” Franny believes that Frazier certainly helped his father politically in the black community. “He had a lot of influence among the row-house folks, preachers, corporate executives,” said Franny. “Joe would tell them, ‘You don’t know him the way I do.’” While Frazier would always say that he did not favor one political party over the other, he had a bias toward law-and-order candidates and, over the years, lent his support to Republican presidential candidates Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. Contrary to the prevailing belief, he found himself sharing the same political space as Ali, who migrated across the years from a confirmed racial separatist in the 1960s to a malleable advocate for conservative causes. In fact, Ali even appeared to be on the same page as Rizzo, telling Hochman in 1975: “I like what I hear about him. I like his looks.” He did not hold Rizzo accountable for not “cleaning up the black neighborhoods,” adding: “People got to clean up their own neighborhoods.”

  By virtue of his friendship with Rizzo, Frazier came to know Nixon during the first term of his presidency. Hand said that when Nixon came to Philadelphia, he used to huddle up alone with Rizzo inside his helicopter. Nixon was so enamored with how Rizzo had cracked down on crime that he eyed him to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation when J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. According to Denise, Joe had encountered Nixon at an event in Washington in 1969 or thereabouts and the subject of “Clay” came up. Nixon asked him if it would be helpful to him if he arranged it that “Clay” could fight again. Joe said that it would. Joe told Denise that Nixon then asked, “Do you think you can beat that motherfucker?” Joe looked at him in disbelief and replied, “Yes, sir.”
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  Of the ten members on the Cloverlay board of directors, only Arthur Kaufmann stood opposed to a showdown between Joe and “Clay.” From his position as a top executive of Gimbels for twenty-three years, Kaufmann became a leading figure in the city, serving as president of the Chamber of Commerce and cochairman of the local Olympic Committee. He had become acquainted with Frazier during his gold-medal quest and was the largest shareholder in Cloverlay. Although Kaufmann had not served in uniform himself, he worked as the civilian aide to the secretary of the army from 1954 to 1979 and had deep connections within the Pentagon, once appearing on the same dais with General William Westmoreland at the Valley Forge Military Academy. Consequently, he looked upon “Clay” with antipathy, and could not sit still as Joe “tarnished” his wholesome, All-American image by consorting with a draft dodger. Anchored behind the desk of his flag-draped office in Center City, Kaufmann told Philadelphia Evening Bulletin columnist Sandy Grady: “If Clay wants to fight, let him fight the Viet Cong.”

  Contractually, Kaufmann had no say in who Frazier fought. Yank Durham decided that, and his authority was inviolable. But Kaufmann remained firm in his belief that Frazier should not fight “Clay” until he served his hitch in the army or a jail sentence. When the Cloverlay board held a vote in November 1970 to approve a bout against “Clay” that had been proposed for Florida, which appeared to have the backing of Governor Claude R. Kirk, Kaufmann cast the only dissenting ballot. He told Grady: “I cannot condone anyone, whether it be the world heavyweight champion or Joe Doakes, flagrantly violating the law of the land, and especially a law having to do with the security of the country. . . . The dollars Joe Frazier receives will never restore his good reputation or his own self-respect.” Kaufmann stepped down from the board. Neither Joe nor Durham weighed in publicly with comment on Kaufmann, yet Cloverlay attorney Bruce Wright did say that if it came to it, Joe would fight “Clay” in whatever prison to which they sent him. Hand remembered, “Even having a vote was silly. Joe fought who Yank said he would fight. Period.”

  Early efforts to find an agreeable host city for Ali-Frazier were blocked. When it was proposed in August 1968 to bring it to Albuquerque, New Mexico, boxing commissioner Tim Kelleher said he would only approve it if he received the okay from General Lewis Hershey, the director of the Selective Service. Kelleher told the Albuquerque Journal: “You get Hershey to write us a letter saying this is a good idea and I’ll buy the first ticket.” Up in Philadelphia, Coxson held a press conference at the Bellevue Stratford a year later saying that he had procured a license for his friend Ali from the Mississippi Athletic Association and that the bout would be held on December 15 at the Jackson Coliseum. Upon hearing that, Frazier replied, “Is he crazy? What am I gonna do down there? How am I even going to get there? Even the Greyhounds don’t go down to Mississippi.” Florida was in the running with an intriguing proposal by Murray Woroner, who had come to some small fame by producing a computer-simulated bout that year between Ali and Rocky Marciano. Woroner envisioned Ali and Frazier facing each other in an actual bout in a film studio in South Miami, with only the press and perhaps two thousand spectators in attendance. The bout would be broadcast to closed-circuit venues worldwide.

  Eagerly, Wright observed, “This could be the shape of the future.” Although he had been working with Dundee to set up the unification match with Ellis, he quickly set that aside in anticipation of the “dream bout” with Clay in February or March 1970. Upon hearing of the negotiations that were taking place, Governor Kirk said he loved the idea of bringing the fight to Florida. He added that he would love it even more if it were held in Tampa instead of South Miami, which encouraged Wright to withdraw from stalled talks with Woroner. Although Kirk had no legal jurisdiction over who received boxing licenses in Florida—those decisions were up to the commissions in each city—the young Republican who in the 1960 presidential campaign had headed up Floridians for Nixon observed: “Florida is the sports capital of the world, and this fight will only help to enhance its image.” But the Tampa City Council came out against it, as did four Florida congressmen and the Tampa Tribune, which carried an editorial opposing it under the headline: WE OBJECT—CONSCIENTIOUSLY. Nor were the citizens of Orlando too pleased when it was proposed to bring the bout there. Thus, forty-eight hours after giving the fight his blessing, Kirk announced that he “heard from enough people in Florida to know that they do not want to have the fight take place here.” Two months later, Frazier stepped into the ring with Ellis and unified the championship.

  With Ali unavailable and no other immediate challengers lined up, Frazier headed off to Las Vegas, where he and the Knockouts were booked into a lounge at Caesars Palace for a two-week engagement. Sharing the bill with him were singer Nancy Wilson and comedians Godfrey Cambridge and Norm Crosby. At a 10 P.M. show, near the end of his run, Frazier was in the second chorus of “Knock on Wood” when his feet flew out from under him as he executed a split. “They must’ve waxed the floor or something,” Frazier said. With a throbbing right ankle, he came back out for the 2 A.M. show before going to the emergency room, where it was learned that he had a fractured ankle. Chagrined that he was unable to squeeze into his “groovy suit,” he was back onstage forty-eight hours later in a full leg cast. He sat on a stool as he sang. Crosby quipped: “I’ve worked with a lot of great casts, but this is ridiculous.” Doctors told him he would have to wear the cast for six weeks.

  “The itching drove him crazy,” Denise said. “I had to stick a coat hanger in there and scratch it. And he would say, ‘No, no, no. Over more!’ He had it only two and a half weeks when he told me to cut it off. He said, ‘The doctors overreacted.’ To loosen it up, he stuck his leg in the shower. I got in there with a serrated bread knife and began sawing it. The wetter it got, the more the plaster came apart. Finally, with him pulling at it and me cutting it, it came off. I rubbed his leg down with a loofah for a half hour and applied Jergens lotion to it. He got up and walked like nothing had ever happened.”

  Joe joined the Knockouts for some concert dates in South Carolina and then followed Sammy Davis Jr. into the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill. With the assistance of Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, who opened for him and pitched in as backup singers, Frazier performed two shows nightly before crowds that were so sparse that Daily News columnist Hochman observed that “a guy could get snow-blind staring at the empty tablecloths. . . . Which is too bad, because Frazier the singer is like Frazier the fighter, busy all the time, holding nothing back. And how many honest, lay-it-on-the-line guys are around today?” Toward the end of his two-week engagement, Frazier could not conceal his disappointment at the poor turnouts. He told Philadelphia Inquirer writer Jack Lloyd that he knew people looked upon him as “another athlete going into show business, just a gimmick to bring people out and disappoint them.” But he remained hopeful that he could prove to people that he was more than that. To accomplish that, he said he and the Knockouts should go back into the studio and record some of their own stuff. He planned to create his own label.

  “Who knows, I might not ever put on the gloves again,” he told Lloyd. “I mean that. But then the chance to fight Clay might come along and I would say, ‘Yeah.’”

  But when and where would that happen? Ali himself was of the belief that he would remain sidelined until the White House intervened on his behalf. Even if he was unaware of how Nixon had referred to him in his conversation with Frazier, he knew it was unlikely that he would receive any help from Washington. Toronto emerged as a contender for the bout, yet Ali had been stripped of his passport and would be unable to gain approval of his petition to leave the United States for eighteen hours. Some interest was expressed in taking the fight to the state of Washington, but the Washington State Athletic Commission voted it down 2–1. “Forty-nine other states say no; why should we stick our necks out?” asked W. B. “Red” Reese, one of the dissenting commissioners. Michigan was in the running and had the apparent support of b
oxing commissioner Chuck Davey, a former welterweight contender. But Governor William G. Milliken withheld his approval. As these and other sites were debated, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin writer George Kiseda laid into Philadelphia for not taking initiative to claim the event, particularly since both Frazier and Ali were taxpayers. Kiseda excoriated Governor Milton Shapp, Mayor Tate, the chamber of commerce, and the Convention and Tourist Bureau.

  “These people spend a lot of words and money pretending that Philadelphia is one of the great resorts of the world when actually Joke City is the last resort anybody would consider for a vacation, a weekend or even a night out,” Kiseda wrote. “Philadelphia entertainment? You can go to Linton’s and count the scrambled egg sandwiches that come down the conveyor belt.”

  Atlanta stepped to the fore in the quest to reel in Ali-Frazier by granting Ali a boxing license in August, with the hope of staging the bout in the five-thousand-seat City Auditorium on October 26. Georgia state senator Leroy Johnson had arranged the license under the nose of arch-segregationist governor Lester Maddox and with no apparent behind-the-scenes aid from Nixon. But Durham did not consider Atlanta to be a suitable site. Nor did he think Philadelphia would do, even if Kiseda had inspired civic effort to get the event with his sharp rebuke. As Frazier prepared to face hard-hitting light heavyweight champion Bob Foster later in the fall, Ali used the Georgia license to begin working himself back in shape by taking on number-one contender Jerry Quarry, whom he stopped in three rounds with a cut over his left eye that required eleven sutures. Back in Philadelphia, Major Coxson held a party for Ali a few days later at his supper club, Rolls-Royce, where Ali sat in a corner booth in an Edwardian suit as fans approached him for autographs. Councilman George X. Schwartz looked on and observed, “This is Frazier’s town. He won’t like this.” To which City Council President Paul D’Ortona replied, “No more. This is a Muhammad Ali town from now on.”