One of the dirty little secrets in almost every Black community in America, at least since somewhere in the late 1800’s, is an odd little phrase known to insiders as "high yellow" (or, more to the point, high yella). High Yellow was, initially anyway, a term used by many African Americans to describe a fellow Black with extremely light colored skin, often a product of a mixed-race relationship. It wasn’t an entirely derogatory term, at least not initially, but it certainly carried with it an implication that was often, shall we say, less than flattering.
As the years went on, though, high yellow morphed into a full-blown racial slur, one used predominantly in a Black-on-Black context. In the neighborhood, being called "high yellow" meant putting on airs or trying to act white – trying, in other words, to be better than your people, or better than your roots. If, at any point in the 20th Century, you were an African American trying to “pass” as white, you could be assured that at least a few of your neighbors were referring to you as high yella – and, if not to your face, then certainly behind your back.
Peggy Wood was not only textbook high yellow, but in the Syracuse of the 1960's she might have been its poster child. Wood had light skin. She read books and would, in time, write one herself. She possessed a broad knowledge of subjects and regularly wrote eloquent letters to friends and colleagues alike. She carried herself with a genial sort of regal air and, around town, liked to regularly sport showy hats, fine dresses and silk hose. Wood spoke the Queen’s English and enunciated – not slurred – carefully chosen words from what was, clearly, a deep and facile vocabulary.
Wood had moved to Syracuse in 1950 from Poughkeepsie with her husband, Frank. Initially anyway, the two had settled in the Ward with their teenage kids. Frank had come to town to take the job as director of the Dunbar Center, the heart and soul of city’s Black community. His wife, meanwhile, secured for herself a position with the Salvation Army, administering to, and advocating on behalf of, Syracuse’s poor and destitute, regardless of gender, color or creed.
Peggy Wood was a woman of considerable academic pedigree, having been schooled at both the esteemed Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and the prestigious Atlanta School of Social Work at Clark University. Born, raised and educated in the Jim Crow South during the Depression, her political and religious beliefs were shaped accordingly. And she not only was an ambitious and accomplished student, but even as the years passed and as her children grew, she'd continue to remain for the rest of her days a classic lifelong learner.
So, when she and Frank came to the Salt City and settled in the Ward, they did so as full-on cultural oddities. Despite her first-hand knowledge of the corrosive power of hatred, unlike so many of Blacks in town, people who’d been part of the “Great Migration” of the American Negro to the industrial northeast, Peggy Wood never became a Democrat. To the contrary, she'd been, and would always remain, a loyal Republican who embraced and lived by the most hard-earned Republican ideals.
Wood espoused self-determination, for example, especially among women. She earned and managed her own money. And she dared to publicly support young ladies – especially young ladies of color – who, themselves, dared to stand up in their male-dominated domain and demand to be counted.
Peggy Wood was, in short, unique, and not just by Ward standards, racial standards, or even gender standards. She was unique by just about any standard imaginable.
In the late 1950’s, she'd help conceive and create a small-but-ambitious group that, by its very name and nature, ran counter to just about every Black stereotype. Chez Nous (French for “at our house”) was a society with regular dues, bylaws and a mission statement for a certain breed of Black woman, an organization that met regularly at different members’ homes, usually on Saturday nights, and allowed members to eat fine food, sample good wines, discuss books, music and art, talk politics, and debate any number of the day’s hottest issues.
But the ladies of Chez Nous were more than just talk. They sought to raise the level of discourse, achievement and expectations in the Ward. Their thinking was, doing so would, in turn, help the Ward's men, women and children better assimilate into Syracuse proper, adding value to the city's culture as they did. The theory behind Wood’s little social group was not unlike “a rising tide floats all boats.”
Chez Nous members were all women of refinement, taste and intellect, or at least women who were trying to be those things. Many had a college degree, some more than one, and quite a few had come to Syracuse because their husbands – professionals with good jobs at the local General Electric plant – had been transferred to Central New York from cities all across the country.
GE was one of the few U.S. companies during the 1950’s willing to hire “Negroes” in white-collar jobs, often as engineers. Yet, for that reason, the company’s operation in Syracuse could afford to be choosy and opted to hire only the finest Negro engineers, most of whom had moved, family in tow, into the Ward because it was the only neighborhood in the area that consistently accepted Black renters and homeowners.
So, when Bill Walsh – now chest-deep in the fallout of Urban Renewal and increasingly angered by CORE’s inflammatory tactics – wanted to find someone to act as a liaison between his city’s two increasingly polarized worlds (one Black and one white) he thought of Peggy Wood.
Walsh had recently launched a committee near and dear to his heart, one he called the Mayor’s Commission on Human Rights. His committee's goal was to foster open dialogue and create a series of public forums for African Americans to voice any and all concerns about Urban Renewal. The ad hoc commission was also mandated with ferreting out discriminatory housing practices anywhere in town and then proposing ways to eliminate them.
To head up his new commission, Walsh initially selected Ralph Kharas, an S.U. law professor, though he soon replaced him with Irwin Hyman, a local rabbi. When he made that second move, however, he decided to also name a vice chairman. The person he chose to fill that role, to the surprise of many, was Peggy Wood, a virtual unknown to many within the confines of city hall
Peggy Wood had gotten to know her fellow Republican, Walsh, long before he was elected mayor, and she liked and respected him, both as a man and as a public servant. Walsh, of course, would have loved to have chosen Peggy initially to head up his new commission, but for two things: she was African American and, more importantly, she was a woman.
He knew full well that Wood would have led his group exactly where he wanted it to go, and would have gotten it there as quickly and effectively as any man, Black or white. Being a pragmatist, however, he realized Wood would do better as a #2 who could work behind the scenes to build bridges, instead of being out front and in the pubic crosshairs. There, she'd run the risk of becoming a target for any and all bigots, the very type of close-minded people he knew could derail his noble little initiative.
Walsh, therefore, eventually named his friend, not as chairman, but as vice chairman of his Commission on Human Rights. And when he did that, from that point forward Peggy Wood would begin making an indelible mark on Syracuse, and not just in its halls of government, but on the city itself.
* * * * *
It was 1967, a cold and snowy January to be exact, and Frank Broadwater remained a kid running life’s marathon with the proverbial piano on his back. A tough-as-nails young man with a thick, powerful body, a sharp mind, and a good-natured but troubled heart, he’d grown up in a house were trouble was the order of the day. All the Broadwater kids – boys and girls alike – were either troublemakers or at least had reputations as such. For that reason and others, prison would soon become part of the Broadwater family dynamic.
But Frank, in particular, seemed to stand out among a group of siblings who could often seem awash in bad luck, bad choices, and, quite often, bad behavior. No matter where he went in life, no matter what he did, the trouble he’d grown up with and the trouble he’d come to know all too well would time and again manage to track him down and dog his sorry ass.
Yet, despite that, of all the Broadwater kids, it was Frank who represented a ray of light and a very real sense of hope that better days lay ahead. As an adolescent, young Frank would weekly go, along with a few of his friends, and on the invitation of Father Brady, down to St. Joseph's French Church on Genesee Street, where Brady would talk to them about Jesus and His love, while giving the boys cups of hot chocolate and marshmallows, patiently listening to their stories and laughing joyfully at their jokes.
Broadwater never converted to Catholicism, he'd say years later, only because Father Brady never made a big deal out of the fact he wasn't Catholic. He just wanted young Frank to learn more about Jesus, to embrace His love, and to make it a part of his life.
At Central, Broadwater's basketball coach, Jack Johnstone, was a long, angular and mild-mannered thirty-something white husband, father and former player, who like Kenny Huffman and Charlie Brady, seemed to have some combination of teaching and patience hardwired into his DNA. What's more, he was a guy who viewed all kids as good until proven otherwise.
That side of Johnstone saw Broadwater from Day One as a cut above the average Central Tech player. It wasn’t that the young man was more skilled than his teammates; he was anything but that. And it wasn’t that he was taller, or faster, or could jump higher. He couldn’t.
It was that Frank Broadwater had two things no coach can teach. He had a non-stop internal motor that pushed him hardest when the others were flagging. And he possessed a keen and analytical mind, especially for basketball, one that could grasp even complex concepts and almost instantaneously make them part of his inherent and ever-evolving understanding of the game.
One day, Johnstone had been trying to teach his team a sophisticated trapping scheme he’d learned as a player, a defense that required all five players to be working as one unit, all five alert and on their toes, moving to specific spots depending on where the ball was and what the offensive player was trying to do with it. It was not an easy scheme, by any means. Yet it was one that, of all the Central players (including a silky smooth shot-blocker named Roy Neal, who’d follow Jimmy Collins to New Mexico State) only one of them could fully grasp its intricacies and understand its workings as a coach might: Frank Broadwater.
It was a nail-biter of a game for Central Tech – its first of the year, in fact, against dreaded rival Corcoran. The game was played just three days after Johnstone had spent roughly that same amount of time trying to teach his boys the trapping zone, before eventually deciding to scrap it.
At one point during a timeout, it was all Johnstone could do to not put his team into that defense. It was the perfect scheme for the moment, given how Corcoran was playing, Johnstone knew it. But he resisted, fearing a full-blown defensive breakdown by his kids.
Yet, as they were huddled and he explained to his team what he wanted, Frank Broadwater, hands on knees and sweat pouring down his face, looked up and interrupted the only man permitted to talk during a timeout. “Coach, can I say something? Why don’t we try that defense you taught us? I really think it'll work.”
Though Johnstone resisted Broadwater’s advice and put his team in a straight man-to-man, the moment made a deep impression on him. Years later, in fact, whenever Broadwater’s name would pop up in conversation, the former Central head man would invariably relate that story and add, wistfully, “You know, I always told myself that young man would make a heck of a coach one day.”
To teammate Roy Neal, Frank Broadwater was likewise a cut above the normal 15th Ward teenager, but for different reasons. In an era during which such revolutionary concepts as “Black power,” “Black is beautiful,” and “respect yourself” were still largely vague notions in many circles, it was Frank Broadwater who first embraced them at Central Tech. While star African American athletes like Neal, his little brother Terry, and Cleve Hughes were still dressing in button down shirts, khakis and loafers, Frank was showing up for school in something the other kids would soon learn was called a dashiki, a loose and colorful tunic-style top popular among men native to Africa.
Broadwater was also among the first kids in Central to start growing his hair out naturally, picking it out so as not to hide, but accentuate, its inherent curliness; becoming, in the process, arguably, the first basketball high school player in Syracuse to sport an afro.
But it was more than the clothes he wore or the style of his hair. As Neal would explain years later, so many of the African American kids at Central were products of generations of racial intermarriage, resulting in degrees of genetic influence. As a result, many possessed somewhat moderate, slightly Anglicized features and skin tones. Not Frank Broadwater. Some of the kids may have had a look that could reveal evidence or elements of a white lineage, Neal would say years later. “Not Frank. He looked African. He didn’t try to hide it. In fact, the opposite. Frank was proud of his Blackness.”
Frank Broadwater’s best sport was not actually basketball. It was football. A powerful fullback and ferocious linebacker, the young man was a standout on a good-but-not-great Central team. His gridiron reputation soon spread and when legendary Florida A&M football coach Jake Gaither flew to Syracuse to scout him personally, he saw the kid play one game and offered him a scholarship – something school officials would later announce to a full assembly a short time later in Central’s Lincoln Auditorium.
Gaither made that particular trip to Upstate New York, actually, to look at two players, Broadwater and one of his teammates, a solid two-way lineman named Barry Thornton. In that Florida A&M was an all-Black college in those days, Gaither was surprised to show up and meet Thornton, one of the two kids he’d heard about and had traveled so far to see. He took one look at the massive Irish boy with the baby face and smiling eyes and said, “Wait a minute, son. You’re white!”
“Yes, Coach, I am,” said Thornton. “Always have been.”
Regardless, Frank Broadwater and Barry Thornton – the two teammates that the legendary coach had traveled miles to personally scout – built a bond and became good friends in high school. Not only were they, pound for pound, the two toughest and most willing-to-fight kids in Central, if not the city, they had similar senses of humor and loved poking fun at one another’s race – using humor as a bridge. In fact, at the end of their junior year, when Broadwater approached Thornton and asked if he could sign his yearbook, he did so as follows: “Barry – Have a great summer. You stick to your women. I’ll stick to mine. Frank Broadwater.”
It was the afternoon of Friday, January 6, 1967. Central Tech was facing Bishop Ludden, which had quickly become a City League contender under fiery, young coach Terry Quigley. Ludden had been formed just three years prior by Bishop Cunningham, the first step in what would prove to be a radical shift in the diocese’s approach to, secondary education; a shift that, in time, would end up pulling the rug right out from under the parish-based, K-12 structure upon which Bishop Foery had built the Parochial League.
In fact, starting for Bishop Ludden that cold January day were two kids who, but for the emergence of Ludden, the parish’s all-new regional high school in Syracuse’s first suburb to the West, would likely have been Parochial Leaguers. John McAuliffe a 6’5” sharpshooter would have likely gone to either Cathedral, where he’d attended grammar school, or Most Holy Rosary, a few blocks from his home. Tommy McCarthy, on the other hand, a slashing swing man, had been ticketed for stardom at St. Patrick’s from as far back as the days when he was both an altar boy and one of Bob Hayes’ prize Little Leprechauns.
Ludden had, likewise, picked up three kids from nearby St. Charles, a grammar school a half a mile or so up Fay Road in Westvale, three solid and smart players who’d emerge as key members of the Gaelic Knights, Mark Wadach, Marty “Mouse” McDermott, and Danny Van Cott’s first cousin on his mother’s side, a hard-working defensive stalwart named Jerry Behan.
Also playing for Ludden, if only in stretches, was a skinny African American sophomore named Phil Harlow, whose brother Howie, along with Joe Reddick, comprised the city’s most powerful backcourt for Ken Huffman's Cougars.
By the first week of January, 1967, it was clear that both Central and Corcoran had emerged as City League powers and were now fighting tooth-and-nail for any edge they could find over one another.
At that point, however, Ludden still remained something of a wild card. Insiders and fans knew the Gaelic Knights would be tough going into the season, based on how they’d finished the previous campaign, combined with the solid core of players they were bringing back. What those people didn’t know was how tough those young Knights would prove to be.
From the outset, the game was physical – perhaps even brutally so – and the two refs (Jerry Hoffman and Armond Magnarelli, a one-time Parochial League coach at St. Lucy's) were calling things tighter than usual in an attempt to put a damper on the clearly physical play. Their quick whistles had the opposite effect, however, adding fuel to the fire.
While racial injustice and race-based hate were rampant throughout the U.S., until that afternoon they'd never really spilled out into the local community.
Because the Central/Ludden game that afternoon was being officiated so tightly, an unintended consequence resulted. With just over five minutes to go in the first half, Magnarelli raised his right arm to signal a foul on Roy Neal, Central’s brightest star. Neal spun in the direction of Magnarelli, a stunned expression on his face, looking for all the world like he wanted to plead his case. Instead, he relented and just shook his head in disagreement. The die was cast and perhaps he knew it.
That’s when it happened. At the scorer’s table, a Central student in a bright red sweater, a rail-thin African American with close-cropped hair, a razor part, and thick, horn-rimmed glasses, raised his right hand as high as it could go. At the end of it he splayed five fingers, and they too were spread as wide as they could go. And when the young man did that, the buzzer on the game clock blared, a wail that ripped through the curtain of boos like a razor.
With that, the auditorium quieted and all eyes turned in the direction of the table where the kid in the red sweater sat, the kid with his hand raised and his fingers splayed. That’s when they saw that very same kid mouth the two words that hit them like a punch in the gut: “That’s five.”
The Central crowd was stunned. Roy Neal, their hero, had just fouled out of the game. The best player on his team, and among the best players in the city, had just been disqualified for picking up his fifth foul, and doing so with five minutes still to play...in the first half!
No one had known Neal had been in foul trouble. No one. Years later, Johnstone would say if he'd had any idea that his best player was playing with four fouls, he would have pulled him out and saved him for the second half. But apparently those four had been accumulated so quickly and so early that no one on the Central side even thought to check, much less alert their coach.
As a result, not only did Central trail the surprising Gaelic Knights by a handful of points, but they were suddenly faced with the grim prospect of trying to play catch up against a smart and talented team with their best player and leading scorer on the bench, his head hung low and covered in a terry cloth towel.
The cascading boos notwithstanding, that’s when Frank Broadwater decided to step up and take charge. Broadwater began to establish himself defensively and off the boards. Much like Paul Seymour had done the previous decade following the unexpected ejection of Dolph Schayes in that epic Nats/Celtics playoff war, Broadwater started dialing up the intensity, while at the same time shouting encouragement to his teammates and barking instructions on where to go and when to go there.
The problem was, without the magnificent Neal, Broadwater’s team was simply no match for the Knights. Ludden was just too big and powerful, and they could shoot and handle the ball far too well to squander the lead they’d manage to build up.
Led by McAuliffe, who came into the game as the league’s top scorer, and Wadach, a savage defender and rebounding savant who, at just 6’1,” would go on to have a four-year run as a rebounding machine for the S.U. Orangemen, the green-and-white Gaelic Knights never allowed Central to get within spitting distance.
That, coupled with the odd, premature disqualification of Neal, gnawed at Broadwater and caused his blood to boil, a little at first, but more so as the game slowly slipped out of Central’s hands and began winding its way toward its inevitable conclusion.
With roughly three minutes to go, when Jerry Hoffman, one of the refs, made a foul call against one of the full-court pressing Lancers, a streaky shooter who'd just hit two in a row, Broadwater raced up behind Hoffman and put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. Years later he'd say that he just wanted to point out to the ref that he'd charged the wrong kid with the foul and that it was another, more replaceable, Central Tech player who'd committed it.
According to Broadwater, the ref then shook loose of his grip, turned and continued toward the scorer's table. So Broadwater reached out again. Only this time – and, again, this is what, decades later he would say he heard that afternoon, a belief he would carry with him for the rest of his life – the referee turned, looked angrily into his eyes and snapped, "Get your black hands off of me, nigger!"
Whether that was actually said or not, or whether it was what the young man heard, it scarcely matters. What matters is that Frank Broadwater lost it. Completely and utterly. Just snapped in a truly unprecedented fashion.
Before anyone realized what was happening, powerful Frank Broadwater – Jack Johnstone’s most intuitive and unsung player, not to mention his eyes and ears on the court – had Hoffman by his striped shirt and lanyard and was backing him toward the wall, his eyes burning with rage. Broadwater then began screaming at the unnerved Hoffman, his big, thick fist raised to his ear and poised like a cocked pistol, ready to fire.
Chaos ensued. No one had really witnessed anything like it before. Fights pitting player against player were as old as the game itself. But this was different. This was a player attacking, even assaulting, a referee, the ultimate symbol of authority on a basketball court – even more, perhaps, than a coach. As angered as many Central fans had been by the officiating, they were stunned by Broadwater’s reaction. His unhinged and obscenity-laced tirade went to a place of outrage they’d never even considered. It crossed a line that many had viewed, at least until that very moment, as uncrossable.
Once the dust settled, it was announced over the auditorium’s P.A. system that the game had been officially cancelled. Ludden was ruled victorious and both teams were immediately sent to their respective locker rooms. The contest would go in the books, not as an official forfeit, as perhaps it should have, but as a game terminated at the discretion of the officials. The records, both individual and team, would stand.
Afterward, in the locker room a level below, a large space with showers on either end, separated in the middle by a caged-in area for equipment, big John McAuliffe, the contest’s leading scorer and a white kid who’d once played in the Boy’s Club tournament with a mostly all-Black team, looked through the cage and saw Frank Broadwater sitting there.
Broadwater was alone, with his back to his teammates, facing the darkened pile of smelly equipment. His head was lowered and his hands clasped. He sat there completely still, almost as in prayer. Slowly, the vanquished Central senior looked up and saw McAuliffe staring at him through the wire of the darkened cage. Broadwater’s eyes were red as if filled with tears, though he wasn’t crying. He just looked at McAuliffe and stared into his eyes. He then started shaking his head slowly, almost imperceptibly. “I’m so sorry,” he said softly to his opponent, a white boy his own age who just stood in silence and stared back. “I don’t know what happened, man. I…I don’t know why I did that.”
John McAuliffe had lived a life of reasonable privilege, at least by Syracuse standards. His father trafficked successfully, even conspicuously, in high-end real estate and his mother came from comfortable money. The young man, in other words, had never really lacked for much. Oh, he’d once felt the sting of racism when a few white opponents from a suburban team called him “nigger lover” for playing with an all-Black team in a Boy’s Club tournament that one time.
But this was different. Looking into Frank Broadwater’s eyes, and hearing for himself the contrition in the young man’s surprisingly frail voice, he understood for the first time, if only in the smallest sense, what it must be like on the other side of the divide. And while McAuliffe – “Showboat,” to his friends – would remain a pain in the ass on a basketball court and would continue to get under many opponents’ skin,Black and white, the moment would end up changing him forever.
As for Frank Broadwater, as badly as he felt for what he’d done, the worst was yet to come.
Armond Magnarelli, one of the two refs that day, and Hoffman’s partner, who Broadwater had likewise threatened when he attempted to intervene, wasn’t just some garden-variety official. He was, in no uncertain terms, the most well-connected and politically powerful referee in the City of Syracuse, if not the State of New York. He may have started as a star athlete. And he may have once been the legendary Ormie Spencer’s head coach at St. Lucy’s, some 15 years prior. But since that rather auspicious beginning in basketball, he’d more than spread his wings and flown to heights he probably couldn’t have even imagined back in the day.
Magnarelli was not only on the City School Board, for example, he was its president. He was not only a communicant, benefactor and usher at Our Lady of Pompeii, he was a founding member (and leading man) of the Pompeian Players, a beloved community theater group known for lavish productions of Broadway musicals like My Fair Lady, Oklahoma! and The Music Man. He was not only on the Board of Directors of the hometown Chiefs, the AAA farm club of the Detroit Tigers, he (along with Jack McAuliffe, John’s father) was in the process of heading up a drive to sell public shares so that the team might raise enough cash to become community-owned. What’s more, Armond Magnarelli didn’t just sit on the Syracuse Common Council, the city’s all-powerful governing body, he'd soon be named its president.
Broadwater, meanwhile, was simply who he was; Frank Broadwater, a troubled kid from a troubled family in the heart of the 15th Ward; a kid who, in a moment of rage and frustration, did a really, really stupid thing. And that stupid thing was not just hitting a white man, or getting physical with a basketball referee. It was raising his fist and threatening a symbol of everything Syracuse was and everything Syracuse wanted to believe about itself.
The ruling by the specially convened session of the city school board was as swift as it was permanent. Frank Broadwater of Central Tech was not only kicked off his team, he would never be allowed to compete in scholastic sports in Syracuse again.
What's more, every one of his full football scholarship offers – offers that included such perennial powerhouses as Ohio State and Michigan – was immediately pulled from the table. That's why the youngster was ultimately only offered a scholarship to a single all-Black school from a small HBCU conference in the Deep South, and a partial one at that. Because he'd suddenly become athletically radioactive and no college program would touch him. He'd committed one of the great sins any schoolboy could ever commit. He'd struck an official during the heat of battle.
Frank Broadwater may still have had his partial scholarship to Florida A&M (one made possible only because, in the immediate aftermath, Central AD Pat Testa had managed to beg, borrow and steal the few hundred dollars Broadwater would need to cover the balance of his tuition, room and board). In time, however, even that little kernel of good fortune would find a way of slipping through the Frank Broadwater’s fingers. Regardless of age, color and station in life, in the end a man is who he is.
* * * * *
Frank Karazuba didn’t realize it, but on Friday afternoon of the third week of that very same January he found himself a part of something that made most of those watching uneasy, and more than a few of them nickel-spitting mad. That something occurred in a tone-setting, early-season showdown between Corcoran and Central, two powerful teams that, along with upstart Bishop Ludden, comprised the three top contenders for supremacy in the 1966-67 City League.
On the stage of the magnificent Lincoln Auditorium, in the heart of the equally magnificent Central High (the site of the now-infamous and still talked-about Broadwater/Magnarelli affair just two weeks prior) ten young men battled tooth-and-nail for well over an hour in what turned out to be another brutally physical basketball contest. Nine of those young men were black. One was not.
That boy’s name was Frank Karazuba.
Karazuba had no idea he was the only white player on the court that day. Nor, for that matter, did anyone else involved – save, perhaps, the referees. Because if anyone involved in the actual game did notice, he never said a word.
The reality of Frank Karazuba’s skin color, however, was not lost on most of the dark-skinned students in attendance that day. Those kids were raucously loud and thoroughly engaged, most of them 15th Warders who’d shoe-horned their way into their school’s still-elegant and acoustically perfect deco-style auditorium.
As the game wore on and Karazuba continued to drain shots from all angles, often with defenders draped all over him, the crowd turned on him. Soon many, no doubt, still stinging from the fact that their schoolmate, Frank Broadwater, had been permanently banned for finally standing up to a white man (even if that white man happened to be an adult and a referee), were howling racial taunts and threatening Karazuba, a few even screaming he was a dead man and that they were going to kill his “white-honky ass.”
Because the court was under the proscenium on the Lincoln Auditorium stage, and because the fans were in seats below, there was something of a buffer, if not some meaningful breathing room between the Corcoran junior and those expressing a desire to end his life.
Yet, no distance could prevent anyone with even half an ear from picking up on the taunts and sensing the tension and anger brewing up and down the aisles of the deco-style auditorium.
Ken Huffman, for one, became aware of them early in the second half. Even though he continued to try to focus on the action on the court and make in-game decisions, it became next to impossible. The viciousness of the slurs directed at one of his hardest working kids simply couldn't be ignored. The more shots Karazuba hit, the more pointed the barbs grew, the more Huffman's level of concern rose.
The Broadwater incident (and the swift and unequivocal penalty it triggered) had preoccupied the Corcoran coach for days. That emotional outburst by a clearly frustrated and, no doubt, pushed-beyond-his-limits young man felt to Huffman as though it had the potential to become the first of what could turn out to be a long and ugly series of incidents for league and city officials.
So when the game was over, a nip-and-tuck affair that Corcoran ended up losing to Central by a handful of points, Huffman told his team not to shower but to simply put on their street clothes, pack their uniforms and head directly to the bus. There, he said, get on and tell the driver to close the door behind you. Understand?
Huffman next went outside, found the driver taking the last few drags from a Chesterfield, his foot resting on the bumper of the now iced-up yellow vehicle, which itself was parked in a lot off Adams Street. He instructed the driver to get on the bus, start the engine, and leave it running. His team, he said, would be out in two or three minutes.
On his way to the team bus a few moments later, however, Frank Karazuba found himself purposefully cut off from his teammates by a throng of kids, a number of whom, he assumed, had been among those pointing and screaming at him during the game. As he watched his teammates hurry off in the direction of the bus, unknowingly leaving him stranded and alone, he looked around and quickly came to grips with the gravity of his situation. He was alone, the only white face in a sea of angry Black ones. For the first time he could remember, Frank Karazuba found himself truly scared, perhaps even for his life.
Suddenly the taunts became more menacing and directed. They were not just about Frank Karazuba, they were aimed at him and spit directly in his face: “Wait just a second there, white boy, where you think you’re goin’?” and “Hey, you piece-of-shit honky motherfucker, you halt your white ass right there,” and “Who the hell you think you are, huh?”
One of the biggest and loudest of the kids took a step in the direction of the Corcoran junior, whose only offense that day seemed to result from the color of his skin and the fact he'd just played the game of his life. The loudest of his antagonists clearly had menace in mind. He sported a scarlet red jacket and wore an angry snarl that intimated he was about to do something – and something violent.
That’s when, out of the crowd, stepped three Central players, each carrying a gym bag, all of them elbowing their way toward the focus point of the stir. There they saw Frank Karazuba alone, eyes wide, jaw clenched, the space around him closing in as the circle of angry, shouting faces continued to draw closer.
Quickly surmising what was happening, one of the players, a rangy sophomore named Cleveland Hughes, stepped between Karazuba and the alpha dog at the head of the mob. Hughes was soon joined by his two teammates, who likewise situated themselves between Karazuba and the mob. Hughes then looked at the ringleader who wore the same varsity colors as he did.
“What’s going on here, man?” he asked calmly and in as non-threatening a way as he could.
The young man looked back in anger, but held his tongue. No one else said a word, either.
Hughes may have, indeed, been younger than most everyone there that afternoon. But he was a big kid, a tall fifteen-year old drink of water with sinewy arms, broad shoulders and huge hands. He happened to be one of the most magnificent athletes in Central Tech, a rising basketball and track star who’d acquired more than his share of respect for that very reason.
“I said, what’s goin’ on?” he repeated, once again as neutrally as possible, sensing the hair-trigger emotions percolating all about him.
Again, no one said a thing. So he just stared at the alpha dog for a moment and said simply, but now with a sense of finality, “He’s okay,” he said, motioning behind his back with his thumb to Karazuba. “The man played his ass off today, alright? Shot like a motherfucker. That’s it. That’s all you can say.”
Hughes shifted his gaze to his other Central schoolmates and softened both his eyes and tone somewhat. “C’mon, y’all. Just…let it go.”
The tension diffused and for a moment things were quiet again on the far western front of the 15th Ward. Sensing his window for retreat was probably no more than a heartbeat or two – if that – Frank Karazuba didn’t bother to say a thing. He didn’t thank or even acknowledge Hughes and the other Central players, much less the angry kid who might have otherwise served as the instrument of his demise. He simply lowered his head, tightened his grip on his gym bag, and made his way to the bus without making eye contact with anyone or, for that matter, even bothering to breathe.
For Central Tech, the blackest, toughest and most unforgiving high school in Syracuse, not to mention one of only two schools still standing in what remained of the town’s once-proud but now mostly demolished 15th Ward, the narrowly averted incident on that cold, grey day was just one more baby step down an increasingly steep and slippery slope.
Things would continue to spiral downward for the Salt City. Because with Mayor Walsh’s systematic dismantling of Syracuse's 15th Ward, his city’s two parallel worlds were coming to realize they were no longer really parallel at all. In fact, they were now on a collision course that would soon change the face, makeup and future of their remarkable city forever.
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