It was 1969. Several months before, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated, and riots were erupting in black neighborhoods across the nation.
Racial segregation had ended as far as public drinking fountains, public transportation, and public schools, but there was a new battleground - public pools. Many public pools were off limits to blacks. Police were routinely called whenever a black person supposedly trespassed into a pool. Still fresh in the memories of both black and white protestors was the infamous incident in the summer of 1964 in which a hotel manager dumped acid into a pool of black and white bathers.
In this explosive environment, Mister (Fred) Rogers quietly did something at that time that was quite unthinkable - he not only hired a black man to take on a regular role in his children’s television program, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” - and asked him to play a police officer - but, he would also regularly invite Officer Clemmons to cool his feet in the same pool - together.
It even surprised Francois Clemmons, who played Officer Clemmons. Fred Rogers had approached Clemmons after hearing him sing in a church. He asked him to join him on his show, to be a police officer, which was a radical idea at that time - a black police officer keeping families safe in the Neighborhood.
Clemmons would remember:
“I grew up in the ghetto. I did not have a positive opinion of police officers. Policemen were siccing police dogs and water hoses on people. And I really had a hard time putting myself in that role. So I was not excited about being Officer Clemmons at all.”
He was even more surprised, and moved, when Mister Rogers on a hot day invited him to join him in soaking his feet in a wading pool.
Clemmons remembers: “He invited me to come over and to rest my feet in the water with him.” He continued, with emotion, “The icon Fred Rogers not only was showing my brown skin in the tub with his white skin as two friends, but as I was getting out of that tub, he was helping me dry my feet.”
Francois Clemmons was the first African-American to have a recurring role on a kids TV series, and he would continue to have that role for the next 25 years.
Years later, in 1993, Officer Clemmons would make his last appearance on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. In a touching moment, Mister Rogers would again invite Officer Clemmons, again joining Rogers at a wading pool in the front yard. This time, two grown men, one white, one black, as they soaked their feet together, discussed and sang a song about the different ways people say “I love you.”
Clemmons would remember that the scene touched him in a way he hadn’t expected.
As they said their goodbyes, with Mister Rogers thanking Officer Clemmons for joining him, Officer Clemmons would emotionally respond, thanking Mister Rogers and saying:
“I like being a human being right here and now.”
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