In Defense of Pam Grier

Throughout this week, I saw this meme shared on, at least, a dozen feeds. Apparently, Pam Grier claims she saw lynchings....in Columbus, Ohio.

Now the easily fooled clevland.com treated the story as straight news and didn't question the timeline.

Do I believe Pam Grier? I believe she saw something, but not a lynching. Why the doubt? When I worked at Iron Mountain, I had to go into the dicey part of town at least once a month. Every time I went to E. 55th and Woodland area in Cleveland, I saw something insane. These are the clear memories at the edge of Cleveland's ghetto that I remember as a grown man.

1. I was at the corner of E. 55th and Woodland, in the work vehicle, and an insane old lady in a sun dress ran up to my window and screamed at me "YOU WANT TO BUY SOME PIXY STIX?" I was caught off guard and responded, "are those really Pixy Stix?" She screamed at me again "ARE YOU A FUCKING COP?" And ran away.

2. I was near E. 55th and Woodland, stuck in traffic, and I saw an old man wearing a suit from the 1950's standing behind a folding table in front of an abandoned building. The sign in front of the folding table read Fish Tacos, but there were no fish tacos and the man looked like a resident from a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Still not sure what that was all about.

3. During a snowstorm a couple a blocks away from E. 55th and Woodland, I was doing about 10 mph and came across a guy walking down the middle of the street in a t-shirt and sweatpants. I beeped my horn at him to move from the center of the road and he approached my vehicle, with no socks and heavily worn tennis shoes, yelling "what the hell are you beeping at?" I slowed down and when he approached my window, I drove away as he thrashed his arms in the air.

4. I had to make a delivery to a trucking company a few blocks away from E. 55th and Woodland. When I pulled onto the property, it struck me as odd that the company was erecting barbed-wire fences around the perimeter of the business. When I asked inside what the fences were all about, I got this reply: The Copper Thieves have been extra aggressive in this neighborhood and we're trying to get ahead of the game. The Copper Thieves stole all the copper off their roof the very next day.

5. And this is the money shot. This was around the year 2010: A few houses down from the trucking company, Co-Founder of Beacon of Speech, Ted, and I were, coincidentally, both making deliveries to the same place. I went to the trucking company first and saw a Black Man standing on a picnic table with a rope and, what appeared to be handsaw, in his hand. He was under a tree and it appeared he was using poor fundamentals while tree trimming. I made my delivery and kept moving....

About a half an hour later, Ted went down the same road and called me in shock:

"Fred, I just saw a Black Man hanging from a rope in a tree in his front yard. What should I do?" "Are you sure he wasn't standing on a picnic table?" Was my reply.

He shot back, "no, I know what I saw."

I said "you better call the cops then."

He eased back, "what if they think I did it?"

I then replied, "then don't call the cops."

"What did you see?"

And I repeated to him what I just described to you.

Then he was like "well now I'm not sure what I saw. You think I should double back?"

"Not in that neighborhood."

Ted hung up and kept driving. I am unclear if he called the cops or not.

The next day, no story in the news about a suicide or a lynching in that neighborhood. No story of a citizen accidentally killed while doing yardwork. Nothing. It's as if Ted didn't see anything.

If Ted saw a lynching, that would have been the lead story at cleveland.com for a month.

I believe Pam Grier saw something and her Mother said it was a lynching. I don't think Pam Grier saw what she was told that she saw.