This weekend is the 57th annual Sebring 12-Hour endurance race. At the 8th annual race, Denise McCluggage and her codriver Allen Eager drove their Ferrari 250 GT to 10th place overall and 1st GT. But her most vivid memory is of a flamboyant black driver named Frank, shaking up the place—“blowing a few riffs for Mr. Charley.”

By Denise McCluggage

Today, the road that leads from the town of Sebring out to the race course, running through the orange groves, is smooth and flat. Back then, it was like a rope given a sharp snap—all swoop-de-dos and thank-you-ma’ams. There’s the story of the Cadillac-engined Allard bombing back to town from practice, just touching the tops of the higher bumps.

Those undulations were to provide the race officials welcome relief from a thorny problem in 1961.

Call the guy “Frank,” because that was his name. He was the color of the lighter of Kraft caramel squares. I don’t recall where he came from, but he arrived fully prepared to go racing. “Fully prepared” back then meant a car (memory says his was an Austin-Healey), the entry fee, a crash hat and a racing license. None hard to come by.

Frank was as noticeable as squeaky shoes at a funeral. Slim, handsome, flamboyant—extravagant in speech and manner. Around his neck was a giant Muslim star and crescent, more a political than a religious statement in those days. It made a lot of white folks nervous. I got the idea that that’s why he wore it. Frank’s stories were fanciful, extreme and variable. He carried great wads of money in an expensive attaché case along with a document which he waved about every now and then saying it was his will. He referred to his wife as “Madame Death.” She was as silent as he was vociferous, as dark as he was light, as stout as he was slim.

His racing license was suspect, but no less so than his driving. It was no secret that the race officials were looking for some solid excuse to refuse Frank a start. He was clearly unstable and not a good risk to be turned loose on a race course. But they much preferred an erratic heartbeat or something equally physical and specific on which to hang their banishment.

My great and good friend Allen Eager was my co-driver. He was grandly amused by all this. Allen, a jazz musician, delighted in what he perceived as ethnic theater. He figured Frank to be blowing a few riffs for Mr. Charley, and he encouraged him by being an appreciative audience. Allen also reveled in the race organizers’ discomfort.

Race. Race. Race. How many meanings? How many layers? And how to keep a potentially dangerous driver, who just happened to be black, out of the race without having it look as if it was because of race they wouldn’t let him race.

No question, had this driver been white, he would have been summarily excluded—no second thoughts. Why, then, a problem?

Consider the times. No hotel in Sebring would register a black man. Frank and Madame Death lodged with the black minister in the “Negro” section of town.

There were stirrings of unrest in the black community, and rumors of troubles (unspecified) circulated. What … riots? Can you see a black march on the Amoco Tower if Frank wasn’t allowed to race? But there were whispers. Whispers are not hard to come by when differences are at the core of something. Rumors breed in strangeness.

Race … race … race. Fidgety times. And reason was rarely in the saddle. I often wondered how much of Frank was theater (he certainly held center stage) and how much was genuine lunacy. Particularly I wondered later when Allen and I were in Italy and Frank showed up in Modena, ostensibly to buy a Ferrari, still waving the wad of money and the will and still with Madame Death in silent tow.

But back to Sebring and the denouement of that episode. Frank got through tech inspection, certainly the most meticulous inspection ever, and passed his physical, similarly detailed. He had made the race!

With a number affixed on his car, he set off for a triumphant return to town on that snapped-rope road. Hold on, you’re way ahead of me: Yes, Frank tea-kettled (as in ass over) his car on the bumps. The car suffered far more damage than he did, but either one was reason enough for a sigh of relief from race headquarters. Madame Death’s husband would not race at Sebring that year.

Excerpted from “By Brooks Too Broad For Leaping,” 1994, available at online collector bookstores.