Writer, Activist, Vintner, incomparable extrovert needed only one name
April 20, 1943 - October 9, 2021
The man only needed one name, and it seemed as if everyone knew it.
After Mansfield Frazier returned to Cleveland to conduct the third act of his life, he seemed to make it his mission to know everyone in town. It seemed clear that just about everyone in town either knew him, thought they knew him, or wanted to know him. He had a booming voice, and he was never shy about using it, so you always knew when he was around.
Once Mansfield hit his stride with the 1995 publication of From Behind the Wall — he spent his time out of circulation teaching himself to write — he found that he could make even more noise with his pen and his keyboard. After that it was “Katy, bar the door!” By some counts, the prolific Mr. Frazier wrote perhaps some 2,000 pieces in his writing career.
The vast majority of them were for the digital newsweekly coolcleveland, but he cut his teeth writing for, and sometimes as editor of, an assortment of black publications where his unvarnished style and eagerness to produce found resonance with readers and publishers alike. Early outlets included the late City News, the equally defunct Cleveland Monitor [literary uncle to The Real Deal Press], and the Call and Post.
Eventually, he found his most attentive audience at coolcleveland, where his expected observations and pontifications appeared weekly towards the bottom of each week’s issue, leading many of his fans to scurry rapidly through other accounts so they could feast on the latest object of Mansfield’s ire, scorn, or disgust. If he had any sacred cows, they were kept in some distant barn. You always knew what Mansfield was thinking, and he couldn’t wait to tell you, sometimes doubling or tripling up his expected Wednesday appearance.
Writing was only one outlet for his prodigious energies. For a while he also hosted a Sunday night radio show focused on the issues of the day, wherever he found them: locally or nationally, in books of the day or the history of yesteryears. If he liked something you knew it; if he didn’t, you knew that too, in quadruplicate.
Mansfield gave up his radio show, and abstained for a time from his writing, when he ventured a run for city council in 2017, hoping to represent his beloved Hough neighborhood, of which he was a fierce champion.
The election results were a jolt — he finished far back in a crowded primary — but not a loss. He had plenty on his plate, most especially The Vineyards of Chateau Hough, the inner city winery he started just a block or so from the home he had built as a vanguard member of what was expected to be Hough’s post-rebellion renaissance.
At home on a Zoom call, attending the monthly meeting of the Greater Cleveland Association of Black Journalists. January 9, 2021. Credit | The Real Deal Press
Growing grapes for wine was a quintessential expression of the irrepressible Mansfield persona. But there was more. He started a nonprofit, Neighborhood Solutions, to provide guidance to returning citizens, something he was never too busy or exhausted to do, and which he found reason to champion on every occasion.
Mansfield died in hospice on October 9, 2021. He is survived by his wife of 22 years, Brenda Frazier; two daughters, Alyson Frazier and Ashley Smith (Dontez); stepdaughter, Bridgett King; grandchildren, Catlin Frazier, Jaxon Smith and Jocelyne Smith; great-grandson Alexander Robinson, and dear friend Callie “Sugar” Anderson. He was preceded in death by his son, Alan Frazier (1976), his father Mansfield Frazier Sr. (1978), his mother Nettie Mae Frazier (1996), and his brother Thomas Frazier (2021).
The celebration of life service will be today at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, beginning at 12:30p. The service will be live-streamed and can be accessed here. Arrangements entrusted to Calhoun Funeral Home.
