EVANS, FRED "AHMED" (1931-27 Feb. 1978) was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder for his role in the GLENVILLE SHOOTOUT. Evans was born in Greenville, SC to John and Ora Evans. The Evans family moved to Cleveland in 1948, seeking a better life. Often ridiculed by his classmates, he dropped out of Rawlings Junior High School to take a series of odd jobs before enlisting in the Army in 1948.
Evans was sent to Korea where he served with distinction as a combat engineer. He suffered back, shoulder, and head injuries from a bridge collapse while there. He was honorably discharged in 1952 and returned to Cleveland to work as a bus driver. As a result of his injuries, Evans complained of headaches, loss of vision, paralysis and periodic blackouts. He reenlisted in the Army in 1954. By this point his behavior had changed; he was court martialed after striking an officer. Army doctors diagnosed Evans with “psychomotor epilepsy” and a “paranoid-type personality.” They also described his behavior as “hostile” when under duress. Evans claimed it was during one of these blackouts that he had assaulted the officer. He served 7 months of a two-year sentence and was dishonorably discharged.
In 1955 Evans returned to Cleveland after his release from military confinement at Fort Crowder, MO. He took a job working for the Pennsylvania Railroad for the next decade. By the early 1960s, Evans became fixated on the paranormal and the supernatural; he even claimed to have seen an unidentified flying object over E. 79th St. and Kinsman Ave. Evans became a disciple of an astrologer named Emmett Cobb, who was later institutionalized at the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
Evans became politically active after hearing Malcolm X deliver his “ballot or bullet” speech at CORY METHODIST CHURCH in April 1964. In subsequent years, he began wearing Afrocentric clothing. Although much of the city’s civil rights leadership brushed him off as an eccentric, Evans became one of Cleveland’s foremost Black nationalists in GLENVILLE with his New Libyans, the other being Harllel Jones and his Afro Set in HOUGH. Evans countenanced the use of violence as retribution for white oppression, which in the context of the place and time proved an attractive message to his followers.
Growing racial tensions on the city’s East Side culminated in the HOUGH RIOTS of July 1966. After the chaos of Hough, political leaders, the media, law enforcement, and Evans himself predicted that 1967 would bring even more racial turmoil. However, as Detroit and Newark saw severe rioting, Cleveland emerged from the so-called “long, hot summer” unscathed. Dr. Martin Lu