Francois Clemmons vividly recalls a come-to-Jesus meeting with Fred Rogers 52 years ago, as if it happened yesterday.

Clemmons, who had spent a good portion of his life struggling with his sexuality, was coming into his own as a gay man. He was frequenting a gay club behind the Greyhound Bus station Downtown called The Playpen and he was enjoying the nightlife of Pittsburgh.

“I felt a certain freedom. I felt a certain communication,” said Clemmons. “There was something so wonderful about being around a lot of other gay people who recognized and accepted that I was gay.”

Clemmons was new to “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” in 1968, the year the TV program went nationwide on the NET (soon to be PBS) network and became a children’s television institution. Clemmons had an opera background and first performed as a singer on the program. Rogers had long-range plans for Clemmons to be a recurring character on the show.

Those plans nearly fell through when Rogers was informed that Clemmons had been spotted at a gay nightclub.

The ensuing confrontation with Rogers is one of the stories included in Clemmons’ new book, “Officer Clemmons: A Memoir,” released this week.

“I wrote the book because I wanted to show the side of Fred that other people didn’t necessarily see, things people did not know, from a black gay man’s perspective,” said Clemmons. “I also wanted to be a role model for young gay, black men and young gay white men.”

As much as anything, the book tells a story of the grit, determination and sacrifice Clemmons had to make in order to become an integral part of one of the most influential children’s television shows.

In a wide-ranging, three-hour conversation from his home in Vermont, Clemmons had a lot to say about his life, his beliefs, his sexuality, and his love and respect for Fred Rogers, the man who gave him his big break in showbiz.

The year Clemmons’ quarter-century long association with “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” began, 1968, was a year of political upheaval, assassinations and political turmoil in America. But it was still a year before the Stonewall riots in New York galvanized the fledgling gay rights movement. And it was not easy to live as an openly gay man and be accepted in mainstream society.

When word got back to Rogers about how Clemmons, a Carnegie Mellon University graduate student at the time, was conducting his personal life, Rogers, in his own gentle way, confronted Clemmons.

“Fred handed me an ultimatum,” said Clemmons. “He said to me, ‘You can be gay, that’s not going to change how I feel about you, Francois. But I don’t think you can be on our program.’ To me, he was expressing his vulnerability, that if the big (financial backers) like Sears and Johnson & Johnson and Heinz knew that an openly gay person was on the program, they would say, ‘Fred, you gotta get rid of him. That is not good for our image.’ ”

So Fred said to me, ‘You need to decide. If you want a career and to sing on the program, then you need to stay in the closet. If you don’t, that’s fine and we will continue to be friends. But I don’t think you can be on the program.’ ”

It was a difficult choice for Clemmons.

He ultimately decided that he was being given an opportunity that was too good to turn down. So, he did what Rogers asked.

Clemmons even married a woman. Predictably, the marriage failed.

Rogers cast Francois Clemmons in the groundbreaking role of “Officer Clemmons,” making him the first African-American to have a recurring role on a nationally televised children’s show in the United States.

At first, however, Clemmons was not thrilled with the idea of being cast as a policeman.

“It was not easy. I remember thinking, ‘Policemen shoot black boys in the back. And now I’m going to be one of them?’ I said to Fred, ‘I don’t think you understand the gravity of what you’re asking me.’

“But it was just like if I go on the stage and sing ‘La Boheme’ or ‘La Traviata.’ I take my costume off and leave it in the theater. So, for a long time I left the ‘Officer Clemmons’ outfit at the (television) station. I never took it home, and that was the reason.”

But as people started to recognize him on the street and greet him as “Officer Clemmons,” he realized the importance of playing a character that presented a positive image of a black man in America.

“I realized, ‘I need to be here’ because white kids had Fred and Mr. McFeely. Black kids didn’t have anybody on the same level,” said Clemmons. “I said, ‘I need to be here for them.’ ”

Clemmons also began to realize the importance that Rogers had bestowed on him in his character role as a “helper.”

“He said that he thought it would be a wonderful thing, that I would be a role model as Officer Clemmons. I listened very carefully to his logic and his reasoning because, as he said, when children are lost, they need somebody to turn to, somebody that they feel will help them. If they know Officer Clemmons is a helper, then when they see a policeman, they will know that they’re not alone.”

The episode that ended up really resonating with people was the one when Mister Rogers and Officer Clemmons sat side-by-side with their bare feet in a plastic kiddie pool. At a time when many swimming pools in America were still segregated, the symbolism was powerful.

Initially though, Clemmons admits he didn’t feel the impact of the scene.

“I thought it was ‘civil-rights lite.’ That it wasn’t aggressive enough, that it wasn’t knock-somebody-dead powerful,” said Clemmons. “What I learned is that sometimes you understate stuff, you do something subtle, and they never forget it, they never stop talking about it. Decades later, that’s what people would ask me about first.”

Yet despite all of the fulfillment and career opportunities that came his way — particularly to sing in venues around the country and eventually the world — Clemmons was not as happy as he could be because of what he was sacrificing in his personal life.

“I didn’t want to bring shame on Fred. I didn’t want to bring shame on my race. But it was tortuous for me emotionally,” Clemmons said. “Oooh, I was so lonely sometimes. I didn’t have a partner in life to process life with. That was part of the sacrifice and the pain that I had to cover up.”

Today, Clemmons’ sexual orientation would not be an issue. Does he feel any resentment at what he had to go through?

“The way I look at it is, my sense of destiny was what was compelling me on. I accepted this role, this plight. And if you accept it, you take everything that comes with it.”

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