Dick Gregory

Not too many comedians were shot during the Watts riots in 1965.

Dick Gregory was.

He survived to live 52 more years. Gregory has died at a hospital in Washington, D.C.

Gregory’s satirical stand-up act based around race relations quickly turned into real-life activism where he put himself in harm’s way.

He was virtually an overnight success. Here’s a syndicated entertainment column that first appeared in newspapers on March 6, 1961.

From Car Wash to TV Comedian
By STEVEN H. SCHEUER
CHICAGO — The Playboy Club here in Chicago is about the busiest nightclub in America. A few deaf diehards night claim the thriving business is due largely to the voluptuous waitresses who serve the undistinguished food and drink. A more likely explanation would link the non-recession laughing crowds to Dick Gregory, who appears tonight for the second time in two weeks on the Jack Paar Show.
Dick is creating more talk in show-business circles than any new performer in months. He's using fresh topical political humor of a brand never heard before in major night clubs or on television. He's an altogether refreshing phenomenon these days—a young man talking previously taboo political truths, but delivering same with such ease that few members of his audience have the time or inclination to be offended.
They're too busy chortling!
Gregory is a personable young Negro college graduate who grew up in St. Louis and moved to Chicago over five years ago. He's a reminder that Lady Luck and Her Magic Show Business Wand is still in business on the New Frontier.
Cash on Hand $1.50
This past Christmas Dick's liquid cash assets amounted to $1.50. He was working for nothing in a local night club on the assumption that the added experience would be helpful and he stood a better chance of being discovered while working than reading poetry at home. Dick was washing cars during the days and on Christmas eve spent two-thirds of his bankroll on three pounds of hamburger for his wife and child. During a break between shows, Dick added "and you just know what kind of treat you can get for three pounds for one dollar."
Thanks partially to a writeup in a national magazine in early February, Dick can well afford to eat filet in early March. His current Playboy Club salary is $250 weekly, up $100 from the starting figure after a successful audition for Playboy talent scouts.
How can I describe his act in 25 words or less? Well, Dick has been referred to in some circles as the colored Mart Sahl. He prefers to remind his audience that "in the Congo they call Mort the white Dick Gregory."
Sullivan Show Shots
Dick's sudden recognition is primarily due to his conviction that public acceptance of even such issues as school integration in America and the need for greater effort in Africa would not suffer from a light touch and dash of satire. Dick told me "my only question was whether my race was mature enough to laugh at our problems. I decided they were. Too many people take themselves too seriously when discussing this subject (integration)."
Dick was pleased by the response to his first network TV appearance and is currently prepping for the first of several guest shots with Ed Sullivan. Dick jests that after the TV debut he was approached by network officials who wanted him to star in "Stagecoach South."
Flips Gregory, "It will be a little different series. The Indians are scheduled to win."
Even in the South the response to Gregory's appearance with Paar was enthusiastic, so Dick can indulge himself with such flippancies as, "in the South they burnt crosses in front of the sets after seeing the Paar Show."
Even his sudden affluence will not easily let Gregory forget some of the things that happened to him two weeks ago today. The day marked not only his first major network TV exposure (he appeared briefly on ABC's "Cast The First Stone," last fall) but his first airplane ride. When he returned to Chicago late in the evening his wife calmly informed him that the finance company had repossessed the Gregory family's television set. As the saying goes, his success couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

But Gregory soon felt more than “a dash of satire” was needed in the real world outside glitzy nightclubs. An editorial by Robert G. Fichenberg in the Knickerbocker News in 1967 stated that Gregory “was stunned by the case of a 78-year-old Negro man who was jailed during a voter registration drive. The man's wife died while he was in jail — on the first night the old man ever spent away from home. At this point, Dick Gregory says, he began to wonder if he "really had it made" when so many of his people were suffering.”

In May 1963, he was in Birmingham, Alabama marching for de-segregation. Here’s a snippet of an unbylined story from the California Eagle of May 9th. The Associated Press photo below is from the same day; Gregory shows newsmen where he said police beat him while in jail on charges of parading without a permit.

"Let them use the dogs! We’ll march anyway!"
Waves upon waves of Negroes have been challenging [public safety commissioner] "Bull" Connor, his snearling, [sic] biting dogs, his pelting water hoses and the whole segregated set-up of Birmingham, Ala. The entire city is in turmoil; shops are closing; schools are emptying.
Sympathy protest demonstrations are being held throughout the country.
HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN
Monday more than 1000 men, women and children were arrested and carted off to jail. Among them were hundreds of school children, some as young as six or seven years old.

Among them also was Dick Gregory, comedian who has made the fight in the South his fight.
Angry Negroes streamed from five churches when word spread that the youngsters had been kept outside in an open jail yard during a sudden drenching thunderstorm.
One Negro woman who refused to get off the sidewalk when ordered to was set upon by five policeman [sic] who wrestled her to the pavement. One of the "law" men kneed her in the neck.
FREEDOM! FREEDOM!
Dick Gregory led the first group of 19 boys and girls from the 16th Street Baptist Church where some 2000 people had gathered. He didn't get very far, only to the first road block.
"Freedom! Freedom!" shouted the youngsters as they were herded into paddy wagons and buses and swept away to jail.[...]
ON THEY COME
Other demonstrators, in groups of 20 to 50, followed those who were with Dick Gregory. Some 200 to 250 more were arrested downtown as they picketed department, drug and variety stores.
Even before the new arrests, the city's jail were packed [sic]. "There's standing room only," commented one official. Hundreds of those taken into custody, including children, were sleeping shoulder to shoulder on concrete floors.
And still the marchers came.

Two years later in August 1965, Gregory was in Watts, urging a throng of 500 rioters to go home when, the A.P. reported at the time, he “stepped behind a barricade of police cars and the shots started. I felt a pain in my leg. I didn’t fall.” It turns out he was shot with a rifle in the thigh. He confronted the man with the firearm and told him to get off the street. The crowd left. Gregory went to hospital, was treated, and then went back to the area to try to help restore order.

Gregory later ran for president against Richard Nixon and turned his attention to health and nutrition. He continued to speak to college audiences. “You have a big job,” he told a young crowd at the University of Utah in 1970, “of giving America back its sanity...Stay morally pure, morally honest.”

Not everyone agreed with Gregory, who was prone to generalisations at times. Walter Winchell, who was writing columns back in the days people yucked it up at Stepin Fetchit, called Gregory “a professional bore.” But the best summary of Gregory’s career may have been made at the end of a column in the Syracuse Post in March 2, 1961. Writer Mario Rossi opined: “When Dick Gregory walks off the stage, he leaves us with more than the pleasant exhaustion that comes from rollicking laughter. There is suddenly the old realization that many a truth is spoken in jest.”