Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Read Dick Gregory’s old jokes and you’ll see why they still resonate decades later
The images that have graced Dick Gregory’s obituaries show the comic-turned-activist with a long white beard and a weathered face, educating crowds about the killing of Trayvon Martin or police brutality.
But before his transformation into an activist, Gregory was a man on a stage in front of a sometimes-hostile crowd, making acerbic, insightful jokes about race, segregation and the civil rights movement that still resonate half a century later.
Gregory died Saturday at age 84. The New York Times called him a precursor to comedians such as Richard Pryor, who also used humor to slice through cultural hypocrisies and abject racism.
And Gregory’s jokes lingered, as John Legend, who produced a oneman play on Gregory’s life, told the Boston Globe:
“It sounds like he’s aware of what’s happening now even though they were written so long ago.”
People are still reflecting on some of his insightful punchlines, including: • On Jim Crow laws: “I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they didn’t have what I wanted.”
• On Willie Mays, the Major League Baseball player who was at times a target of racism:
“You know I still feel sorry for Willie. I hate to see any baseball player having trouble. That’s a great sport. That is the only sport in the world where a Negro can shake a stick at a white man and won’t start no riot.” • On how people learn to hate: “I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.”
• On bad neighborhoods: