Dick Gregory, cutting-edge satirist and uncompromising activist, dies at 84

The comedian Dick Gregory rose to national prominence in the early 1960s as a black satirist whose audacious style of humor was biting, subversive and topical, mostly centered on current events, politics and above all, racial tensions. His trademark was the searing punchline.

“A Southern liberal?” he once said. “That’s a guy that’ll lynch you from a low tree.” Another: “When I get drunk, I think I’m Polish. One night I got so drunk I moved out of my own neighborhood.” On segregation: “I know the South very well. I spent 20 years there one night.”

Gregory, 84, died Aug. 19 in Washington. His son, Christian Gregory, announced the death on Gregory’s official social media accounts. The cause was not reported.

His expert timing and bold humor - often pulled from the day’s headlines — inspired the careers of comedians such as Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor.

Mel Watkins, a journalist and scholar whose books include “On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy,” said that Gregory broke the mold among black comedians by employing political satire at a time when audiences expected black performers to do minstrel skits in baggy pants and outsize shoes and use slapstick humor.

“He was the comic that made white America aware of the fact that African-American comedians were perfectly capable of satire,” Watkins said. “He was sharp. He was urbane. He smoked a cigarette on stage. He was very calm in demeanor but very outspoken in what he said. … He brought in current political and social issues into his comedy — which was astounding to most white Americans at that time. It was during a time when blacks were considered incapable of doing this.”

Gregory was hired at the country’s most prominent clubs — from the Blue Angel in New York to the hungry i in San Francisco. He was a guest on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar and “The Merv Griffin Show.” He made more than $12,000 a week at his peak.

Darryl Littleton, a comedian and author of “Black Comedians on Black Comedy,” said that Gregory was among the first black comics to gain recognition for incorporating political barbs into his routine. Littleton said Gregory, along with white comics Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, “were all chopping at the same tree and nobody was really doing social commentary and breaking down barriers like those guys. What a lot of guys do now echoes what those three guys did back then.”

More than a comedian, Gregory was driven by an unwavering commitment to front-line activism. He marched in Selma, Alabama, was jailed in Birmingham, Ala., was shot in the leg during the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles, and had counted the

Rev. Martin Luther

Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X - all slain campaigning for their cause — among his confidants. At one protest, Gregory said, his pregnant wife was kicked in the stomach by a white sheriff.

Gregory’s entertainment career increasingly took a back seat to his activism.

Protesting de facto school segregation, Gregory led a march in 1965 from Chicago’s City Hall to the home of Mayor Richard Daley. He and several dozen peaceful protesters were arrested for disorderly conduct — they had refused to obey police orders to disperse, and hundreds of hecklers began pelting them with rocks and eggs.

In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed those convictions, saying there was no evidence they were responsible for the violence.

Amid that legal case,

Gregory ran for mayor against Daley in 1967 and for U.S. president in 1968 as a write-in candidate with the left-wing Freedom and

Peace Party, campaigning against what he saw as rampant political corruption in the two major parties.

Gregory said he was appalled that the Democratic

Party would host its national convention that year in Chicago, a city where black demonstrators were regularly brutalized by the police. The convention drew a large contingent of white anti-Vietnam protesters, and the outbreak of violence that ensued prompted Gregory to take mordant glee in the melee.

“I was at home watching it on TV, and I fell on the floor and laughed,” he told

GQ magazine in 2008. “My wife said, ‘What’s funny?’

And I said, ‘The whole world is gonna change.

White folks are gonna see white folks beating white folks.’ ”

“He was the comic that made white America aware of the fact that African-American comedians were perfectly capable of satire.”

— Mel Watkins, journalist and scholar whose books include “On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy