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 comicturned-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: A passerby walks near an entrance to a Panera Bread restaurant location, in Natick, Mass.

“I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.”

Dick Gregory