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: