By Paul Freeman [2011 Interview]

As a stand-up comedian, Dick Gregory broke down barriers. But there was so much more to this extraordinary man.

In the 60s, Gregory gained national exposure, frequently appearing on TV and releasing a number of hit comedy albums. His humor touched on his everyday life, but also delved into biting social satire. That's evident by such tracks as "Congo Daily Tribune, "Commentary on Affairs Political," "Middle East" and "Not Poor -- Just Busted" from his debut LP, "In Living Black and White."

Gregory made a number of film appearances, including a riveting screen debut as a Charlie "Bird" Parker type of jazz saxophonist in the intense drama "Sweet Love, Bitter," a seldom seen gem also starring Don Murray, Robert Hooks and Diane Varsi.

He marched beside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Gregory fought tirelessly for civil rights women's rights, peace and other social causes. He went on numerous hunger strikes.

Gregory was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. And he railed against the Warren Commission report concerning the assassination of President Kennedy. Throughout his life, he sought to unearth the truth regarding the deaths not only of JFK, but also his friends Dr. King and Malcolm X. Not surprisingly, Gregory was on Richard Nixon's enemies list.

Gregory ran for mayor of Chicago against incumbent Richard J. Daley in 1967. The following year, he ran for President of the United States, as a write-in candidate.

He wrote many books, ranging from "Nigger: An Autobiography (with Robert Lipsyte) to "African American Humor: The Best Black Comedy from Slavery to Today" to "Murder in Memphis: The FBI and the Assassination of Martin Luther King" (with Mark Lane), "No More Lies: The Myth and Reality of American History" and "From The Back of the Bus." A health food advocate, he wrote "Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' With Mother Nature."

It was an honor to talk with Dick Gregory prior to his 2011 appearance with another legendary and influential comedian, Mort Sahl, at San Francisco's Rrazz Room. Gregory passed in 2017, at age 84. He was still married to Lillian Gregory, whom he had wed in 1959. He has had a profound impact not only on their 11 children, but on generations of comedians and activists.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
You're performing in San Francisco with Mort Sahl. You both gained prominence in the 60s. Do you feel you have a shared history, a lot in common?

DICK GREGORY:
In the 60s, Mort was probably the biggest thing out there. A lot of his stuff was limited. He couldn't work Vegas, because he refused to put on a suit and a tie [chuckles] His trademark was a sweater, open shirt. You can work Vegas naked now... with sneakers on.

So you had Lenny Bruce, who was out there. And when he came to town, all the real hip, hip folks, the heavy drug addicts would be there. When Mort came to town, just the reefer smokers came out. And so I would just sit and listen to him and just admired him. And then met him.

We had never worked together at all. We knew and respected one another. And then one day the New York office put together, said, "Look this would be great, to take all the old comics," so they got about six of us. And I was the youngest. And I'll be 80 in two years. So you can imagine how old the rest of 'em was. So I was thinking, "God, if the audience laughs long enough and keeps us up there, they'll see someone die tonight."

One thing led to another. A couple of them got sick. So it was me, Mort and Irwin Corey and Shelley Berman on the first group. And then, little by little by little, the timing didn't work out, because it was too many of us. It was okay if you're interacting, like in a play. But we were doing separate sets. So then it got whittled down to me and Mort. And originally we weren't doing nightclubs. It was like theatres. And then when it got down to me and Mort, after that nightclubs started booking us.

And it was just fun. Mort said to me, "I'll go on first. You close the show." I said, "Come on, now, Mort. I'm not going to have you mad at me for the rest of your life. I'm opening the show! And you're closing it." And the fun is, normally when you work, you open a show, you get off, you gone. Man, when I get off, I'll stay there, get a chair and sit and listen to Mort. We have that much fun with one another.

Out of town, we get up in the morning and we talk, just discuss world things, real things. And it's just like we've been knowing each other all our life. The chemistry hits on stage. Like if you go to a casino and there's a group playing blackjack, there's another group playing poker, another group's shootin' craps. That's how I look at our act. When you come in to see the two of us, you're in a casino, but it's two different things. I walk out and talk about the world according to Dick Gregory. And Mort walks out and talks about the world according to himself. And we have two different backgrounds. That's what I bring and that's what he brings and the people, they love it.

See there was a time when Mort Sahl could go over most folks' head. But not with the cable news and the news network and 24 hour news. Everybody knows what's goin' on. You just walk up there and start talking.

PCC:
So audiences are more receptive these days?

GREGORY:
Well, they're more informed. They've always been receptive, because you've got the audience that was receptive to you. When I was out there, you could do jokes and, if you had the wrong audience that hadn't been well read... You know, Shelley Berman had a million, million, million-plus-seller album talking about coffee, milk or tea -- about airline stewardesses.

Well, man, back in the 60s, I walked out to a black audience. If I talked about coffee, milk or tea, that wouldn't have known what I was talking about, because 99.9 percent of black folks had never been on a plane. But I could take that same type of material and do it pertaining to the Greyhound bus. Today you wouldn't have to do that, because everybody knows about the airplane movies and all, so you don't have to worry about that. Or you can do a Greyhound bus one and talk to that high echelon economy and they would understand, because that's how aware the world is today.

PCC:
So with that being the case, what are some of the key topics you touch on now?

GREGORY:
Oh, I talk about the war. I was in the war for three days, when the captain talked to all of us and told us, "If you're captured by the enemy, give up nothing but your name, rank and serial number. You understand?" And everybody, 40,000 troops understood but me. And you really feel stupid when you raise your hand and you don't understand. So I said, "I don't understand." He said, "What is it you don't understand?" I said, "I don't understand that, if I get captured by the enemy, I give up nothing but name, rank and serial number."

Then I ask the women in the audience, "Do you know what a dog tag is?" It's got your name, rank and serial number. Well, you know how stupid that is? If I'm captured, I can't give them no more information than they would get if I was dead? So I said, "No, no. No way." So they said I was a traitor, un-American. It was my third day in the Army, I said, "I'm telling you now, put on my record to the Pentagon, if Dick Gregory ever gets caught, change all your used-to-be secrets."

I tell them that Mort is five years older than me and in two years, I'll be 80. People keep saying, "You look so well. How do you know when you're getting old?" You know you're getting old when somebody compliments them beautiful alligator shoes you're wearin'... and you're barefoot. So it's that type of... and whatever is in the news.

Last time we were together, the whole Michael Jackson was big. I said, "All fathers who had no education, no money, they want their children to succeed, so they threaten them and intimidate them. My father heard I flunked Latin, came in the house and beat hell out of me. And he didn't even live with us. [Laughs] And then you stop at that point and say, "Gary, Indiana, huh? Late 50s, early 60s, Steel industry had left. You couldn't find a more blighted-out city than that. Crime was the highest there. And yet not one of those Jacksons was arrested for stealing, for rape, for driving drunk. I mean, let's stop and think about -- not one of them has ever gone to jail. And they got up together and became world renowned, not because of crime... It's that type of approach.

I talk about three years ago this Christmas, the biggest news in the world was the San Francisco Zoo. Tiger jumped over the fence and killed that one guy. Then we find out later he that he threw an empty vodka bottle. So I say, "When I heard the news at Christmas, I felt sorry for him, from the tiger jumping." I said, "Do you realize what a nothing life you have to have to go to the zoo on Christmas? He must have nothin' under the tree. [Laughs] Christmas comes once a year. The zoo is open all year round." So I said, "If you throw a vodka bottle, you better leave something in it, because the animals ain't no fool -- 'Hey man, let me get high like you!'" So you just pick up the news and take off. I walk out with a stack of newspapers and start talking from there.

PCC:
How did you get into comedy? I read that for you, it started in the Army.

GREGORY:
I had always been funny. I didn't know nothin' about comics. I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. I was born before television, so I didn't see variety shows. It was a rigidly segregated city. You had black movies, white movies. You'd have white water fountains -- black, you couldn't use them. I don't know anything about comedy. I was just a little, skinny, nappy-haired black boy that didn't know where my daddy was. And people would laugh at me. You think people are scared of AIDS? Back then it was TB. And they saw a little skinny boy comin' at them, they crossed the street [laughs].

So people would laugh at me about being skinny and "Where's your daddy?" And then one day, I started using it. If I bumped into you at the playground, I could act like your daddy wasn't at home, act like you were being raised by your mother. And if the stuff is funny, people gonna laugh. And then I learned, whoever uses it first is gonna get the laugh.

And the juvenile gangs. You think the Bloods and the Crips are something, you should go back and look at the gangs that roamed American streets in the ghettos in the 20s and 30s. Even the gang members would see me comin' down the street and cross over to the other side. And that's the first time I realized, as a youngster, the way you can say things, as long as you're not angry. When you're angry, the humor is not there.

And you'd say the same things over and over. People would laugh. And so, I'd use mine as a weapon to protect myself, so people wouldn't talk about me. And the more you use it -- it's like lifting weights, if you lift weights with your right arm and not your left arm, your right arm will get big. And so that part of my brain that said, "Be funny" got big.

I couldn't even get a date, man. People were scared to go out with me. They'd think, when I left them, I'd come back and talk about them as a dog. That's what they thought [laughs]. And so, from that, I was funny, because I had to be.

And then in the Army, I acted just as crazy as I did in the street. And the Army didn't tolerate it. They said, "You must be a comic." I said, "Yup." "You go down to the PX and you entertain the soldiers tonight." And that's how I started. I went to the PX. You don't have to be funny to entertain soldiers. My opening line was, "I was arrested this morning for impersonating an officer. I slept till 12 noon." And they went crazy. And it was that type of thing, where I was never dealing with the underdog, but the top brass.

And then I won the all-Army talent show and the all-Service talent show. You got to New Jersey, where they had the finals. And you win the finals, you go on "The Ed Sullivan Show." I won it, but they couldn't give it to me. They gave it to somebody else, because they said I was too political.

So way back then, I realized that there were different kinds of comedy. There was nice, kind stuff and there was stuff that people laughed at, but were scared of.

And thank God, because had I gone on "The Ed Sullivan Show," I never would have been here today, because I knew nothing about comedy. And I would have thought, "'The Ed Sullivan Show' -- you can't tell me what to do."

Then I realized comedy is just timing. The funniest jokes you ever heard in your life did not come from a professional comedian. They came from friends and relatives. To be a comic is about timing, a rhythm.It's not the same as when you're sitting at home during Christmas holidays, just laughing and talking with family. So that's what I had to learn.

I also had to learn -- because I didn't know nothin' about show business -- that a Negro comedian was not permitted to work white nightclubs. You could sing and dance, if you were a Negro. But you couldn't stand flat-footed and talk to the white folk.

PCC:
How did they see any logic in that?

GREGORY:
There was never no logic about it. How was there logic? When I was a little boy, a woman, a schoolteacher in St. Louis, couldn't get married. The logic was, she'd get pregnant [laughs], be out of school. A woman couldn't be a cop. A woman couldn't be a principal. The people who make the rules don't need logic.

And then Hugh Hefner broke through it. And Hugh Hefner brought me in to play the Playboy Clubs. It was the first time in the history of America a black comic worked a white club.

PCC:
So did you feel a lot of extra pressure in that kind of situation?

GREGORY:
No, see, I didn't know. At that time, I wasn't aware. See, I knew nothing about show business. It wasn't that I traveled from one city to another. I was right there in Chicago, working Negro clubs. And when Hefner brought me down, I couldn't believe they were going to pay me $50 for one night. I was working three nights a week at $10 a night. I didn't know much about downtown Chicago. I got off the bus at the wrong place and I didn't have no more money. It was a blizzard that night, so I'm asking people about the Playboy Club and they just said, "It's 12 blocks that way." So I'm runnin', slippin' in the snow. And I finally see the big Playboy sign.

And I didn't know that Hefner had booked out the Carousel Room to a group, the Southern delegation of a frozen food convention. They had booked the room. So what had happened was, Hefner had seen my act in a Negro club and knew I did a lot of racial stuff, so they just said, "Well, this probably wouldn't go over."

Now, ordinarily, to get $50 and not have to work is a blessing. But I was runnin', runnin', trying to get to that club by eight o'clock. And I get right to the Playboy Club and say, "Hey, where's the Carousel Room?" He says, "Second floor, to the right." Now I don't know this white man standing in the middle of the stairway is Hefner's partner, Victor Lownes. He's waiting there to tell me I don't have to work. I just see a white man standing in my way. So I push him out of the way. Get up to the second floor, turn right, see the Carousel Room, jump up on the stage and start talking at 8 p.m.

At 10:30 that night, I was still talking. At 12 o'clock, that's when they woke Hefner up, told him to come by. And at 2 o'clock, I walked off the stage. That's how it happened. Had I not got there on time, I wouldn't have worked. I wouldn't be talkin' to you now. Life is all about these little threads.

And then he brought me in for two weeks. And I'll tell you what, people didn't come to see acts. They came to see bunnies and he gave you an extra shot of whisky without telling you. And sometimes in the 50s, 60s, the mob owned 99 percent of your clubs. It was a rip-off. He gave you a good meal. But it was the bunnies -- this was something new. And the key, the fact that this was worldwide. It was a status symbol to have a Playboy key.

And so the people would come in and a guy that was a writer for Time Magazine, wrote about the space program, their office was located in Chicago, so he was there whenever he was back to file his stories from Florida. He and his wife wanted to go to the Playboy Club. And they said, "There's no more tickets. Oh, wait a minute, there's a Negro comic opening up tonight. Let me call over there and say you're coming to review him." And he wrote a review. And it made the cover of Time Magazine [laughs]. That little thread again. He was just writing it, because it was the only way he could get in. He had his credentials and he faked like he was coming to review me. And he did review, the science editor, who wrote about the space program, reviewed me. So then from that, I went on the "Jack Paar Show."

PCC:
A national breakthrough with that exposure?

GREGORY:
Well, let me tell you another little thread. In the Negro nightclub, there was a great Negro singer, Billy Eckstine. Billy Eckstine cussed out Jack Paar -- man, Jack Paar, I'd been watching Jack Paar every night for five years -- almost hit him. Jack Paar, my man, what's wrong with you?

Well, he had never let a Negro sit on the couch. Then it dawned on me, if you were a Negro, you could come on a show and do your act, but then you leave. Like now, everybody who comes on don't sit on the couch, right? But never had a Negro sat on that couch.

And unbeknown to my wife, I had been standing in front of the mirror, just acting like I was on the Paar show, not knowing if I'd ever go, but that's fantasyland. And when I learned that about the truth about the show from Billy Eckstine, I was so hurt, I was crying that night.

And then when the story about me came out in Time Magazine, the "Jack Paar Show" called the house. My wife answered. She was just happy because she knew that's all I wanted. But she didn't know I had changed my mind. So I got on the phone, they said, "Dick, this is Jack Paar's producer. Read an incredible story. Time Magazine. And Jack wants you on the show." I said, "I don't want to be on the show." And I hung up. I'm crying and I was trying to explain it to my wife and the phone rings again. It was Jack Paar. I thought somebody was putting me on.

He said, "This is Mr. Paar, how come you won't work with us?" I said, "Because the Negroes never sit on the couch." He said, "Sammy Davis..." I said, "Sammy Davis sits in for you on your night off sometimes. But a Negro's never sat on the couch." He said, "Well, come on in, I'll let you sit on the couch."

So I went in. Now, what I didn't know, when you sit on that couch, you become the family. My salary jumped from $250 to $5,000 a night. Had I not sat on the couch, none of that would have happened. I'd become the family. And I talked about my children, from a funny standpoint. Thousands of letters came in from white America. I didn't know that black children and white children were the same. I'm sitting there talking, NBC, so many phone calls from around America, their circuits blew out. And that came from Billy Eckstine telling me that a Negro had never sat on the couch. And I knew if I sat on the couch I would make it. But I thought there was a big of a price to pay to do my act and not sit on the couch.

PCC:
So the reactions NBC received were overwhelmingly favorable?

GREGORY:
Yeah, that year, I went back on the Paar show 22 times [laughs]. It was overwhelming. You know, usually, most folks that have negative attitudes, we hear from them, but we don't hear from all the folks that don't. So here the one little handful of folks that was calling in with something negative was overwhelmed by the positive. That's why they brought me back so much. I was good for the ratings.

PCC:
How difficult was it in the 60s to use humor and still deal with social issues?

GREGORY:
As I said, I looked at is as, I was using it as a weapon. I wasn't a comic to be a comic. Most Negroes didn't know what a comic was. I didn't know nothin' about all the other comics -- Redd Foxx and the other black -- I didn't know nothin' about them. All I knew was about the comics you saw on TV. Before TV, it was radio. You know how stupid you got to be to listen to a tap dancer on the radio? So television came around and the white comics like Bob Hope and them, I didn't think they were funny. I thought they were corny. So I thought there must be something wrong with me.

Recently I went to see the movie "Iron Man 2." Oh, I was miserable. I was outraged. And I said to my wife, "Baby, you know, there must be something wrong with us, because all these white folks at the movie can't be wrong and we right." [Laughs] One of my children told me about that, said, "Dad, anytime you go to a movie and the movie's too loud, y'all are too old to be in there."

Anyway, it was that type of rhythm. I didn't like the slapstick, the mom-and-pop jokes, the woman always being the butt of the joke. But I didn't set out to be a comic. I set out to protect myself. And then I fell into it. And so that was my life. So I wasn't doing jokes to make white people happy. That never dawned on me. I was doing funny stuff. I said, "I spent 20 years in Mississippi one day." And that's funny any way you cut it [laughs]. I walked into a restaurant one day in Mississippi and they said, "We don't serve niggers in here." I said, "I don't eat niggers nowhere. Bring me a hamburger." [Chuckles]

PCC:
It must have been perfect timing, with your style, and the Civil Rights movement happening...

GREGORY:
Yeah, the Civil Rights movement was the number one thing on the news. And when black folks and white folks in those days in America came together, they didn't think they had anything to laugh about. I said, "Hey, let me tell you what's funny." And I realize now -- when you look at "All in the Family," that TV show was the hottest show for years -- there couldn't have been an "All in the Family," had there not been a Dick Gregory. Because America -- I'm talking about the producers and the people who run show business -- they found out that there's an audience there. So a black guy already blazed the trail. So when I sat back and looked at it...

Somebody from the New York Times asked me, "How many of those white folks you think are laughing at you, because they feel guilty?" I said, "You know, being black, being raised in a black community, we got some Negroes whiter than white folks. So I have no right to sit on the stage and look out there and decide, that's a white man, when it might be a Negro, laughing because he's guilty. Now you have a right to go ask them, as a reporter, were you laughing because you were guilty? I don't have a right to do that. I just come out there, stand flat-footed, say whatever I've got to say and then leave.

PCC:
You were involved in many important causes. Did that become more difficult, when you became a celebrity, when you had a lot to lose?

GREGORY:
Oh, no, man. It came easy. The more powerful you are... in other words, the President of the United States, if he tells corny jokes, he'll get laughs, because you don't expect that type of power to be humorous. So the more famous you become and the more popular, people are more willing to laugh -- louder and harder. And in the process of that, I was developing into a full-fledged social satirist. But no, I never... we'll find a cure for cancer one day. We'll find a cure for everything that ills the world. It won't be through comedy or entertainment or athletics. We overblow... I never walked up on the stage, in my life, to integrate. Now, in all my contracts, it said, "If you run an ad for me being at the hungry i [famed San Francisco venue, for example], in a white paper, if there's a Negro paper within 100-mile radius, you have to run an ad in there, too. Now, that was me. That was personal me.

When I would go into a town like Vegas and work, I would go to the Negro side and go to the barber shop and the beauty parlors and I'd give them like $300 and tell them would they get a couple to come to the Flamingo. Don't tell them you know me. Don't act like you know me. And I'll meet you tomorrow and find out how they treated you. Was there any attitude or anything? So that was just me. That was my point of my life. And so when the Civil Rights movement started, it never was a decision with my wife and I -- Will marching with King, being arrested, going to jail, how would this affect my career? How will my career affect the movement? That was the important bit. And it worked.

I mean, when I went to Mississippi, I knew I was going to die, but I went anyway. And did I ever believe I could sit and talk to you today and realize a black man is head of the Mississippi state troopers. A black woman is head of social services. A white woman wants to get on welfare, she's got to get past a sister. How quick that thing changed. So if somebody said, "On your gravesite, what would you like to see on there?" Simple -- "He had no hidden agendas," which I didn't. I think it's an insult for me to say, "I'm going to wipe out this through humor," no more than I'm going to wipe out your cancer tumor through humor. Although they're finding out now that humor helps to heal folks. I didn't know that at the time.

And when I marched down in Mississippi, if all them Ku Klux Klanners would have laughed at me, I would have felt that I was defeated. When I'm up there on stage, I'm up there as a comic. When I'm out here dealing with human dignity, I'm walking out here dealing with human dignity. When I walk up on the stage, I'm not going to assume that I'm going to be killed. When I was down there with the movement, every day I was there, I assumed I could be killed. It's a big difference.

PCC:
Your personal friendships with Malcolm X and with Dr. King, did those shape your philosophies and your attitudes?

GREGORY:
Being there, I didn't see him as Malcolm, I didn't see him as King. I mean, if I had known what was going to happen to both of them...

Malcolm was embarrassing to be around, because he was so bashful. When that camera came on, he was a different person. Jesus! There was only one person I knew more bashful and timid as him and that was Richard Pryor. I just refused to be around Richard Pryor at the time. I'd just feel embarrassed at how timid he was and how bashful he was.

First time I met Malcolm, he called the hotel -- "Dick Gregory, this is brother Malcolm. What do I have to do to get you out to come out to the mosque?" He wasn't doing nothin' but selling woof tickets then and I was the biggest thing in show business then. I said, "Is this Malcolm X?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Well, send a car to come get me. I'm ready to go in 30 minutes." So I hung up.

He rang back. "Dick, Dick, Dick..." His whole demeanor had changed. He said, "Dick, you can't come in the mosque." I said, "What do you mean?" "You know what'll happen to your white audience?" I said, "Malcolm, didn't you call me and ask me to come?" "I was just playin' man." "No, you wasn't playin'. Don't play with me like that. Send a car. And here's what I want -- I want you to take a picture of you and me standing in front of the mosque and I want to see it on the front page of Muhammad Speaks." That's how we opened up. And he did. And you look at his writing -- he says, "There's only one revolutionary in the world; that's Dick Gregory." That's the way he felt about me. I just loved him, man.

PCC:
And Dr. King?

GREGORY:
The strongest two forces in the history of America have always been the black woman and the black church. That's why the African-Americans are the only group on this planet, over and over, can start at the bottom and make it all the way to the top. You trace that back to the black woman and the black church. Ninety-eight percent of the people at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement had "Reverend" in front of their name before they had PhD. So comin' up in the black Baptist church, I was used to that. I wasn't used to Malcolm. I wasn't used to Malcolm telling white people to go f-ck themselves. [Laughs]. I was used to preachers just standing in the pulpit and preaching, not saying, "Get you a gun, redneck honky!" So I was used to King's demeanor. I wasn't used to Malcolm's.

It was just an honor to be with King and listen to his oratory. White folks hadn't gotten to hear black folks speak like that. They had some preachers who had never been to school, shouting about the bible. But that's not the whole picture. I'm talking about ministers with huge churches who were such eloquent speakers. We grew up with that. It's like when people talk about Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama was our aunties, our mothers, our sisters. We've seen Michelle Obamas all our life. White folks just getting to see that. We grew up with them [laughs].

So it was that type of movement. People came to King and what he meant. And remember, what made our movement wasn't King. It was the Ku Klux Klan. It was their reaction to King. That upset the world. King could have come through 25 ahead of time, it wouldn't have been effective, because TV wasn't there to send the pictures around the world. So the timing was right. His demeanor was right. A lot of people hated him, they'd say, "No honky's going hit me in the head. I'll kill him." "Well, you ain't killed none yet." He was embarrassing black men who had that attitude. They said, "Police brutality was raging in Chicago, New York, Pennsylvania, you didn't do nothin' about that." So it was a whole combination...

And I was able to work with all of them -- the NAACP, the Urban League, SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee]. I went to Mississippi with SNCC and Stokley Carmichael and Rap Brown were calling the NAACP a bunch of hankie-head Uncle Toms, white folks' niggers, and talking about them like they was dogs. And when they arrested three or four hundred of us [laughs], they were calling on the NAACP and the Urban League -- "Come on down, get us out!"

The beauty was that, I think if it had been the NAACP and Urban League members who had been arrested, I don't think the young folks would have lifted a hand to get them out of jail. But they were so mature and understood this struggle. And although what these people were calling them kind of alienated them, it had nothing to do with putting up the money and the lawyers to get them out of there. And it was those combinations that came through at that time that was just unreal.

And King was like Malcolm in one way. Malcolm didn't say one thing when the cameras was on and something else when they were off. King never said one thing for the camera and then something else when it was off. And the world could feel that. You could just feel it. I think the world never fully appreciated King until after he was shot. And something in the ether -- it's just like smelling good food that's being cooked. You just know that you're in for a good meal. And I think that's what happened with King.

I knew him. But at the time, I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't think we would be looking back and hearing that there was street named after Martin Luther King. A holiday named after him. That wasn't what you were there for.

People ask now, "When you were out there marching so there could be a Negro President?" We weren't thinking about a Negro President. We were out there to liberate black folks. We were out there saying that we at least should have a right to vote, have a right to get a mortgage. That's what we were there for. Out of that comes a black President. But you didn't go out there and lay down your life saying, "I want a Negro President. I want a Negro to be the president of Harvard or Yale." That wasn't it was about. And out of that, when the pot of stew was all cooked, that's what happened.

Of course, we haven't gotten there yet. But we don't have to worry about the physical part. There was a time when you had to worry about being physically attacked. You don't have to worry about that. If a black person got lynched today, it would shock the world. There was a time when that was happening all too often.

Now we're dealing with the mental part. And now white folks need to be hugged, because with Obama in the White House, there's a whole bunch of them that are crazy -- "We got to take our country back!" I said, "Did I sleep through a war? Did we lose one? Oh, you mean a black man... oh, I see, okay."

PCC:
We do still see polarization and we do still war dragging on. Do you see a lot of parallels to the 60s?

GREGORY:
No, no. No parallels at all. In the South, they never cared how close a Negro got, as long as they didn't get too big. Remember, they weren't worried about me being close -- I lived on the plantation with them [laughs]. The massa's here. I'm right here in his backyard. In the South, they never cared how close a Negro got, as long as they didn't get too big. In the North, they didn't care how big you got, as long as you didn't get too close. And so that's pretty well in place today. It's beginning to break down now, because you don't break down stuff from the top, it's from the bottom.

So when youngsters start going to school with one another... We used to watch the buses pass by our house taking the white children to school. But it came my turn to ride, it wasn't busing. It was called "forced busing". Force busing. "Well, you let them dumb Negroes come to our good schools, our schools won't be that good." Well, they've always told me good schools flunk dumb people out [laughs]. If you tell me dumb people gonna mess up your school, your school wasn't as good as you thought it was.

Things have changed. You turn on the TV now, you see Negroes. You see women in the news. Hispanics. Before, the only people who knew about Hispanic successes was the family. Now the whole world knows it. The whole thing has changed. Kids grow up with a whole different mentality now.

PCC:
What about your opposition to the Vietnam War -- did that end up being a challenge for you in that era, in terms of stirring up animosity and controversy?

GREGORY:
Oh, yeah. I've had some people sit with me in a club and say, [in an irate voice] "I don't like what you said about the Navy." [Laughs] But the movement was so big, so huge. Your priorities went with the most dangerous. You don't care about having nobody comin' to the club. You don't care about people not laughing. You don't care about bad reviews. It's about priorities.

Some people might say, "Are you fighting for the Negro race?" [Laughs] I said, "No, no, no no. I'm not fighting for the Negro race. I'm fighting for me. When I bought a Rolls Royce, I didn't buy it for my children. I was buying it for me. And they'll have it, if they want it. But I ain't got no guarantee my children won't buy a Rolls Royce and won't even let me ride in it. So the rights I was fighting for wasn't for my children. I want my human dignity right now. And that's where my mind was. And I'm married to a woman who never put no demands on me. Not "We're gonna get the big house. We're doing to this." Or "We got to be careful of this or that." That was never in her psyche or my psyche.

PCC:
How many years married?

GREGORY:
Oh, I hate to say it -- 51 years. There ought to be a law against that [laughs].

PCC:
You also were able to use a lot of your energy towards positive things like fighting world hunger and fighting drug abuse.

GREGORY:
Oh, yeah. I was even doing this when I was in high school. I was marching with the NAACP, when I was in high school. I ran the mile, when most folks, even black folks, were convinced that, genetically a black man wasn't built to run long races. Just short distances. I believed that. And then I just started running, just to get away from being skinny, having people laugh at me. And I'd just run. I'd feel free, when I'd be running.

I started running at four o'clock on Saturday, running the four square miles around my house and I realized the longer I'd run, the more people would come out and look at me. So I figured out, I start running at four o'clock and when you come back at five in the evening, I'm still running, that was the new buzz -- "Who is this? Jesus Christ!" And then from that, I ended up being the first Negro in the history of America to win a state mile championship. First Negro in history to win a state cross-country championship. I ran the mile faster than anybody had run that year and didn't even get my name mentioned, because I was at the Negro meet. I said, "You mean I ran faster than anybody had ever run and I don't get credit?" So I got with the NAACP and we forced them, in St. Louis, to integrate the track & field. Then they realized they couldn't integrate that without integrating the rest of it. I was the one that said, "This is not right. Let's change it."

I'm almost 80. I never threw a football in my life. Ever. I never caught a basketball in my life. I never played baseball in my life. I was just fragile. I never had a fight in my life... except with my mouth. Everybody thought somebody as loud and funny as I was, I could fight the same way. I couldn't. I was just standin' on the corner, just talkin' shit. If there wasn't nobody there, I'd talk about myself. I'd talk about me -- "You little nappy-head, skinny-legged..." [laughs] and it'd be so funny, I'd laugh. I came through with that attitude, that feeling. I began to see that, when you find what works for you, you can make a difference.

And one day, in a black nightclub, I was making $10 a night and I asked the little handyman, "If I give you $10, would you come and open up the doors at seven o'clock in the morning?" So I came in. It was the largest Negro nightclub. It was 1,500 seats. And so I came in and I straightened up the seats and I straightened up the tables, because they don't clean up the place until after noon. And then I got up on the stage and did my act. And that's when I learned, I don't care how drunk you are, how heckling you are, I'd rather see you there drunk and heckling me than an empty chair, because an empty chair can't laugh. That's how I learned to have respect for that audience.

PCC:
You talk about being fragile. Really you have such incredible strength. You're such a survivor. Is that something that you're born with, that inner strength?

GREGORY:
There's an inner strength that pulls to you. People's laughing at me and I start giving it back to them and the same folks let me laugh at them. And so it's the people around you, the people in the movement, the people in the NAACP that marched with me.

We had lunches and you had to pay 10 cents to get a luncheon. And because of my fame in high school, I would shake down the students. In order to eat lunch, you couldn't come with a dime. You had to have two dimes. And I would go laugh and talk and pass them out to the ones that didn't have a dime. So it was that type of thing. Always wanted to be on the side of the underdog, because I was the underdog. And then realizing that you can move forward from that, if you're not mean or bitter or evil or ready to go get a gun.

PCC:
So running for office, was that part of giving voice to the underdog, as well?

GREGORY:
I ran for office, because I thought it was a great thing, the right to vote. But I looked at America and I realized that when you vote for the lesser of the two evils, one day you're going to get the evil of the evil. So I decided I was going to run and people would have a choice of something other than the lesser of the two evils. Now it's kind of interesting, if someone names you some black folks who have run for President of the United States before Obama, they say Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisolm. Up until Obama, I was the only African-American in the history of America that ran for President of the United States. They ran in the primary. If Obama had lost in the primaries, then I would have still been the first African-American in the history of America that ran for President, because I ran as a write-in candidate. I didn't have to be validated by anybody.

And then a strange thing happened. The white folks in the Peace & Freedom movement in New Jersey put me on the ballot. I didn't want to be on the ballot. They put me on it.

Some kind of way -- the voting was on Tuesday, I think it was November the 4th, 1968 -- I think somebody tampered with the machines, not by me, but somebody else. And they messed up. And the machines in New Jersey, half an hour after the polls closed, showed Dick Gregory winning by a landslide. And so the machines were locked into that. And they were reporting, Dick Gregory's the next President of the United States. So they had to shut all the machines down. And the Wall Street Journal was the only paper that ever ran that story. The Friday after the election, they said, "A strange thing happened..." [Laughs]

PCC:
It seems strange that people aren't more concerned about government and corporate conspiracies these days.

GREGORY:
Well, you know why? They have a vested interest. When I was a little boy, I used to hear the old folks saying something like, "I don't how she tolerate that. Everybody in town know he's having an affair with her sister." She knows it, too. But she's got 12 children, where they gonna eat? So people tolerate stuff just because it's convenient. And when it gets to the point they don't need it, they'll start whoopin' and talkin'.

PCC:
Did you anticipate that even now there would still be questions about the JFK assassination? Or did you feel it was going to remain in a mire of mystery?

GREGORY:
No, I thought eventually... they can't kill us all... and I thought eventually, there would be questions asked. But when you control it... I mean, people with the New York Times belong to the CIA and the FBI that we don't know about. So in a free, democratic society, you're reading columns in a major paper and don't know that they're part of it. There should be strict federal laws that, if you work for the CIA, the FBI, if you don't announce it, a disclaimer, it's a federal offense -- that's a democracy. Otherwise, they could cover up.

You know, when Kennedy got shot, his car went down Elm Street. That car was not supposed to be on Elm Street. That decision was made 30 minutes before that car turned. Well, how did Lee Harvey Oswald know to get a job six weeks before on Elm Street, if the car wasn't planning on this? It's simple stuff that nobody asks.

Why did the Secret Service clean that car? When they went to the parking lot, they took all the blood... because with technology, you can look at the blood splatter and know where the bullet came from. They cleaned that up in that car that night. They sent it back to Cincinnati and had it reworked. I said, "Wait a minute, I go to museums and see hatchets that cut off kings' heads 3,000 years ago. They didn't keep the car?" So there was just a lot questions.

The book by Mark Lane -- Who would have believed that would be a bestseller way back then, questioning the assassination? And then little by little by little... and then somebody stole the Zapruder film from Time-Life and brought it to me. And at the time, Geraldo Rivera, he was bold and game -- I don't think he'd do it now -- we handed it to him and he ran it. And everybody saw Kennedy's head going back. That's when they knew he was shot from the front. And so a lot of stuff has come out. And a lot more will come out.

But when you stop and think of Dan Rather, when they realized there was a Zapruder film, and they wanted to show it to the American people, they made a decision that it would be too hard on the Kennedy family -- we're going to let one reporter come in and look at it and tell us what he saw. And they took that little punk reporter and he lied and said, "No, there were no shots from the front." And so he's going to have to pay an awful price one day to the universe. And that was his reward -- he moved all the way up to the top. Then all at once, they double-crossed him. So there's a whole lot of stuff that went down.

Like Malcolm X, we got the autopsy. Me and Mark Lane forced the government to give it to us. And all the bullets were going down. They were fired from above. Them black guys standing on the floor [rival black Muslims], they were shooting up. They didn't even know that they had blanks. And we didn't put that in that immediate book because we didn't want them to get out of jail. They thought they had killed Malcolm. So then the CIA admitted they rented the Audubon Ballroom two weeks before Malcolm was killed. But Americans, the ones that believe the official story, believe it. But there's a whole bunch of us out here been making noise for a long time. Some of us been killed. Some of us been framed. Some been disgraced or what have you.

That force out there... I think it's too late to save America now. I think we've tolerated it for so long. And for so long, if you keep thinking you have a headache, when you have a serious brain tumor, then you're in serious trouble.

PCC:
So what do you see as being the most serious ill in the country, the one that needs to be addressed most urgently?

GREGORY:
The CIA and the FBI and all intelligence groups that keep lying to the people. And the people keep believing it. That's the same way Hitler and them came into power. Hitler and them burned Congress [the German parliament building] down, which was called the Reichstag, and said the Communists did it. Well, back then you thought of communists, you thought of Karl Marx, you thought of Jews. So he was saying the Jews did it. It was a symbol.

As a matter of fact, I didn't realize that when Hitler and them was using eugenics and all of that, that eugenics book that they were using came out of the University of West Virginia. That's where eugenics was put together. They were using our road map.

PCC:
Do you think too many Americans are afraid of the truth?

GREGORY:
No, no, no. They're not aware. They think they have a free press. And they don't.

PCC:
Can you focus on the positive changes have taken place during your lifetime, rather than be frustrated by how far there still is to go?

GREGORY:
Well, let me show you who you how it works. If people are still hung up by what happened to Jesus... [laughs] I think eventually the truth will come out. It may be too late to save the country.

This is how it works -- Let's say you were born today. And let's say I'm 70 years old today. So 30 years from now, I'll be 100. Thirty years from now, you'll be 30. Well, one of the things we all have in common, we've learned the word "reparations." I never learned the word "reparations" until, what, eight years ago. So 30 more years, I'll be 130, you'll be 60. Sixty years from now, that's when I feel reparations will come down the chute, because won't nobody be scared of it. People who were scared of it will be dead. So longevity catches up. And you've got a new mode, a new model, a new brain, a new intelligence. And the truth will come out. And maybe we can prevent it from happening again. It's already happened now and they think they've got away with it. But they haven't.

PCC:
As far as longevity, I guess you were way ahead of the curve in terms of vegetarianism and raw fruits and that kind of thing.

GREGORY:
Oh, yeah. I've been really happy about that. When I was growing up, I thought good nutrition was whatever you liked to eat, there was enough of it. And the bad nutrition was when it ran out before you got enough. [Laughs] So then I see a whole new world. The problem today is the chemicals that are put into food. We didn't have that. And one day, when we look at the violence that goes on, you can trace it to chemicals and additives. And somebody will figure that out and then the whole food chain will change. That's why I say about America, they think they're so free, 98 percent of the milk sold in America comes from cloned cows. And they don't have to put that on the label at all.

PCC:
You'd think more people would be outraged by what's being done to our foods, but I guess it takes a lot to get people incensed.

GREGORY:
Yeah, especially when you think you got the greatest country in the world and you think God gave you a gift to have you born here, you don't want to change nothin'.

PCC:
When you look around at the comedy scene today, do you see some comics talking about important social issues?

GREGORY:
Oh, God these young comics, they're so brilliant. You don't see them. But they got all these comedy clubs. I don't get to see many. They're not going to be on TV, but you walk in there, they're tackling everything. Oh, it's just outrageous. You sit there and say, "Wow, what a blessing! What a blessing."

PCC:
It must be gratifying to know that you opened a lot of those doors that they're now walking through.

GREGORY:
Oh, yeah. It's a really good feeling to know that you just put another step on the ladder. The ladder reaches all the way up to the top of the universe.