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Dick Gregory

Dick Gregory: The Color of Funny Race, Comedy, and Justice

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  • ABOUT Dick Gregory

    Dick Gregory is a comedian and civil rights activist. Since his first performance in Chicago's Playboy Club in 1961, he has become a nationally known headline performer, selling out nightclubs, making numerous national television appearances, and recording popular comedy albums. He is the author of Callous on My Soul and the bestselling autobiography Nigger.

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It’s hard to predict whether Dick Gregory will be most celebrated as a path-breaking comedian or a trailblazing civil rights activist. It’s impossible to imagine the history of either movement without him—or without his unique blending of the two. In the early 1960s, he became one of the first black comedians to perform before integrated audiences. In 1967, he ran for mayor of Chicago against Richard J. Daley, and a year later for president as the Freedom and Peace Party candidate. The author of and contributor to many politically-charged books, Gregory is still a staunch, wry political voice across a range of issues as varied as nutrition, social justice, and the environment. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington interviews the provocative and always unpredictable Gregory.

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