Lecture

Dick Gregory

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

ABOUT 

  • 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. Profile
  • ABOUT Laura Washington

    Laura Washington is the Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University, contributing columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and a senior editor for In These Times magazine. The former editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter, she served as deputy press secretary to Harold Washington. Washington is an award-winning journalist who has covered local and national politics for more than two decades. Her work has been widely featured in the national media, including Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times.

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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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Broader Investigation

Panel

Black Humor Reflections on an American Tradition

Scholars Gerald Early, Werner Sollors, and Glenda Carpio discuss the rich and radical tradition of black humor, satire, and wit.

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