Dick Gregory talks to Ray Suarez

Ray Suarez: You got into the civil rights struggle early on. Could you have imagined, had I whispered into the ears of your 20-something-year-old self, that about six decades later, we'd still be having these same arguments?

Dick Gregory: Let me answer this way — 120 years ago, if you was at a meeting and said, "One day horses will be obsolete," they would put you in a mental hospital. It's the same. You couldn't see this. Especially black folks couldn't see it. We [are] the only group of people that had to struggle. And we opt for education over liberation. When George Washington was fighting the British, it wasn't so he could build a college. It's liberate. So all the black folks you see in America have never been liberated. You get a white cop can kill my momma and my daddy and my children. But in the news media, if you check, a white cop ain't never hit my car, not my automobile.

But when you look back — and I've been looking back because of the 50th anniversary of the Poor People's Campaign — I have seen a lot of black and white film and a handsome, skinny young Dick Gregory in his white shirt and his skinny black tie talking about hope, about a belief in the future, about a belief in this country being willing to release its grasp and grant black people full human and civil rights. There had to have been a certain optimism in the tank for those things to go on in the late '50s, in the early '60s.

Yes, but that's because we [were] never liberated. We talk as a group of people that's educated but not liberated. George Washington didn't have any educated people with him. They were a bunch of thugs, but they wanted to be liberated. The song don't say, "Give me education or give me death" it say, "Give me liberty or give me death."

But let's talk more about that dichotomy that you're pointing out between education and liberation. A lot of the wise old heads who got all that stuff started said that the two went hand in hand.

No. A black Ph.D. right now driving down the street in Washington, D.C., with a billion dollars in the bank, five Ph.D.s — he hears a squad car and he squeeze the steering wheel tight. Nobody’s telling him that. That’s in his blood. And then when the car pass, he say, "Thank God that had nothing to do" — and they weren't after you in the first place. You have to look way in to it. I missed it all coming up. My mother gave me everything a child would want. When I was born, we didn't have welfare. Everything the child would want for Christmas, you told me a white man brought it to me. 

You're 81 years old. You've been a public person for most of that time. And you are not a liberated man?

Not at all. No. You can't get liberated with money. That comes from inside. They convinced me that all black women are ugly. They convinced black women that all black women are ugly. The only woman on the planet, a black American woman, go to a place called a beauty parlor. All the rest of them, hair salons. They teach me something is wrong with my hair. My hair didn't come from Sears and Roebuck. It came from the same God that put the universe together. And yet you hear black folks say, "Oh, she got good hair. She got bad hair." God, in the business of making something bad?

But haven't we shaken some of that off? I don't hear people talk the way I did when I was a kid about good hair and bad hair.

When I was born, they was changing a black person's dollar for 49 cents. Now they give me 98 cents. I don't want 98 cents for a dollar. I want full dollar's change for a dollar, or this cash register will never ring again. You know, you got black folk full ashamed of “riot.” They call it rebellion. It's not no damn rebellion. A rebellion ain't something you have after a cop shoots somebody. A rebellion is planned. You know the day it's going to start. This is a riot.

In Chicago in 1968, it was a police riot. They didn't say police rebellion. A black father, I have three boys. I never taught them to behave when you run across an ignorant racist cop that might kill you. Why? Anytime you teach your child to treat filth nasty, then they think something wrong with them. That's the game. I never taught my children, "You have to be twice as smart as white folk." See, children don't hear what you mean. They hear what they say. And when you tell them they got to be twice as smart, in [their] mind, they think they dumb. That's how it works. 

Another story of a young fellow being cut down on the street by a policeman. What's going on in Ferguson? You grew up in St. Louis and around there.

Well, I've always told people, if you ever go to St. Louis, you got to set your watch back for three hours. That's how far back St. Louis is. I mean, here's a town that used to be mostly white and now 70 percent black. White mayor, white police chief, anything important is white. Anything important is white. Police department with 50, three blacks. There’s got to be something wrong before you got to that. You know? And now what I see is horrible coming out of there because wake up one morning and they tell you about this person's been shot. And you look at it. Then later the police, you show the picture. He lay there for four hours? Four and a half? Anytime there's a call that go out, shooting [a] cop, you know, they don't want the cops in trouble. They sent all kind of footmen there. Nobody showed up. Nobody showed up. He lay there four and a half hours. Then the cop just disappeared. Where he disappear to, you know? The real black folks are saying, "Where'd they take him? Where'd they take him?" Now, I can understand why you can't get a prosecutor to prosecute, because white prosecutors live in all-white areas and they got to go get re-elected every four years. They ain't about to go get re-elect in four years after putting a white cop in jail for killing a black.

Right now in Ferguson, there are people talking about recalling the mayor or replacing him in the next election, doing something about that 6 percent, 7 percent turnout among black folks in Ferguson. Is that part of the answer? It sounds like you have so little trust that even if they put in a new council, a new school board, a new mayor, that won't even be a help.

If the president of United States go to New York tonight by his self, unannounced, he can't get a cab. Most powerful man in the world. Now, the problem with that, they had a black mayor. It didn't change. And it's simple to change. All you got to do is put some decoy cops out there and a camera. And the minute that cab pass you and you see it, pull him over just like they do when they give you a speeding ticket and then suspend their license for three weeks. And you do it again, forever. You don't have to go through no whole bunch a changes to do that. It's that simple.

But look at how far the conversation, what we think of as the conversation, has come since you got into the struggle. Aren't we better off as a country?

Not at all. Not at all. It's gone from physical to mental. It's a mental thing now. The South have always said they don't care how close I get. But you can't own me as a slave, and I live in the same piece of land you live on. "As long as you don't get too big."

Up North they says they don't care how big I get as long as I don't get too close. And that's there. I mean, my hero No. 1 would be John Brown. Not Jesus. Not all this other stuff. Because John Brown got us sitting here now. He changed everything with the greatest movement in history, the abolition movement. Do you know black folk couldn't belong to it? Here's white folk going to go out kill for me, die for me. That was Frederick Douglass. Biggest problem, he couldn't be part of the abolitionist movement because they say black folks are too childlike. Huh? What? That hasn't changed yet. Still the same.

Yet you were a comic for a long time and using humor to try to get people to think about these contradictions.

No, no. Don't do that to me.

Oh, what were you doing? You tell me then.

I would never believe you can change things through humor at all. I remember when New York Times reporter asked me in Chicago at a nightclub when I finish, "How many of these white folk is laughing because they're guilty?" "You can ask them that." Being black, I know some black folks whiter than white folks are. When you stop and think, when I go South, anytime I went South, I thought I could die. The fear, that's what fear do.

But when you're working the Playboy Club — which, let's face it, most of the audience was white because to be a key holder, you basically had to have some dough and most people who had it were white — if you tell a joke about segregation, if you tell a joke about people getting clubbed on the head by police, that's a moment where the person laughing may start laughing and then have an uncomfortable confrontation with themselves.

I didn't go up there for that, you know. When America goes to war, they don't send no comics. They send some folk that barely can read and write, right? When America decided they wanted to go to outer space, they didn't get some folk that love America. They got scientists. And if this thing is to change, what have this done to your mind? I know who I'm dealing with, a white dude that his own wife, his mother, his daughter, his girlfriend didn't get the right to vote till 1921. If you do that to your momma, my momma better stay in the house. Legally, black folks had a right to vote before white women. 

So if you weren't using humor in that way, why didn't you just keep it safe, keep it light? You didn't. You went to places that made people uncomfortable.

Yeah, but you're supposed to remember, I know who I am. I've got 10 children. And they tell me about Father's Day. I don't even celebrate it. Why? I never had affair with my wife to create another God. I was just doing the do. But I never bought a car I didn't know the year, the make, the model, the down payment, the insurance, the trade-in. When I got to look at myself in the mirror and not sit across from a TV guy, when I look myself in the mirror and realize I put more planning on a car than creating God's new life, I'm just as filthy as the rest of them are.

Anytime I get on a plane and fly to a peace rally first class, that tax money go to make bombs and stuff they drop on little children. So when they fall on my grandchildren, "Hey, what took you so long?" This is what this is about. Now how'd I get that way? I don't know.

You know, I came up, didn't know where my father was. Glad he wasn't home. You know? And we listened to all this crap about "Oh, there's no daddy at home.” Hitler had a mother and father. Look how he came out. This is a game that they play, you know?

There came a point where you stopped doing stand-up. Why?

Well, because of cigarettes. I used to smoke four packs of cigarettes a day. But I didn't want to bring people into an atmosphere to see me where they had to sit through cigarette smoke. And that's before I knew about the secondhand smoke. So I just quit.

So quitting one meant you had to quit the other?

No, it's — you know, in my mind I still think as a Negro now, unshackled, unfree, you know, and I'm not going to let nobody make me a hero because they think I'm a hero. I live with me. I know who I am. I'll die. I'll die for it, but there's certain things I won't do. And that was the money piece. I mean, I made more money at that time than most people, just second only to Frank Sinatra. But I'd spend it for the movement. When they cut the food stamps off in Mississippi, I carried 70 tons of food a day every two weeks, yes, with my family. 

You make it sound straightforward and logical. But you walked away from the dough. You walked away from the applause. You walked away from whatever, "The Ed Sullivan Show" and all that stuff. You made a choice. You had to at some point say, "This is more important to me than all the good things that have been dished out."

If you could feel your hair grow, you'd probably go crazy. OK? You know, so I had a big car, a Rolls Royce. I lost all of it. Who cares? You know, I grew. It was the movement that changed me.

Tell me how.

Well, as a child I went to the movies because I just realized the hand I've been dealt in the St. Louis ghetto, that can't come from God. Something's wrong. So I went to the movies and dream. I'd see Clark Gable long black hair. And every time he'd say something, well, he'd shake his hair and flip it back. I damn near broke my neck one night sitting at home and trying to flip a nap back, you know? Then I said to me, long before I hear it, that to be black in America, when you hit big with a job or money, you owe yourself X amount of treats just to un–mess up your mind. So that's what I did. Before I hit big, I said, "Listen" — when I realized it was going be in entertainment — "if I don't bring a woman into the nightclub, I'm not leaving with one." OK? That was the law here [in my head]. And so I had certain things set up before it happen. I knew I was going somewhere. I didn't know if it was sports. I knew it wouldn't be sports. I knew it wouldn’t be entertainment, I never been around entertainers in my life. 

I want to bring up optimistic children but realistic children. So you don't want to tell them the game is rigged and you already lost. I've tried to temper realism with a belief in the future. It's a tough thing to do.

You might try to temper that knowing what's in your head, knowing what's in your head. You know? You see, the one thing that President [Barack] Obama should have taught black folks — you know, we were always taught, "Behave yourself, get a good education." He went to the school the white boys go to, never been to jail. Just as nice and kind, huh? They treat him as bad as they would treat a third-grade dropout on death row waiting to be electrocuted. So let me say, "Don't believe what they telling you, because it don't work."

So don't play it straight? Don't walk the straight and narrow? Don't be Barack Obama? Is that the bottom line?

No. I'm telling, I'm honest. All my children have been successful, very successful, because I told them the truth, "Education ain't nothing." If you think there's a universal God that put the planet together and made a system who hate you to teach you something, then you in trouble anyway.

You know, I had a mother that couldn't come to my graduation because she didn't think her clothes was right and she didn't want to embarrass me. That's that feeling. And last thing — let me say this here — no group of people have ever been negatively go through what we go through and them same white folks pick us to feed them, take care of their children. They see something in me, OK? But I never had that much faith in white folk. They hire nannies to change the baby diaper or walk their own dog and pick up the dog s---. Now something got to be wrong with that. You know? Something got to be wrong. The only way to help us if somebody came from outer space and saw that. They would steal the dog because they'd think that's the one that had the power. And black folk, you know, I wonder how many black folk really feel about their dog kissing in the mouth, take them outside, the dog run across the street, kiss another dog in the butt, come back doing watching this. 

This interview has been edited and condensed.