Dick Gregory:
The Nightlife Interview

interview by Chris Wissmann

photos courtesy of SIU News Service

Nightlife 08/11/99

It’s a shame, because Gregory was more than a jock– more, even, than an outstanding athlete (captain of the track and cross country teams, he lettered in track in 1952, 1953 and again in 1956 after a stint in the Army; set the SIU half-mile record at one minute and 54.1 seconds; and won the Outstanding Athlete award for the 1952-53 school year). In his classic history of the Strip, Carbondale after Dark, H.B. Koplowitz credits Gregory with "perhaps the first documented instance of civil protest in Carbondale"– in the early ‘50s, the young SIU student successfully ended the Varsity Theater’s segregation policy when he refused to sit in the balcony.

Gregory went from SIU to a short but prosperous comedy career. A contemporary of Redd Foxx, Gregory became a huge influence on Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock, not to mention Lenny Bruce and George Carlin. He made several albums, wrote a best-selling autobiography (Nigger, 1964), and starred in two films (a 1966 comedy, The Wrong Box, with Peter Sellars, and a 1967 drama,Sweet Love, Bitter, somewhat based on the life of jazz great Charlie Parker).

By then he was heavily involved in the civil-rights movement and had become close friends with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Brandishing Gregory’s autobiography at a rally in New York in December 1964, Malcolm X said, "Dick is a revolutionary... Dick is one of the foremost freedom fighters in this country. I say that with all sincerity. Dick has been on the battlefront and has made great sacrifices by taking the stand that he has. I’m quite certain that it has alienated many of the people who weren’t alienated from him before he began to take his stand. Whenever you see a person, a celebrity, who is as widely known and as skilled in his profession as Dick, and at the same time has access to almost unlimited bookings which provide unlimited income, and he will jeopardize all of that in order to jump into the frontlines of the battle, then you and I will have to stand behind him."

Malcolm was right– if Gregory’s civil-rights and anti-war activities didn’t drain the time necessary to sustain his comedy career, his stands scared away directors and booking agents. His only major film role after 1967 came in 1995 as the Rev. Slocum in Mario Van Peebles’ Panther.

And his status as a comedian helped establishment leaders to portray Gregory as a clown, someone not to be taken seriously. Mike Royko, in his biography of Mayor Richard J. Daley, Boss, dismissed Gregory as "the best-known, if not most effective, of the Chicago [civil-rights] leaders." But Gregory took civil-rights demonstrations from the city’s minority neighborhoods to the doorstep of Mayor Daley’s own home in the privileged Bridgeport neighborhood. Neither Daley, nor the city’s white population, would be able to ignore the movement again. Gregory was a relentless thorn in Daley’s side, conducting marches, organizing neighborhoods and even running against "da Mare" in 1966. And he published fine books on American history and political activism, including No More Lies: The Myth and the Reality of American History (1971), Dick Gregory’s Political Primer (1972), and Dick Gregory's Bible Tales (1974).

His commitments to civil rights, the anti-war movement and nonviolence led Gregory to give up meat. In 1973 he published Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' with Mother Nature, and in 1984 he founded his own nutritionist company, Dick Gregory Health Enterprises. He joined the Riddick Bowe camp as nutritional advisor for the heavyweight’s first title bout against Evander Holyfield; after winning the crown from Holyfield, Bowe was as quick to give credit to Gregory’s regimen as HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant was to scratch his head about it.

In August 1987, SIU conferred upon Gregory a Doctorate of Humane Letters.

Gregory receiving his Doctorate of Humane Letters from SIU.
Gregory caused an uproar when, at a press conference, he
declared that SIU was still a racist institution.

What have you been up to lately?

Basically I’ve been spending about 90 percent of my time on the police-brutality question. At midnight last night I started a fast and prayer vigil, and I vowed I would not eat no more solid food till there is a federal law that says anyone who’s permitted to carry a legal gun– cops, CIA, FBI– anybody that has a legal gun will have to be licensed by federal law.

Now, let me just back up. If you was a barber, you’d have to have a license. If you decide you gonna be a beautician, you have to have a license. You have to have a license to drive your car. If you gonna be a chauffeur, you have to have a different type of license. If you gonna be a bus driver, you have to have a different type of license. And so, why don’t we demand, by law, that anybody who has a gun, a legal right to stop me, [has] to have a license?

Once you give them a license, now they have something to lose. I remember one time, I had two moving violations against me in the state of Massachusetts– I was the best driver on the road for the next 18 months, ‘cause one more, I’d’ve lost my license!

So I’m saying, we can resolve this real simple by just licensing them.

One of the problems we have [in America] is, cops are undertrained. They’re overstressed. See, how can we have as many cops as drug addicts and alcoholics, and nobody in the church, in the media, wants to deal with that problem? That’s a disservice to them!

Now, how do you look at cops’ problems if [it’s] the number one divorce occupation on the planet? It’s the number one suicide occupation– more cops die every day in America from suicide than get killed in the line of duty [a 1996 Buffalo University study shows that police are eight times more likely to die from their own hand than from murder due to unusually high rates of marital stress and substance abuse– ed.], and nobody stops and says "Wait a minute! You know? Let’s review this. What is it?"

Well, you got a job that’s highly stressed, and no professionals there to say, "Well, how do you break the stress? How do you handle this?"

And so, I’m just saying that we the people, particularly minority people, shouldn’t suffer because we have a system that reduces cops down to niggers. That’s really what we reduce them to. The hottest, hottest day of the year, they got to be directing traffic, and the coldest, coldest day of the year... and they don’t get paid the right type of salary for their importance.

Well, that’s not our fault– that’s their fault if they tolerate it.

The number one problem confronting America is, we let a handful of people manipulate our very thoughts, and then we buy into it. I mean, how can this be such a racist system, and nobody– black or white– talk about it? You have to talk about this every day. Every day! If the Germans, the decent Germans would have been willing to confront Hitler and them Nazis with discussing what they was doing, the whole world might be different today.

And so, today– you see, racism is an insanity that the American people can no longer afford.

The police thing I’d like to get back to, because here at SIU we have a big administration of justice department, and so I get to meet a lot of the kids who are going through to become police. And I’ve always been kind of appalled at the kind of people who want to be police. In the ‘60s, they might have been Marines, but the Marines don’t shoot anyone anymore. So now they want to be a cop because that’s their best chance to shoot somone.

But think about this for a minute. What intelligent white [person] that’s got anything going for them, other than whose family has a long tradition of being police, would want to be a cop anyway? Think, with all the opportunities. And so, when you stop and think about that, you hit it. There’s a certain mold that’s there.

That’s not their fault. That’s society’s fault that permits that because I tell you what– if those cops were doing to white folks what they’re doing to black folks, that whole course would be overhauled. It wouldn’t be tolerated.

So in one respect, we have to blame part of the police brutality thing on us.

We have thousands of black cops across this country. How come black cops aren’t handcuffing whites, shooting them in the back of the head, claiming they was struggling, trying to get their gun? Are black cops more spiritual? Are they trained better?

No! They know white folks won’t tolerate it. So when we black folks send a message to the police departments across this country that we no longer [are] going to tolerate it...

Well, now, how are you going to do that? Well... first, you threaten an economic boycott. You say to white America, "If police brutality is not shut down in this country in 30 days, then we [are] gonna call for a boycott of Thanksgiving and Christmas."

Well, now, you got this small-time, millionaire, rich, rich turkey farmer in Goose Neck, Oregon, who ain’t never seen no black person sittin’ across the table from him. All at once now, what a cop do to my head affects his bottom line. Affects her bottom line.

Now they get on the phone and start making phone calls. When you realize that 60 to 80 percent of all retail moves during the Christmas holidays, one boycott with a group of people who spends as much money [as African Americans], plus the white folks that would ally with us, the Asian folks, the Chicano folks– I mean, when you stop and think about 80 percent of all advertising dollars is spent during Christmas. Shut that down and you bring this country to its knees! They’ll take the guns away from the police before the rich, rich folks in corporate America let them affect their bottom line.

So we have the power to deal with police brutality here, the same way they did with South Africa under apartheid, just bringing that government to its knees.

And how did they do that? They didn’t go take sticks and try to fight the police. They didn’t try to bad-mouth the police. The world looked around and said, "We will hit you at your economic base." And that ended it. It’ll be the same thing here.

What will it finally take to fully politicize minority and poor communities, who are really the ones being affected here? Because you don’t see these things in rich neighborhoods.

Well, what I’m saying, this is one of the reasons of the fast and prayer vigil. I vowed that I will not eat no more solid food till that law is there.

Well, it’ll take a while. It might take two or three years that I don’t eat. But when I get below 90 pounds, you’d be surprised how that–

Hollywood became a multi-trillion dollar industry because of stunts, OK? And there’s ethical stunts and there’s unethical stunts.

And fasting– look at what happened in Belfast [when four Irish Republican Army members imprisoned by the British died in a hunger strike]. I mean, 15, 20 years ago when those guys in jail fasted till they died– now, I would never even suggest nobody do anything like that. But it got the world’s attention. And that whole crisis hasn’t been the same since.

And so, consequently, we didn’t get there overnight. It took a time to get it. But little by little by little, then you start waking people up to the amount of feelings...

And we got to understand that white racist people and a white racist system is two different things. White racist people don’t bother me. It’s a white racist system that even I’m a part of. Till we’re willing to change that, then we see trouble.

That’s very similar to what Malcolm X used to say– revolutions are bloodshed. You don’t usually get things out of the goodness of people’s hearts– you have to fight for them and you have to show that you’re willing to die and kill for them.

And see, what [Martin Luther] King was able to do was to move that argument to the highest level, and say "When you’re willing to die for it, and not kill for it, the whole universe wraps its arm around you." Because, remember, when you’re willing to kill, the same thug that creates the problem sells guns to both sides.

Right. They don’t care who buys them.

And then they come in and make money rebuilding. And so, consequently, when you go out peacefully, willing to die, not kill, then the universe reach down.

There’s no way, when Nelson Mandela was framed and sent to jail for 27 years, although he was framed, he was part of an armed struggle. It was our movement that reached under his jail cell and switched that. There’s no way– the white folks in charge of South Africa would have paid him to come out, would have gave him guns, would have helped get him an army so they could have wiped out [the African National Congress] and they’d still be in charge now.

There was something about that smile, about his kindness, his niceness, that just turned on the whole world. I mean, the whole world– when he walked out of jail that day with that smile on his face and the love in his heart, he looked like the ray of the sun walked out. And so that’s the strength of what we’ve been able to win in America.

Gregory, SIU track star.

They said, "Well, there’s nothing we can do about it– we don’t vote." So we all decided we was going to leave and go up to Eastern Michigan [University]. And then things changed.

But we were able to do some things by threatening to withdraw our talent. We said we’re not going to be gladiators in a white racist system, and it worked.

Chris Rock said that your political involvement forced you to sacrifice your comedy career, that "they wouldn’t let you do comedy anymore." Was he right?

Yeah, well, you see, first, Hollywood determines what they think people want. NBC, CBS, ABC determines what they think people want. So if you work for them, they want you to act a certain way because they got a product they trying to sell. And so, one of the things in the nightclubs, I was so hot as a performer that I might have had 15 people trying to get me at the same time. But I could only do one. And so what happened, you start noticing that you were still working, but it might have been just two clubs that wanted you for that same date [laughing]. That started happening.

And the other thing was, in all fairness to the nightclub owners, that my loyalty was to the [civil-rights] movement. And so if you had invested your money to advertise that Dick Gregory was coming to Cairo, Illinois, Carbondale, Illinois, Murphysboro, you had your ads out, and then there was a big battle going on in the South, I was going to be there [helping the movement]. And so you had a right to say, "Wait a minute, now." And probably all that went on through my agent, which was white. And those was common things that probably went on– "Well, we cannot guarantee you that he will be there."

And who knows? My agent might have been aggravated at the amount of time [I spent on civil rights].

I remember once, I was leading demonstrations in Chicago, and I was making so much money for the club in San Francisco, at the hungry i, that I go in there every year for a month. And I vowed that I would not stop demonstrating around [Mayor Daley’s] house till we had won what we was after. And so, in order to keep my commitment to the nightclub, I flew from San Francisco every night when I got off to Chicago for a solid month. Led the demonstrations, then got back on the plane and flew back every evening from Chicago to San Francisco.

And it had paid off. I’d probably be dead now if it wasn’t for the movement. I was drinking a fifth of Scotch every day, smoking four packs of cigarettes a day, I ended up weighing 365 pounds– my top weight. I had sinus trouble so bad that if I traveled within a 50-mile radius, I’d almost have to be hospitalized. I had ulcers so bad that when I woke up in the morning, my stomach would hurt so bad I’d have to crawl to the bathroom, I was in so much pain.

Now, I’m 67 years old, my wife is 62, we’ve been married 40 years. We haven’t had a prescription filled since we’ve been married. That’s the whole influence that the movement had on me. And then I carried mine to another level into health and nutrition. And so with a sense of fairness, believing that animals shouldn’t be killed, I became a vegetarian.

I had never heard the word before. I didn’t know you could live without eating meat. I just decided that I wasn’t going to eat anything else that had to be killed. About 18 months after that, my ulcers left. Six months after that, my sinus troubles left. Well, I’m still drinking a fifth of Scotch, smoking four packs of cigarettes, so that’s the first time I realized it must be something [in] the food that I didn’t know about. So that’s when I started doing research.

Political power– enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, for instance– didn’t result in economic empowerment for African Americans–

Well... there’s not a [more] economically powerful group on the planet than black folks. If we was a separate nation, we’d be the fifth or sixth most economically powerful country in the world. We just don’t use it to our benefit. When General Motors had their best year, 42 percent of every Cadillac bought, black folk bought it, but we never asked for 42 percent of the jobs. We are less than 12 percent of America’s population. But 37 percent of every movie ticket sold in America, black folk buying.

But we haven’t flexed our economic muscles, and one day when that happens, then things will change quick.

What would it take to get that muscle used?

Oh, my, changing the mindset. You must remember, it’s a human thing to want to be validated by the same system that misused you. You want them to say, "You OK." And so that’s why you saw black folks taking good teeth and putting gold on ‘em. There was a time black folks [would] open their mouths, there’d be nothing but gold. Wasn’t nothing wrong with their teeth. That’s a validation.

You know, any time I want to take on the same looks and characteristics of the oppressor, then they won...

See, they had a situation at the [Columbine High School] out there in Colorado. They brought psychiatrists, psychologists out to deal with them children. I mean, we’ve been going through this problem, it’s just we got off the [slave] boat. At what time do we as African Americans realize that we need somebody to come and start dealing with the horrors that’s in our head?

And so, to have that kind of money, and don’t have the mentality to go along with it, is like having no money at all.

One of the things that the media likes to harp on is role models, and when I think of major African-American figures, I think entertainers– musicians and athletes–

Yeah, you know, first, we cannot just wipe out the human brain. When you see the television, and you see what they bombard you with, it works. When you think about subliminal subduction, it works. And what you see all the time is the glorification of athletes and entertainers.

There’ll be a cure for cancer, there’ll be a cure for AIDS. It won’t be developed by athletes or entertainers. Every war we’ve ever been to, every major war we’ve won, we didn’t do it with athletes or entertainers [laughs].

First, athletes and entertainers deserve credit because the time they put in practicing, the time they put in perfecting they skills, they deserve the attention they get. They command that type of attention. Those of us out here in the human struggle, we don’t command attention, we command respect. It’s a big difference.

I don’t know no leader that can draw the amount of people that entertainers can draw. But then again, [entertainers] deserve that. That’s the attention for what they put into their arts and their crafts. But respect– I mean, I can call Buckingham Palace, the Queen won’t call me, but somebody’s gonna call me back. I can call the White House. I’d be shocked if the President called, but somebody gonna call me back. I couldn’t do that as an entertainer or as a great athlete. Not at all.

In the ‘50s, there was a Jackie Robinson. In the ‘60s, there was a Muhammad Ali, a Jim Brown using their platforms to talk to people about more serious things. I don’t think we see that so much today in, say, the Michael Jordans.

Yeah, but remember, there were a whole lot of black athletes that came through with Ali. None of them followed his lead. It wasn’t Ali’s athletic ability, it was something else inside of him that if Jordan or anybody else had it, they’d be doing the same thing. But there was something in Ali above and behind his athletic ability that created that.

I guess I’m just kind of surprised that Mike Tyson or Michael Jordan didn’t see Ali for his political–

Who knows why they didn’t? Maybe they did. Maybe they said, "Well, let me fund four or five million dollars over here to certain causes, and I’ll do it that way." Different people do things different. Different people take the same steak and cook it 15 different ways.

Gregory delivering a lecture in January 2001 at
Carbondale's New Zion Baptist Church.

Someone like Charles Barkley says he’s not a role model and that kids shouldn’t look up to him. Do you believe that, too?

I think all they should do is play their game and do whatever they want to do. Listen, you got some little boys that’s been told since they 8 years old when to go to bed, when to wake up, when to do this, when to do that, and all they’re qualified to do is their game. And anytime one can spread beyond that and do something else, that’s not the norm.

It’s just like everybody said, they didn’t think Dr. J, that should have been brought up about his daughter. [An unconfirmed rumor is circulating that a major woman tennis star was fathered by Julius Erving.– ed.] Once you command news, if Dr. J hurt himself, there’s millions of people that be praying for him just because he’s Dr. J. Well, how would I know he broke his knee if it wasn’t for his fame? So if fame’s gonna give you a plus, it’s also going to give you a negative. That’s the price you pay for celebrity status.

Again, it is up to the parents, it is up to black folks to say, "Find somebody in your house that’s a role model."

It’s something wrong with black folks that go out and buy they children $200 pair of sneakers but never give that same child $200 to go put in church. I tell ministers that if I would have had a black church, all those folks that have those $200 sneakers, once they get sick, I’d say, "Go pray to Nike. Don’t come in my church. Here’s the phone number to the president of Nike. Call him."

"And while you’re at it, ask him why he has 13-year-old kids making shoes for five cents a day."

[laughing] That’s right.

But that’s the hype that people put down. And you can’t expect a black child to be different than a white child if the parents is not saying, "Hey– it’s OK to look at that, but let me tell you what the values are." And if that don’t happen, it’s not going to happen.

What politicized you initially?

Well, it started gradually. It started in high school when I ran the fastest mile in America and didn’t get credit for it because I was at the all-Negro meet. [In 1951, Gregory ran the mile in four minutes, 28 seconds– ed.] And then we joined forces with the NAACP to demonstrate the conditions of the public schools and also the conditions of the way we were forced to participate in sports.

Now, it was interesting in St. Louis. We had three black high schools. So how can you have a football season, a basketball season, a track season with just three schools? Well, what the state of Missouri did was pay for us to go outside the state. I mean, we were in high school, and we were going to Kansas City, we were going to Illinois, we were going to Washington, D.C. We were going to West Virginia, at taxpayers’ money. Our band was going all over the country in band competition because we couldn’t participate with white bands.

And so you sit and you look at the stupidity.

They had laws that said if I was black, right? And I was not permitted to go to the University of Missouri law school, right? The state of Missouri had to pay for me to go to any law school that I chose! So I could go to Harvard, Yale, and get a better education than whites– and they tolerated that [laughing].

And so, from the demonstrations there, and seeing a victory, I mean, immediately they integrated the cross country. The demonstrations happened in September. We closed the three high schools down, they immediately integrated cross country, and at that point, I was legitimized. I became the first black to win a state cross-country championship in the history of America. And then, the next year, I became the Missouri state mile champion.

From that, I left and came to SIU. And I think, at the time, there probably was no more of a racist school on the planet that black folks could go to.

Now, let me qualify that. There was more racist schools, but you weren’t permitted in them. I’m nowhere saying that Georgia and South Carolina and Mississippi was less a problem than Southern Illinois, but black folks wasn’t permitted to go.

There was a hostility there [at SIU] that black folks had learned to peacefully coexist with. For instance, black women were not permitted to live in dormitories, so they were forced to live in town. The only reason black men was permitted to live in dormitories was they couldn’t be so outraged to have black athletes living in the dormitories where you could have a certain amount of supervision, and the rest of the black men couldn’t. And so that’s what that was about.

Black fraternities and sororities could not be on campus, on Fraternity Row. A black woman could not run for homecoming queen.

And so, living in town, you know, it did something. It took a black community, gave them a form of economic power that few places had because all of the black women were forced to live in houses in town.

And it meant, that with no supervision, we [African-American men] could go hang out with them till three, four o’clock in the morning.

Now, [Carbondale’s African-American community had] to be very careful... ‘cause if the word gets out that you’re very strict [as a landlord], then [students are] not going to want to live with you. And so, consequently, you would lose economically. So then automatically, now you’re going to have more black women getting pregnant.

So then they made it a race thing– what is wrong with them? That whole game.

So consequently, we were able to do that, with organizing the black community and the decent white folks that was part of that change that I would say now that SIU probably ranks among the best schools to go to in America.

Now, that don’t mean that it wouldn’t be still a white racist institution till we can break that. But I’m saying the total day-to-day insults is not there. That we can participate in decision-making. And that was something that a handful of black folks, we organized.

Now, I remember that I scored enough points during our conference meet that was held at SIU. My points alone gave us enough points to win the conference alone. When I walk in town, we are the conference track champions. I walk into town and see all my white track dudes in the restaurants and the bars drinking and enjoying themselves with their new sweaters on which I won for them, and I can’t even go in and say hello to them.

So I took a brick and threw it through the window. And the police came, and then that’s when we started the action of saying, "We’re [going to] bring this town to its knees."

And little by little by little by little, we integrated the movies, and the restaurants, and then the whole thing just cracked open.

Then they made a deal with us. They said "Well, we’re building a new dormitory. If you don’t force the issue now, we will just quietly, when the new dormitories is built, black women– the word was Negro then– Negro women will be permitted."

I guess that’s where my consciousness, my real political consciousness, my real humane consciousness, my real ability to work with all people– see, before then the only Chinese I’d ever been around was at the Chinese restaurant. The only Italians I’d been around was at the Italian restaurant. And so, to come to SIU, to see white folks, to have white professors...

There was a professor, Dr. Voss, I think was his name. He was a speech professor. And he had a problem with one of his eyes. And I don’t know anything that had the influence on my life– one, what he said, and two, that it was coming from a white man. We had a project where we had to do a speech and come to the front of the class. A white girl started crying. She said she just couldn’t speak before people.

So [Dr. Voss] made everybody sit down and told us a story that when the boll weevil had destroyed the cotton crop in America, and America was about ready to fall, economically, as a nation, they brought in the best minds in the world [as] the last resort at a conference in Washington, D.C., where they were going to see if they could come up with some sort of solution.

And so, out of all the scientists that was invited, a black man by the name of George Washington Carver from Tuskegee was invited to come to the conference. [Dr. Voss] said that the fact that the trains were segregated, he rode up to D.C. in a segregated train so he couldn’t converse with the other scientists that was on the white part of the train. In Washington, D.C., the hotels were segregated, so they had to put him in the Negro side of town. The conference lasted for six days, and to everybody’s amazement, they forgot he was in town. He was in the Negro side of town, and they forgot he was even part.

So they decided, out of embarrassment, that they would bring him in. The conference was closing at 12 noon, they’ bring him in and let him speak at 10 minutes to 12.

And [Dr. Voss] took a deep breath and said "Miss So-and-So"– whatever her name was– "that night, they were still listening to George Washington Carver. They sent out for sandwiches. At 5 o’clock that morning, they broke up, and he had brought the solution.

"And so you see, if you have something to say, people will listen."

And that just blew me away. It blew me away to have a white professor stand before a predominantly white class and give that story. And the story just blew me away. And I never forgot that. And I’ll always realize that if you have something to say– and even when I made it as a comedian, I did not just make it as a comedian making people laugh, I had something to say.

And in all honesty, the president, Delyte Morris, he was a different type of person. And when you pushed the school, they nudged. They might not have went out and led the battle, but they would look and wink the other way when you would make that move.

And the amount of support we got from other white students, was just some coalitions that was spawned that was incredible.

Well, in the ‘60s, Southern was just incredibly radical, with the anti-war movement and the riots and everything.

Well, one of the things that I think that the groundwork that we laid there, that SIU became the first major university institution to have a black athletic director, Gayle Sayers. And so all of that was from the seeds that was planted there with a handful that just said, "We’re not going to come down here and use this school just to get an education and peacefully coexist with filth. We’re going to do the things that we come down here for, but we’re going to say in love and liking this institution, we want mama not to be a whore. We want mama not to be a thug. We want mama to be pure." And that’s all we were doing, was trying to clean mother up.

Well, that’s great. We’re here in the Deep South, and those changes would have never taken place if someone didn’t make them change.

Yeah, you know I realize, as I look back at Southern and what a handful of us was able to do, that swamps do not breed mosquitoes. The mosquitoes do not breed swamps. But if you clean up the swamp, the mosquitoes will leave. And that’s what we were able to see in cleaning up things. You had different pressures off you. And so, who would ever believe when we were there, that a black woman would eventually end up being a homecoming queen? Who would have believed that a Harvey Welch would occupy the spot that he has? And so as you look at the many changes that is there, it’s incredible.

Sure, you think you’re not going to get complaints with honest black folks about the racism that exists at Harvard, or Yale or MIT? You see white women complaining about sexism in the leading institutions? Well, until women come together, particularly white women, and do what black folks did and say "We’re not going to tolerate it anymore..."

Nothing has ever been gained in this country out of the goodness of America’s heart.

My biggest horror was when I found out that a white woman didn’t get the right to vote until 1920. I mean, it just stupefied me because she came over on the boat with the boy. She spit him out of her belly. And she didn’t get the right to vote out of the goodness of America’s [heart]– she fought and went to jail, died. So I say, "God, they treat his mama like that, my mama better not come out of the house!"

Gregory as one of the Marching Salukis.

Yeah, uh-huh. I played bongo drums. I would perform and sing little calypso songs and do some little funny stuff but I never had the courage when I was there just to stand up flat-footed and talk before I did my little songs. Once I did my little song and felt confidence that I got the audience, then I would stand up and talk. But basically I did it from playing bongo drums first. I played in the band at SIU. I was a bass drummer.

Malcolm X was a good friend of yours. I’ve probably read more about you in books about Malcolm than I’ve been able to read about you directly. How did you come to know Malcolm?

I was playing New York... playing a nightclub, and Malcolm called me, sounded like he had an attitude. [Imitating Malcolm’s voice:] "Uh, Dick Gregory? Brother Malcolm X. I’d like for you to come out to the mosque." I said, "OK, send a car for me."

He said, "Well, where are you?" I said, "Did you call me or did I call you?" He said, "I’ll call you right back."

I said, "Forget my audience, man! I demand that you send a car to pick me up and take me to the mosque or tell me how to get a cab. And I demand you have a photographer there to take a picture of me and you, and I want to see it on the front cover of Muhammad Speaks!"

[Laughing:] And that’s how we met!

You must have meant a lot to him, not only because the Nation of Islam looked down on entertainers in the early ‘60s, but because most of the prominent African-American leaders, like Muhammad Ali, abandoned him after he left the Nation. You were one of the few who stuck with Malcolm.

Well, you know, Ali walked away because it was a church hangup. I don’t know what my reaction might have been had I been a Muslim. I mean, you got certain decisions [being] made because of the church that wouldn’t be made if it wasn’t a church, you know, like eating pork is a religious hangup. Eating a cow is worse for you than eating pork, but that’s a religious thing about the wild boar and all of that.

I didn’t have that because I wasn’t part of the religion. I mean, I knew Elijah Muhammad– well. And me and Malcolm just had a friendship that was just incredible.

I said, "No, Malcolm, and let me just tell you something else– I love you so much that I don’t even want to take a chance of getting weak, so I had my wife book me into a college to give a luncheon, a noon speech by the airport at O’Hare Field"– and I think it was Hinsdale College, I believe it was– and I said, "So I’m going there, and I’m going to sit it out until I hear you’re dead. Then I’m going to come back."

So he said, "Why you feel this way?" I said, "Because, I don’t want to give this government two for the price of one. When I get through I’m going to call Adam Clayton Powell and tell him when he gets through preaching at his church, ‘Don’t come out there.’" ‘Cause I knew it was a government thing. Everybody knows it now. I mean, I didn’t know to the extent [J. Edgar] Hoover was sending Malcolm letters with Elijah’s name forged on it and sending letters to Elijah that was supposed [to be written by Malcolm]– I didn’t know that. I just knew the whole thing was a government thing.

And that was the last conversation I had with him.

That must have been a really sad time for you.

Oh, God, it was just... mmmm...

And then I expected it. I mean, I knew once he went there [to speak at the Audubon] because he said he had something important to say and he wasn’t going to reveal it until then. I knew they had to stop him.

Did you ever know what, exactly, he was going to say that day?

I didn’t know and didn’t care [laughing]. If what you was gonna say you didn’t tell me before you died and they killed you for it, I don’t want to know it now!

You’ve been very committed to nonviolence. Malcolm wasn’t– he believed in doing whatever was necessary to achieve equality. I bet you and Malcolm went round and round on that.

No, we didn’t. It was a mutual respect first. I understood Malcolm’s position because my hero before I got into the movement [was] John Wayne. John Wayne never said, "Meet me at the OK Corral and don’t bring your guns." So I grew up on John Wayne. Man, if you right, get your guns and deal with it.

And so it was the King philosophy that I had a problem with. [Derisively:] "Let someone slap me and don’t do nothing, turn the other cheek? Well, even if I can do that, now you ask me to love ‘em? God, I mean, you crazy?"

... In the process of having respect for both of them, seeing them when the cameras wasn’t there, seeing King in the quietness of his hotel room, just me and him– he was always talking about love. After they had just misused him, threw things at him, he was still talking about love! I mean, I see this!

Malcolm was probably one of the most bashful, shy people I ever met. Maybe Richard Pryor is a little bit more bashful and shy. You can’t tell that when the cameras come on.

Malcolm called everybody "Yes, sir. No, sir." He talked to white folks, black folks, he referred to "Yes, sir. No, sir." Just as mannerable, just as nice and peaceful– and so that was the Malcolm I knew, and the Malcolm I loved and respected.

And at the time I knew Malcolm, I was eating pork. I devoured a pit of barbecued ribs. That didn’t [cause] no problem with me and Malcolm’s relationship. I drank.

Malcolm could never come into nightclubs where there was alcohol. When Malcolm caught my act it would always be at the Apollo Theater.

But no, it was never a conflict because Malcolm never told me to pick up a gun.

My philosophy is that, I will never knock a machine gun out of your hand, and don’t knock this carrot out of mine! I do not have the right in America to draft people to go to war and kill, and if you don’t, you’re labeled a traitor. I don’t have the right to tell you that you don’t have a right to arm yourself. I think it’s stupid, I think it’s not going to work, and I think the government will infiltrate [your group] and buy the arms and do all kinds of crazy stuff [to use you for their ends].

And so Malcolm and I, we had nothing but profound [respect]– and then laugh! Oh, man, we’d sit and laugh and talk all day. When we was around, we was talking about human things, children, just human things, how it affected us and what have you. It was a great relationship.

The last thing I saw you involved in was the Iran/Contra/cocaine connection with Maxine Waters. Have you heard from her–

Oh, I see her all the time. What the government did admit, the CIA admitted that they did, but they admitted it on November 3, which was Election Day, it only ran in one paper, the Washington Post. Well, all the politicians was gone home then. And then the Monica Lewinsky thing broke so big you couldn’t get nothing through anyway.

When you see how powerful something like the CIA is, that they can make a confession like that and watch it all just get washed away, it’s got to be really hard to maintain hope.

I look at the decent folks out here as light. I look at the CIA has darkness. If you want to know how powerful light is, if you go in the house, turn the light out at night, and turn it back on, light wipes out darkness. I mean, the sun comes up every morning and smack nighttime out [of] the sky. And all we got to do is just keep shining the light.

See, the CIA is like roaches. In the dark, they’ll come out, man, walk all over your house, act like they family. The minute you turn the light on, they will run to their hole. And all we got to do is just keep this light on and keep ‘em running, and eventually we’ll win. I’ve always felt that way.

My prayer to God is, "Don’t move the mountain." I used to want God to move the mountain so I could get across. It’s "Give me the strength to crawl up it." That’s all.