Dick Gregory's Insight Into American Race Relations

Dick Gregory

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Gregory

Excerpt: In 1961, while working at the black-owned Roberts Show Bar in Chicago, he was spotted by Hugh Hefner performing the following material before a largely white audience:

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many Southerners in the room tonight. I know the South very well. I spent twenty years there one night.

Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant and this white waitress came up to me and said, "We don't serve colored people here." I said, "That's all right. I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken."

Then these three white boys came up to me and said, "Boy, we're giving you fair warning. Anything you do to that chicken, we're gonna do to you." So I put down my knife and fork, I picked up that chicken and I kissed it. Then I said, "Line up, boys!"^[6]

Gregory attributed the launch of his career to Hefner who, based on that performance, hired Gregory to work at the Chicago Playboy Club as a replacement for comedian "Professor" Irwin Corey.^[7]

Gregory's first television appearance was on the late night show Tonight Starring Jack Paar.^[8] He soon began appearing nationally and on television.