Speech from “Dick” Gregory and Music from Bob Marley The Wailers Full Concert Live at Santa Barbara

Speech from “Dick” Gregory and Music from Bob Marley The Wailers Full Concert Live at Santa Barbara 1979

In 1961, while working at the black-owned Roberts Show Bar in Chicago, Dick Gregory 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!”

Richard Claxton “Dick” Gregory Passes, 1932 – 2017