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Dick Gregory

Not Quite so Funny

Dick Gregory 20th January, 1970 Gregory on Canadian Campus

"It is so cold in this damn town that the janitors are knocking on the pipes.

"I dig Agnew myself. I think that Agnew is putting everybody on. I don't believe that it is humanly possible for one man to be born that dumb. If Agnew is as dumb as he wants us to believe he is, he could not walk and chew gum at the same time. If he is really that dumb, I would not be surprised if he hi-jacked a train and said 'take me to Cuba'... I kind of look on Agnew as Washington's answer to Rosemary's Baby. The only time Agnew kind of frightens me a little bit is when Nixon leaves town. That makes Agnew the number one guy in town...I just get the impression looking at him that he would make a crank call to the Russians on the hot line..."

"And I just hate that the young folk in America have to keep reading them right-wing cracker controlled newspapers, to read what they say about them. They call them 'hippy-yippy-bearded-irresponsible-smelly-kids!. Whatever that means! Because you have a beard, why does that mean that you have to stink They never say that about Abraham Lincoln. He not only had a beard, he was ugly too!"

"I remember when I was a kid and my mother and father and the whole community were talking and they said, 'One day you're going to grow up boy and some white man's going to call you 'nigger' but don't get mad, 'cause God don't like no Ugly.' That's a good trick. Now I got seven little black kids at home and me and my old lady ain't teaching them nothing. And I damn sure bet you if a white man ever slips one day and makes the mistake of calling one of them a nigger, I damn sure bet you it's going to surprise them "

'Ten years ago if I worked in a Ford plant making Ford automobiles and a white boy called me 'nigger' and I hit him in the nose, I have no doubt Henry Ford would have fired me. But Henry Ford got to be very careful that in America today of what type of white folks he hires, 'cause he knows damn good and well that if one of them called me 'nigger' today, I just might burn his plant down..."

"If I go to Mississippi tonight and speak and listened to the Governor of Mississippi speaking and everybody in America up north will report that speech as a 'racist speech the governor made', but let the Governor of Illinois, or the Governor of California, or the Governor of New York give a racist speech and America we call it a 'conservative speech'. I go to Mississippi and get attacked and the press will report 'Dick Gregory got attacked down in Mississippi by the racists. White folks are the attackers in Chicago, the Press will say, 'Dick Gregory stirred up the Whitie backlash'."

"Economic wise in the next 6 months in America you're going to see America go through one of the worst periods she's ever gone through in the history of America...

"I can guarantee you that before Nixon's term is over, the silent majority that everybody's talking about will be the most vocal group we've ever had in the history of America..."

"And for Nixon's policy to get all the old fools to turn their lights on; well let me tell you something; turning on those automobile lights ain't going to kill no Viet Cong."...

"Like Dean Rusk, Ex-Secretary of State, look at all the kids he got killed when he was Secretary. Dean Rusk's son is now close to twenty-five years and he ain't ever gone from Washington DC yet. You know, I wish I was young enough to get drafted in America. As soon as I got my induction notice, I would hurry up and fly to Washington DC and handcuff myself to Dean Rusk's boy. And then get on world-wide television and let everybody know that "Whatever's wrong with Dean's boy, is wrong with me too..."

"Irregardless of how you feel about Black Panthers or Bobby Seale, the issue is that in an American court room it is your duty as a defendant to defend yourself. Bobby Seale went to jail for doing what the American constitution says a defendant is supposed to do ... Because he was trying to defend himself, he got his legs shackled, hands cuffed, mouth gagged and taped. It's a scary thing to me that when a man's sitting in an American court room with the world-wide press sitting there, and they'll gag him and cuff his hands behind him and shackle him to the chair. If they do that with the world-wide newspapers sitting there, then what the hell do you think is going on in courtrooms in America where you ain't got nobody lookin "...A lot of people think that the Black Panthers are running across all of this problem because they talk about getting guns and killing the folks and all that. But you go back and do your own research, and check out the Black Panthers. When they first arrived on the scene, they was talking about arming yourself, defending yourself, and nothing happened to them."

"...In a nation where 44 million citizens go to bed hungry every night like happens in America, it can't be an accident that we pay farmers billions of dollars not to plant. We got billions of tons of food stored up in warehouses and Americans are going unfed ...Do you think that's an accident? No-0, that's the trick, man...I've tried to explain to folks in America that Panthers aren't getting killed cause they're black folks; that if there was white folks in America who were getting organized and going up to Appalachia and talking about feeding 400 white folks, they would be gunned down while they slept too. You've all got the news up here about the Union official, Yblonski. He wasn't no Black Panther. White as snow. Laying in bed one night, he didn't know what killed him. He and his wife and his daughter...for what? Cause he was talked about the corrupt system that whites believe in and he died for it.

"We lie to them young kids 24 hours a day, and when they catch us, we call it the 'generation gap'. So I figure when your own mother lies to you, damn near anybody's going to lies to you...It's not that we don't dig Santa Claus, we dig him, but we just know damn good and well that we ain't going to let no white man come into our neighbourhood after midnight."

"I just get damn sick and tired of all them right-wing crackers running around eulogizing America—America the beautiful! When any old fool would know that eulogies are for dead things...Let me tell you that America will never be a beautiful country as long as one Indian is locked up on that reservation in America. We can travel 3,000 miles from our shore and guarantee some foreigner in Viet Nam that he's goin to live free from communism, but who in hell is going to guarantee that Indian brother that he can be free from us?...And the same that goes for America goes for you Canadians."

"...The whole country is in an uproar because the Biafrans don't want your aid. Well why don't you take those blankets and food and stick them on the Indian reservations and give it to the Indians?'

"...I've met so many people here on campus who are saying, "Oh, it's so cold, it's so cold'...If you get damn cold with all these modern conveniences, what do you think that Indian is doing a few miles from here, or haven't you though about that? It's not too late for you here in Canada, but in America we've gone beyond the point of no return. You got a big job. I hope you don't make the same mistake we made in America. We didn't know how big our problem was. Let me tell you something, and I'll be honest with you. A country that don't treat the Indians right, I don't feel too safe in myself. I damn shudder to think what the reaction of Toronto would be if they had as many black folks in the morning as we've got in Harlem. I might be wrong and I hope I am wrong, but as long as you've got that Indian locked up on that reservation, I've got to believe that way because the reason is to protect myself."

"Young people are working to solve problems all over the world, but I hope you young people in Canada that have been so beautiful in sticking out your hand to our draft-resisters and saying, 'Now brother, come on over here with us where you'll be safe', would stick your hand out to that Indian reservation and tell them the same thing. The way the Indians get treated in Canada, if I was about to get drafted, I'd go to jail for the rest of my life before I'd run over here to Canada knowing the way you treated Indians, I wouldn't even ask you to help me."

"In Chicago at the Democratic Convention, 15,000 hippies and yippies showed up to change the system and the whole establishment went stone crazy. Why? Cause they was trying to change the system. Oh because the kids were coming into Chicago to tear up the town, but white folks in America know better than that. Hell, for the last ten years every spring break them white kids been going down to Fort Lauderdale. Florida and getting drunk and tearing up the whole town and there ain't never going to get thrown out. They don't care if you tear up the town, it's the reason you tear it up.

"...Three days after the Democratic Convention, the whole establishment tried to convince folks in America that they did not see what they saw on television. They said that it didn't happen. They said that the press created it. You know if Kosygin and the rest of them damn fools in Moscow, Russia was dealing with a world as insane as America, you know that they could beat that Czechoslovakian rap? They'd get on world-wide television and say 'You didn't see it, y'all...! It didn't happen.