White mayor, white police chief, anything important is white. Gregorys uniquely placed to provide historical perspective. He was shot in the leg in the 1965 Los Angeles Watts riots, but he has not used violence to project his message. He has used comedy. He was a headline performer. When america goes to war they dont send no comics. They accepted folk who can barely read and write. At 81 years old, and father to ten, dick gregory reflects on his past and the legacy his children will inherit. We spoke in washington, d. C. You got into the civil rights struggle early on. Could you have imagined, had i whispered into the ears of your 20somethingyearold self that six decades later we would till be having these arguments . Let me answer it this way. 120 years ago if you were at a meeting and one day horses would be obsolete. Were the only group of people who have had to struggle through divisions that weve went through, and we offer education over liberation. George washington was fighting the british so he could find a colony. Liberate. All the black folks you see in america has never been liberated. You got a white cop who killed my mama, my daddy, my children. But in the news media if you check, a white cop never hit my car, never my automobile. If you look back, because of the 50th anniversary of the Poor Peoples Campaign ive seen a lot of black and white film. A handsome young dick gregory talking about hope, belief in a future. Belief in this country being willing to release its grasp and grant black people their full human rights. There had to be certain optimism in the tank for those things to go on. Thats because we never liberated. We talk about a group of people who are educated but never liberated. The song dont sing give me education or give me death but give my liberty or give me death. A lot of wise old heads who got that stuff started say the two went hand in hand. They want the hbcs filled with tomorrows doctors and dentists and preachers. A black ph. D driving down the street in washington, d. C. With a Million Dollars in the banks. Five ph. Ds, and he hears the squad car is screaming a siren and he squeezes the wheel. Then when it goes on, you thank god. When i was born we didnt have welfare. Everything a child could want for christmas they told me a white man brought it to me. Youre sitting here, 81 years old. Youve been a public person for most of that time, and you are not a liberated man. No, not at all. You cant get liberated from money. They convince me that all black women are ugly. They convince black women that all black women are ugly. The only woman on the planet, black American Woman go to a beauty parlor while the rest hair salon. They teach me something is wrong with my hair. My hair didnt come from sears and row buck. It came from the same god who put the university together. Then you hear women say she got good hair, she got bad hair. I dont hear people talk the way i did as a kid about good hair and black hair. When i was born they were doin giving 0. 49 for a dollar. You have black folk so ashamed. A real bell i dont know is not what happens the stay afte after a cop shoots someone 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 . Any time you teach your child to treat filth nasty, they think something is wrong with them. I never taught my children they have to be twice as smart as white children. When you tell them they have to be twice as smart, in their mind they think theyre dumb. Thats how it works. So we turn on the television. Another story of another fella being cut down on the street by a policeman. You grew up in ferguson and around there. I tell people you have to set your watch back three hours. Heres a town that used to be mostly white. Now its black. White mayor. White police chief. Anything important is white. Anything important is white. Police department with 50, with three blacks. Something most be wrong before you got to that. Now what i see is horrible coming out of there because you wake up one morning, and they tell you about this morning who has been shot. You look at it. And then later the police show the picture. He lay there for four hours, four and a half. Any time there is a call that go out shooting, cop, they dont want the cops in trouble. They send all kind of foot men there. No one showed up. Nobody showed up. He lay there four and a half hours. Then the cop just disappeared. Where he disappeared to, the black folks are saying where did they take him . Where did they take him. Now i can understand why you cant get a prosecute for prosecute because white prosecutors live in allwhite areas and they have to get elected every four years. Theyre not going to be elected after putting a white cop in jail for killing a black. I dont want to miss this point. Because i think a lot of americans dont understand the lack of trust, the lack of credibility in institutions. Daytoday institutions. For years of working as a street reporter ive had black people tell me they dont believe anything from the police crime lab, from the lips of the mayor, from the head of the school board. An alternate narrative comes from the street time and time again. Why . One of the things that i see different in this, and ive been shot in watts, you have black folks now saying its a conspiracy. What . Because the guy in new york, okay, right after the woman get beat up by the state trooper, they never seen them come this close. They think its more to it than what it is. Right now in ferguson there are people talking about recalling the mayor o or replacing him in the next election, doing something about that 6 , 7 turnout of 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 wont even be a help. If the president of the United States go to new york tonight by himself unannounced, he cant get a cab. Most powerful man in the world. Now the president obama with that they have a black mayor. It didnt change. And its simple. Put some cops out there, and the cam a and the minute that cab pass you, you see it, bull them over just like they do when they give you a speeding, and them suspend their license for three weeks. Its that simple. Look at how farhe conversation. What we think of as the conversation has come since you got into the struggle. Arent we better off as a country . Not at all. Not at all. Its gone from physical to mental. Its a mental thing now. The south has always saidhe clo. You cant own me as a slave and i live on the same piece of land as you live on. As long as you dont get too big. Up north they dont care how big i get, as long as i dont get too close. John brown got us sitting here now. He changed everything with the greatest movement in the history of abolition of movement. Frederick douglas. He couldnt be part of the movement because black folks are too child like. Nothing has changed that. Still the same. Even frederick douglas, friend of some of the most prominent members of his day, cosignatory of th,. He couldnt belong. He couldnt belong. And the reason the whole thing is because of john brown. December 2nd, charleston, virginia, the tree they hanged him is still there. Lets go hug the tree. They tried and sentenced him, and so on the second when they hang him, i go through that courthouse right where he walked up the street. Turned left. Walked three blocks. Turned right, three and a half blocks, and theres the tree. What did he say . What im hanging for rich white folks i would be a hero. But last night i talked to god. God told me to tell you the negro slave is going to be free, but it will be the biggest bloodbath of the history of the planet. He was right about that. Yet, we dont teach much about john brown whether teaching early history to white kids, black kids, brown kids, we dont talk as much about john brown as we do about frederick douglas, booker t. Washington, jackie rab bin son, s ojou are, ner truth. Harriette tub man. A whitey killed my jesus and they told me to call it a good day. I calthey call it a good friday. Thats incredible. Does the ability to make people laugh carry with it the ability people see the world and each other . Youre watching talk to al jazeera with dick gregory. Stay with us. Im ray suarez. And this is talk to al jazeera. My guest this week is civil rights activist and comedian dick gregory. Nothing weve been talking about so far is very funny. Yet youve been a comic for a long time and using humor to get people to think about these contradictions. No, dont do that to me. What were you doing, you tell me, then. I dont believe you can get people to change under humor. In the New York Times they asked me, in chicago. How many whit of these white folk who are laughing because they know theyre guilty. Stop and think. Any time i went to south i thought i could die. Thats what fear do. When youre working the playboy club. Most of the audience was white. All of it. Most people were white. If you tell a joke about segregation, if you tell a joke about people being clubbed on the head by police. Thats a moment when people laughing may start laughing an then have an uncomfortable conversation with themselves. I didnt go there for that. When america goes to war they dont send no comics. They send peek who can barely read and write. When they decided they wanted to go to outer space. They didnt go to people who loved the United States . They went to scientists. I know who im dealing with. A white dude his own wife, mother, daughter didnt get a right to vote until 1921. If you did that to your mama, my mama better stay in the house. Legally black folks had the right to vote before white women. If you didnt use humor that way, why not keep it safe . Light. You didnt. You went to places that made people uncomfortable. Just remember, i know who i am. I have ten children, i dont celebrate fathers day. I never bought a car that i didnt know the year, the make, the trade in. When i got to look at myself in the mirror and realize i put more planning in owning a car than creating gods new life, im just as filthy as the rest of them are. Answer time i get on a plane and fly to a rally, that money they use to drop on a bomb. We listen to all this, there is no daddy at home. Hitler had a mother and father, look how he turned off. This is a game that they play. There was a time that you stopped doing stand up. Cigarettes. I didnt want to bring people in to an atmosphere where they had to sit through the secondhand smoke. To quit one meant you had to quit the other . No, i still think as a negro, man. Unshackled, unfree. Im not going let nobody make me a hero because they think im a hero. I live with me. I know who i am. Ill die for t but there are certain things i wont do, and thats the money piece. I made more money at that time than most people. Second only to frank sinatra. When they cut the food stamps off in mississippi. I carried 70 tons of food there every two weeks. 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 was dished out. If you feel your hair grow, you would probably go crazy. I had a rolls royce, i lost all of it. It was of movement that changed me. Tell me how. Well, as a child i went to the movie because i just realized the hand i had been dealt, that cant come from god. Somethings wrong. Something in the movie to dream, dream, dream. I would see clark gable with black hair. He would shake their hair and flip it back. I nearly broke my neck trying to flip my nap back. I said before, to be black in america when youre big in a job and money you have to owe yourself treats just to unmess your mind. When i hit it big, i realized if i dont bring a woman into the nightclub, im not leaving with one. That was the law here. So i had certain things set up before it happened. I knew i was going somewhere. I didnt know if it was sports. I knew it wouldnt be sports. I had been around entertainers. Wait, wait, you knew it wouldnt be sports. You were a celebrated, admired track athlete. That had a lot of future to it, and you walked away from that as well as. Well, we had dual School Systems in st. Louis. Black school and white school. Black track meets and white track meets. I went to the black track meets and ran the mile faster than anybody that year on the planet. I didnt get credit for it. So what do i do . I go by to the naacp and started up a march. That day it scared them white folks so bad. They arrested me and i get home three white men sitting in my house. And my mother all upset. And so that three days later, a white school made one call. I think in 30 minutes we can fix this. He called the legislature, they got on the phone and integrated Cross Country. Now that september i was the first plaque in the history of america to win a state Cross Country championship. Now the spring is out doing track. The university of missouri. A black couldnt go there. You couldnt stay in a hotel there. You couldnt eat there. So we drove up from st. Louis, 244 miles to columbia, missouri, and found out you couldnt stay in a hotel. You couldnt stay on campus. We were there for the state Cross Country championship. You look and you look. If i had to loo say what turned me around, i was in the band. Base drummer, the heartbeat. At long last is dick gregory optimistic about the future . Youre watching talk to al jazeera stay with us. Only on Aljazeera America ve this is talk to al jazeera. Im ray suarez speaking this week with dick gregory, activist, comedian. Dick gregory, take us home. If people have watched this show from the beginning, they might be, well, they might be feeling pretty bleak about the future of the country, do you . That little town outside of st. Louis, they see the cops, the prostitutes, they see them talking to the bad guys, but they give them a slap up the side of head, call them names, this and that, you wonder what its like when you dont have the power to do anything about it. You dont have the powerthey go to church every sunday and pray, and come out and let someone misuse them. It will change, but you have to go in with big money and top minds that can go in and turn it around. If that happened i dont believeand if i did, i wouldnt say itthat we are beyond the point of no return. But were getting there. I want to bring up optimistic but realistic children. You dont want to tell them the game is rigged and you already lost. So ive tried to temper realism with a belief in the future. Its a tough thing to do. Im trying to temper that knowing whats in your head. Knowing whats in your head. You see, the one thing that president obama should have taught black folks, behave yourself, go t get a good education. He went to the school that the white folks go to, never been to jail. Hes nice and kind and they treat him like a third grade drop out waiting to be executed. They say, dont believe what theyre telling you. Dont play it straight . Dont walk the straight and nature . Dont be barack obama, is that the bottom line . No, im telling, im honest. All my children have been successful, very successful because i told them the truth. Education aint nothing. If you think there is an universal god who put the planet together and need a system to teach you, youre in trouble already. I had a mother who couldnt come to my graduation because she didnt feel like her clothes were right and didnt want to embarrass me. No group of people have ever been negatively go through what we go through and they see something in me. They hired nanny toss change the baby diaper or walk the dog. They get their exercise. The only way to help us is if someone came from out of space and saw that they would steal the dog because they would think thats the one that had the power. And black folks, how many black folks feel about white folks and their dogs, kissing them on the mouth. Taking them outside, they cross the street, and they kiss another dog in the butt, and they come back and they kiss them. Thats a whole other show. Thank you. Coming up at the stop of the hour. European leaders look at the crisis in ukraine. Many u. N. Peace keepers are freed in the golan heights. And new gun regulations go into affect in california. That and much more coming up on al jazeera america. Youre in the stream. Dont send your kid to the ivy league. Why elite colleges, according to a guest, dont measure up. A budding movement that spreads to more states . And later, the department of education has found an interesting demographic trend that could change the way schools operate