Groundbreaking comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory died late Saturday in a Washington, D.C. hospital. He was 84.
His son, Christian, told the Associated Press that his father had suffered a severe bacterial infection; he is survived by his wife Lillian and 10 children.
Gregory broke racial barriers in the 1960s as one of the first black standup comics to connect with white audiences.
He rose to fame from an impoverished childhood in St. Louis, won a college track scholarship and became a wry satirist, lampooning racial divisions at the dawn of the civil rights movement.
“Where else in the world but America,” he joked, “could I have lived in the worst neighborhoods, attended the worst schools, rode in the back of the bus, and get paid $5,000 a week just for talking about it?”
Gregory soon moved gracefully from social satire to social activism, using humor to fight for integration and social justice.
He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Chicago in 1966, and even made a bid for US president in 1968, garnering 200,000 votes as a candidate on the Peace and Freedom party line.
He befriended John Lennon in the late ‘60s, and joined in the singing of Lennon and Yoko Ono’s anti-war anthem “Give Peace a Chance” durin their “bed-in” for peace in a Montreal hotel room.
In later years, Gregory preached the virtues of prayer, non-violence, vegetarianism and raw food diets. He remained on the comedy circuit until this month, recently saying on social media that given the violence in Charlottesville, Va., “We have so much work still to be done.”
With Post wires