Dick Gregory, who broke ground in the 1960s as the first mainstream black stand-up comedian, and turned a life of comedy into a life of social activism, died Saturday at 84 years old. Gregory made his big break at the Playboy Club in 1961 as a one-night replacement, and rocketed his way to fame using his unique brand of razor-sharp social satire.
“It is with enormous sadness that the Gregory family confirms that their father, comedic legend and civil rights activist Mr. Dick Gregory departed this earth tonight in Washington, D.C.,” his son Christian Gregory said in a statement. “The family appreciates the outpouring of support and love and respectfully asks for their privacy as they grieve during this very difficult time.”
“He was one of the sweetest, smartest, most loving people one could ever know," his publicist of 50 years, Steve Jaffe, told The Hollywood Reporter. “I just hope that God is ready for some outrageously funny times.”
Gregory began his career as a late-night emcee at the black-owned Herman Roberts Show Bar in Chicago in 1958, while keeping a day job with the U.S. Postal Service. His big break came three years later, when he subbed for one night at the Playboy Club for Professor Irwin Corey, who didn’t want to work seven nights a week. Hugh Hefner, who had seen him perform for black audiences before, paid Gregory $50 for the show. The shite audience at the Playboy Club loved him, and he stayed on for three more weeks, which turned into three years.
“When I started, a black comic couldn’t work a white nightclub,” Gregory recalled in an interview in 2016. “You could sing, you could dance, but you couldn’t stand flat-footed and talk—then the system would know how brilliant black folks was.”
In 1962, he was invited to The Tonight Show, but said he wouldn’t perform unless he could also sit down for an interview with Jack Paar after his set. He was the first black performer to ever do that.
“I went in, and as I sat on the couch, talking about my children, so many people called the switchboard at NBC in New York that the circuits blew out,” he said. “And thousands of letters came in and folks were saying, ‘I didn’t know black children and white children were the same.’”
Gregory said his salary at the Playboy Club jumped to $5,000 a night after his Tonight Show appearance. “And the next year and a half, I made $3.9 million,” he said. “That is the power.”
His fame drove him to become a public supporter of civil rights and opponent of the Vietnam War. He was friends with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, marched in Selma, got shot trying to keep the peace during the Watts riots in 1965, and traveled to Tehran in 1980 during the Iran hostage crisis to try to negotiate their release. He ran for mayor of Chicago, lost, and ran for U.S. president a year later.
“Had I won,” he said of his run, “first thing I would do is dig up that Rose Garden and plant me a watermelon patch. And it would be no more state dinners, but watermelon lunches. We’d eat watermelon and spit the seeds on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
