ST. LOUIS — Dick Gregory learned to answer hardship with words sharp enough to make people laugh and think.
Born Richard Claxton Gregory in St. Louis on Oct. 12, 1932, he grew up poor in the city’s Black community. The Library of Congress says Gregory developed his improvisational skill trading insults on neighborhood streets before refining his satirical voice in Chicago nightclubs.
Gregory attended Southern Illinois University before he was drafted into the Army. His career accelerated after a successful engagement at Chicago’s Playboy Club led to national nightclub bookings, television appearances and a recording contract. His 1962 book, From the Back of the Bus, used satire to examine race during the civil-rights era.
He did more than discuss injustice from the stage. The National Archives says Gregory worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, encouraged voter-registration drives, joined sit-ins against segregation and participated in marches addressing the Vietnam War, hunger and other issues.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute documents Gregory’s fundraising support for civil-rights organizations and his participation in the 1965 Selma movement. It describes him as a performer who used his talent to advance civil rights and King’s methods of nonviolence.
Gregory died in 2017, but his legacy remains especially close to St. Louis: He showed how humor formed in a city’s neighborhoods could become a national language for confronting racism and demanding change.
Sources: Library of Congress; National Archives; Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.
