The New York Times book section recently featured a review of The Essential Dick Gregory. It was thoughtful and interesting, though it might have said a bit more about Gregory’s important role in Chicago’s civil rights history. (For those unfamiliar with him, Dick Gregory, who died in 2017, was a stand-up comic, civil rights leader, author, and vegetarian activist.)
In the summer of 1965, Gregory led daily marches to protest de facto residential and school segregation in Chicago. They assembled in Grant Park at around 5:00 pm, and headed for a different destination every day, known only to Gregory (and not always planned in advance). One day the marchers might go to the Rush Street nightclub district on the near north side, on another to Mayor Daley’s house in Bridgeport (a longer distance, and much more tense), and sometimes the contingent of 50-100 just marched around the Loop.
At age 16, I had a summer job on West Randolph Street, so I would hurry up after work and join the group, usually as the only white teenager. They tolerated me. The summer's high point was a Martin Luther King led march and rally at City Hall, where I somehow ended up close enough to shake King’s hand. During that demonstration, Bernard Kleina took the only ever color photographs of King.
I don’t remember any of the speeches, or even whether Gregory spoke, or anyone other than King. Afterward, I took the Illinois Central home. One of the conductors, a man with an Irish accent, noticed a large "Freedom Now" button I was wearing and asked me why I wanted to bring two groups of people together "who only hated each other." I thought about Dick Gregory, who hated nobody and had always been very kind to me.
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