Gregory's is the Wisdom of Ages
I knew that the 100th anniversary of the NAACP was a momentous occasion, but for me as an independent journalist, the occasion as much as anything else signified a night of work - that is until I was shaken awake by a kind but firm hand upon my shoulder as I sleep walked into a conversation with two gentlemen at the bar, one of which was Dick Gregory. He turned to me and looked me squarely in the eyes, as so few are able to do and grabbing my shoulder and with a few amiable pokes and jabs to boot he spoke to me about the vastness and the depth of the crisis through which we are now passing.
“People say this is like the great depression. This isn’t like the great depression. Have you ever tried to unlearn how to ride a bicycle? It can’t be done. In the great depression nobody had anything. Now we’re so used to having so much, how are we gonna’ learn how to live without it. You can’t do it…There is no end to this thing.”
Gregory’s were sobering words, and like so many of his words, they just leave one to think, and that’s one of the secrets of Gregory’s genius. He doesn’t tell people what to think. He says things that make people think, whether they want to or not! Even still, it didn’t dawn on me at the moment of our meeting that I was in the presence of genius and that the hand upon my shoulder was the hand of wisdom rooted in the ages and thrust forward through decades of civil rights struggles. I did, however, begin to contemplate Gregory’s genius during the shock, awe and humor of his address.
“I just came back from Paris and its kinda' interest’n – all over the world and I can recognize a whore, but I don’t know you’re a Christian until you tell me. I can’t look at you and tell you’re a Christian but I can tell she’s whore. Somethin’ wrong with that.”
"If you look at all the bibles and the great writers of the world they talk about wisdom, and then this little tricky boy changed it to smart and intelligence...You want to understand my problem you don't take it from yesterday or how many black folk have PhDs."
During his address, Gregory identified that the experience of history lives within us and molds the social issues that we experience today. Importantly, Gregory invoked the power of peaceful activism and he pointedly identified socio-economic segregation and the mindset of opulent wealth as the true source of oppression and tyranny by which we are manipulated in ways that most of us don’t understand.
I wouldn’t say that there were many new concepts in Gregory’s address, but the concepts were magnificently packaged and delivered. Gregory didn’t try to spell out solutions for his enrapt audience, rather as he moved through topics as varied as religion and whoring and chastity and Viagra he took his audience from shock to laughter with hard hitting statements that prompted people to look into their own hearts in search meaning.
God bless you Dick Gregory
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