Title: Patricia Marx Interviews: Dick Gregory
Last Updated: 2016-06-16 7:14PM
Origin: https://opentranscript.herokuapp.com/transcripts/patricia-marx-interviews-dick-gregory
This transcript was generated by Open Transcript Editor Pilot and may contain errors.
Read more about how this transcript was created at https://opentranscript.herokuapp.com/

The Negro Problem in America has developed into a crisis whites against Negro and now
Negroes against Negroes those who stand for nonviolence against those who want blood.
Mr Dick Gregory the negro comedian has been risking his life fighting for civil rights
to nonviolence.
He's my guest today here to tell us
about the Negro Problem. It's a white
problem because Show me a so-called Negro problem and I'll
show you dumb white
leadership. The
Wallaces the
Wagners Rockefeller's see we do not control anything.
So we can have a
problem we have people that say what about the Negro crime rate. What were the
white man's crime rate look like if the negroes took over America tonight and
hired black Muslim as police.
So I got a man out there as God made a don't even like me in the first
place and you see. All I lived a white man
say get like
me be like me and I'll accept you the day the white man quit killing
each other we won't have anyone to imitate.
Are you saying then the negro superiors in the
White know I'm listening all superior to the white model. I'm saying that
the minority will always asked a majority to let me integrate what
you and the white man is in a minority worldwide
and with jets bring in the world closer
together and a few years the white man in the world will have the same problem a Negro in
America has because he will be outnumbered
ninety to one the same way we are and he should look and look at
our problem because one day he's going to have to as the world's black man. Let
me integrate with you the way we are has an American white man. Let me
integrate list good reuse of the negroes are asking to join the white majority would you have it any other way.
No know any other way because
one the white. And I've always told me when you get like me you can have it
go back and check sleigh pictures I never wore shoes. He told me to get like
him so I put on issues socks underwear shirt his ties
to guy had him covered all the way up to my Adam's apple Nadya's nice deal and give it to me and I was so fair with him
I didn't say that some was wrong with him I said maybe it's my big lip and I grew a much station if you
look at a lot of negroes you see a lot of negro wear my
station and I had uncovered. Them from the bottom of my feet all the way up to the bottom of my
nose and he still didn't give it to
me and I didn't blame him I said it must be his nappy hair. And if you look at a lot of
men roll in a growth process they had their I straighten my hair out and a hundred
year period I went from the bottom of my ski to the top of my head nasty of didn't get it I don't have anything
else I could do that's why I'm out here on the street today.
I tried I tried I tried everything
I could and he wouldn't let
me everything I could and he wouldn't let
me and the constitution today the reason the negro have resorted to
violence because we're not trying to take over a country trying to make a constitution work in
practice you don't think that the whites will accept the negroes unless they seem like or will
they ever
accept all of this is everything else what they say to say we too
loud and the history of the world the man has been pushed down and had to be allowed to be heard.
So they say I'm too loud sure too loud I got to be over dressed over coffee
than over money.
When I walk down the street I'm a nigger if I drive down in a Cadillac they look around who is
that I've always had to get something extra to take with me so men
look at me.
You've always been white folks eat more watermelon eat more pancakes and we go to
Negro neighborhood you don't see no pancake house that serves a hundred different types of pay and cakes.
But when my little daughter go to one of them schools you teach you know about Little Black Sambo
own pancakes.
I'm eating all the watermelon and drinking all the gin the negroes number one drink not.
Such white folks is drinking
gin for a hundred years a man's been changing my dollar with thirty two cents.
Now always changing it for sixty four cents nice and that I should be
happy that he's helping me I'll stop to cheat I'm going to get a four dollars change for
a dollar of this class registers not going ring no
more when you see the cash register not going to ring. No more what do you mean what are you going to make it not
ring not ring to stand in line and argue what you bought might change like
we do and now stand right here in this line and say you gave me sixty
four cents
but not a dollar and you keep telling me go ahead but if you're doing better than you used to do you don't
mess around and lose me I'm your liberal friend somebody don't make me mad.
Come on baby don't make me don't do this is a stall and all I was saying was giving my
Jane the demonstrations all I'm saying is give me
my chains. I'm not moving the lines are getting longer and longer.
There's a gap back then lie and he get mad now and he's Yelland
up car come out nigger move now used to like you know I'm not movin.
We've been saying this niggers been saying isn't working. Is it work.
You're listening to me you hear me she was work
to check you've stolen here biggest. Movement ever happened in the history of
the world we wonder
Stoli wanted hands down.
Never in the history of baseball have they ever cancel a game at them o'clock in the morning because of rain like they
did the motionless doll
in the paper say seventy five percent of the cars didn't show up you know what
and if I was in a normal traffic was
all as Rockefeller's how much money they lost on selling
their gasoline that day as the state in the city how much money lost on taxes on
gasoline as the airlines how much money they lost the people didn't come
in as the people I was told to do interviews and people had apartments as how
many didn't
show check your schools and find out how old attendance was that day.
Check the department. Doughton find out how many people income in the shop check to the promised of how
many packages they didn't deliver because they didn't think they could get them
to check out the world astray and have them How many did they expect that day with this
the five hundred thousand nine hundred three thousand shows fifty three thousand
paid they expected a half a
million sixty thousand
show that paid the new head four hundred and forty
thousand times to their families money they lost stolen was very effective.
It was listen what about violence they could be nearing and that's an outburst of
violence Francis in Harlem.
Well I don't know everybody talks about violence today. You see the funny thing
the white man but a lynching us for hundred years no wipers never talked about violence. We NEVER been
able to ever interview show we have no by never talk about violence is a funny thing.
December the seventh one nine hundred forty
one the Japanese was a yellow man to white
folks the symbol the
A he was a white man he'd been a white man ever since
his some
of this American white man that and do you let him know
you can put this pistol in his head and blow all his brains out.
You're a nigger. That's why the Africans becoming more white than a Negro.
That's why Malcolm X. who said the pink eyed devil need to be dead. Martin Luther King's I love your
brother turn the other cheek.
They call Martin Luther King a nigger and a
common years they never call Malcolm X. a communist not a nigger. They've always called him our commands.
This is the problem in this country is the
white man. What do we have to do to move him.
What do we have to do we tried everything we can try
nonviolently and we get laughed that laughed at it and it's funny.
We had white people talking more about a stoney and then they talked about the six colors.
Has a got killed in
Birmingham where Stone is nonviolent business stone and nonviolent The sixty years
ago killer was violent and they didn't talk about those six kids they talked more about
a Stalin and about the Church of God blow them
Birmingham. But you're just saying that what makes people talk and listen is
violence now and violence when it's against
white nonviolence. One is the one is against
white yourself I'm saying what I'm saying is this here. The violence of the kids was against
us nonviolence was against
white they talk about more nonviolence as against them than the violence does against us.
I had a negro assassinated President Kennedy we had to fight white folks in the street.
That's what I'm saying you say it's OK for violence but when I think
about
it and in a shape form or fashion. Everybody gets upset
when I volunteer
violence the Negro in this country
today keeps race riots
out of the only way you will get a race rise when I had a white man back a
white man hit me four hundred years.
So here and then to do
it where do you stand when you advocate nonviolence and yet you say violence is the only thing that will make
the whites
react and I didn't say rounds of do nothing make the whites we act I think is the only thing they've been reacting
to we're going to try to do it not bomb committed to
nonviolence violence a white man could make me get bomb
and then it becomes better than
me nonviolence mean I've found some work done for.
What makes you believe the white man will change
them and what makes me believe you. I have faith in me not him.
I have faith that through my demonstrations that he's on the TADA weapon
me he can work both
ways either I'm a good tired of demonstrating a start you'd know you can get Clodagh within
me and I just believe he's going to get tired of weapon
me didn't Berman a family get tired of standing hard. Pictures
come
through and you get real upset you see had I taken a gun down the Birmingham to
try to get Bull Connor's job O'Connell Steelman work
and I got his job without a gun.
Because white people in America. Basically they
decent basically ladies in D.C. is a funny thing about a
white man in America he has a conscience and he never qualified to own slaves but he tried
to own slaves because he was trying to imitate the people he had just
left but he realized what a generalized American negro slave of the worst slave
in the whole world because I had amassed that couldn't even
respect because look check the records and see what type what type of guy came over he went to
prison but he had a conscience.
Then all at once he said that I was inferior to
him and his conscience had made him block me had made him
sit her toes up and every time I'd jump will want her to put another one up me give tell Mr
I'm inferior to him I'm inferior to him and not only do we tell the staff I'm in fear him he
tries to make me in period of him. That's why he gives me inferior schools.
That's why he stands me to the worst things in the world that's why I keep talking
about my crime rate and a negroid never shot a polyp in the back. While the plane was
gone and I never put four sticks of dynamite in his mother's luggage and blew up a
plane negroid know what committed atrocities a white man have in
his college but you gotta keep telling the step bout my crime rate. So he can justify what he's doing to
me because the day he quit justifying what he's doing to me he'll go crazy.
Well how do you justify the crime rate crime rate is higher among Negroes
in my primary disarmingly goes and I tell you
what you have many negroes in the south and you do not know if you know that don't
you have you ever heard a Southern senators talk about a Negro crime
rate. All
right now why is it in the south the negro have got a crime rate and up now
if you
have tell you what. Let's take
New York for
instance you have male white friends that you know right right.
Very intelligent. Do you know any male white friend that would give John a New York Police Department.
You know because there's too many opportunities right.
OK So then a Negro with a master's degree will get a New York Police
Department because if I finish college an account number are going to take their opinion work
into account inspection but I've got a wife and a family so I get on police department.
But now I have no intelligent whiteboards knowledge on the police department from the ground level only from the top
level and who you don't feel the jobs with just go hire so many a
me of killing white
boys that white borders not Barry
educated many times is not a police department consists of
a lot of Southern
whites and you got a stud and white boy didn't like me in Mississippi and he up here
in New York with a badge and a girl and was my crime rate falls look
like it was the last time you picked up the paper and read about a Negro stick in a
bank in less time you picked up paper and read about a Negro embezzle
in Manila time you picked up a paper and read were a negro neighborhood
a little four year old girl was raped and chopped up and put in a
sewer my crime rate. But what you do
you count me if you count the people I get
arrested the whites would have the crime rate but you can't the one to get
prosecutors I have mean that a
lawyer is that a percentage nonetheless there is a higher percentage of crime rate among the negroes I
got there only ten percent niggers in the pot limit ten percent population.
If you count the amount of people I get arrested. How the do this time out
how many police station they have a new
yard and you'll find out there. Eighty percent of all the police station in New
York the Negroes never been
in and who are they bringing in I'm white but they when they go to
trial they come in I'm a
lawyer I haven't got one. So I get. Convicted.
So you can't your crime rate a mom who gets convicted not amount to little gets
caught so out all the gangsters in New York. You have heard of a colored gangster.
But you talk about my crime
rate a negro didn't kill that gangster in the Barbershop.
When Pentland dope we get caught with the dope in Harlem. But if the cops was that
smart they would stop the dope in Manhattan for the white folks cut it and send it to is not
New York's a free city
job opportunities OK never seen a fire
truck there was even talking ladder you ever see a negro driving a five.
Why this degree who are the real Negro leaders.
Well it's very difficult to say who's a Jewish leader in America who's the Irish leader
in America who's a tell you to lead America who's the white leader in America.
Then why are we the only groups that have leaders and their leaders were any good for you we wouldn't have known either.
So maybe you are the only group that needs it in the Irish and the Jews
are simply knowing the full state that the white man. Not only America but the world over.
He's losing all over the
world and everyone for his Marshall Plan and his money he would have learned a long time ago
you see when you bend over to conquer you have to stay bent over to
keep and. You have no
leaders and want to produce a leader he's not a white
leader when you say Who are the four most people in the world today he might be
an Irish guy but when I use are easily to you can
say when I say who is the Irish president for assassination of Kennedy.
You couldn't say when I say who the American president uses that community. You
see leaders with us is limited to Negroes leaders to white are not limited to any minority.
That's why nobody can answer you who the leader of a minority
groups we have tremendous
leaders that are world leaders but they have been
limited and if I told
you who the number one. Need role in the country world few people would
know Lutie Dr Benjamin May
is president of Morehouse University. The young man the late President
Kennedy sent
to the Pope soon to represent him to Benjamin
may but we only know Negro leaders as the white power structure you want to
know was was to know them the negro to say go slow the only
Negro leaders as recognized by white folks in the Negro fight in the civil rights bill are great doctors you don't
know his name. Our great research is his name is not known.
All we know is the man a fighting for civil rights and the only one will say as a leader is the negro to say
Go Slow Love your fellow man.
We'll have a man like Malcolm X. is he a
leader Malcolm X. has become a leader Malcolm X. had probably become the number one leader
in America today the number one group in America today because white people
and colored people know who he is the richest white man old Malcolm X. There's the
poets white man know who Malcolm X. did and what he looked
like the riches Negro know what Malcolm X. Here's the powers Negro know what Malcolm X.
is now the so-called Negro leaders who the right man said in there. There's plenty
poor poor white people that don't know what the president of the end of lazy people look
like there are many many poor negroes who don't know where I work and look
like poor negroes and poor white and rich negroes and Rich White know what Malcolm
X. look
like so that makes Malcolm X. number one man country
today. May be known as a respected.
He's respected the white man respects him because you never called him a nigger are common in these
call Malcolm X. He's called Martin Luther King
both the negro respects we didn't want to respect him but we had to
respect
him because Martin Luther King said turn the other cheek love your brother they
care Martin Luther King in jail and Malcolm X. couldn't get
arrested but now do you stand for nonviolence respect Connex
essential
violence Malcolm X. do not stand for violence you know what Malcolm X.. Now. Makes clear when those
four kids was killed in Birmingham member said the negro should fight the white man but do you
remember when those movement was killed in
L.A.. The movement was killed in L.A. Remember
that they didn't fight. So the move will not go on fighting why the
negroes know the fight in Alabama.
You see if you look through the things that have been said by Malcolm and filter
mouth and find out the myths from the
truth than you will understand Malcolm. What's the truth. Now you say a movement stands
for violence right.
You say that can you call one incidence which you know moves and been
violent and I can quote many statements that he says I
said in face statement if I tell you I'm a millionaire. Are you going to tell the world I'm
a
millionaire or you know. All right then why
Americans they want safety we assume what we want to
assume. But there are many examples just recently in the news and up in Harlem the youth gangs that
are murdering for the sake of murdering and this was to be under the influence is not a mix of
like most what I tell you the best person I asked wouldn't be me because I don't live here but I tell you what if you actually
Polish Commission here in New York I bet he couldn't tell us what it is and I'm sure if it was he would
know but he's never confirmed
that and they usually confirm everything of that nature.
You see when a negro up in Harlem is supposed to be killing white for the sake of killing white then
another negro if I asked about it but when a white man supposed to be secure and colored for the sake of
killing color. They never asked a negro about that questions are so unfair not even when
they mean to
be all the ones we have to be responsible for Negroes but whites
only responsible to themselves. You see when a white man rapes a four year old girl.
And the next day a white man come to my neighborhood to sell me my product. I never Graham my daughter
away like he's going to rape
her when a white man puts forty sticks of dynamite
in his mother's luggage and blog whole plane up when a white man come to my neighborhood to sell my product with
his little valise a little briefcase. I don't assume is dynamite in
it you see the day the white man learned to be a. Spare the
negro the example the people are living on Kennedy down
on Johnson's wife's
poverty ranch. I wonder how many whites would have been that
loyal. This is different the day the white man learned to be a law
in America as a
negro we have something going on you see the white man owns this country have all the
privileges and is the white man who gives the secrets
away and there are many negroes who work in access of
secret them in a negro who knows a lot of secrets because he was a
negro involve the universal Chicago when he split that
Adam and final has given the secrets away.
Well who is
loyal the last friend this American white man have it Earth goes
around the world he is hated and if he ever take a world trip when he go to France
he hang around in the American section where he's been and his big butt the book but if
he ever lose that American section here finally what people think about
him and South Vietnam right now are we fighting a war
the American Whites cannot even go into the town because of the atrocities they committed
with the cab drivers that you tell me we're going to fight and save a
country has more to be teaching them freedom and their own white boys can go in town
because of the attitudes because of the attitudes towards
them all over this country. I think you've just come from a meeting of the
young gang leaders in New York City. What is their
attitude when talking about juvenile gang leaders you talk
about poor folks. I made a
joke
that had we really want to direct the World's
Fair we would have cancelled the Starlin invited all society kids down from
Southampton. But when they do something.
It's not a problem.
It's when the mother on a D C It's one Negro one with illegitimate Keir but we forget
about the white woman to get the boys and cry. Card You see we put the old
people in
projects and we name I'm such a such a project. You have a head dress right where
you live when I give you my
address why we got to call it a name you have name nothing
else just give you the street an
address and give him a telephone you will as all people live in the projects don't
have
telephones have some relief. You're not supposed to have a telephone.
Do you realize the people I live in the projects that they don't have
doorbells So if you had to walk up twenty five twenty seven stories on the elevator you have to go
all the way up those wear them stories and knock on the door do you know they don't given
doorbells So when you spend this type of money to build a new place
and all you do is build it for poor
folks and you're not going to help them at
all you haven't better. They condition as far as being
poor as far as convenience.
You better your
condition because all we do is put them in you have doctors. That's in terms
that should live in the projects because you have doctors are doing in turn workers making less
money than mother on
relief and can you imagine what this gang leader would do when he got a doctor living in his building.
He'd have somebody when they
imitate somebody that he feels is his own to
imitate juvenile gang lead in the street he have to be a gang leader in the street
juvenile delinquency in America to me is nothing but the style
does after the finished product have been
pedal
ISM so we have these gang
leaders and the only way we're going to solve the problem is getting at the base the root of
the
problem go into the home follow him from the time
he's five years
old to the time he's
twenty you see when one about high school
dropouts you have a kid that's not eaten but one meal a day at
home. Or maybe he's not even at home at all we give him what
a lunch at school.
How do you expect in the
study after he played baseball and basketball and he goes home is hungry mom I have
a new food for
him but you go on the Brahmachari and you feed him
why knows you feed
them about a kid whose dad is over there on the
Bollen getting fed and he's in the projects and not eaten.
That's the one you learn about falling out of
school Feed him. See to it fill up a
program get your laundry mat go
on for janitor you pay the damages
nice schools in New York for a thousand dollars a
year then do it
different pay him thirty thousand dollars a year and get your laundry warm and see to it that
the
kids can bring their dirty clothes the school WOLLASTON In school eight hours a day.
The woman downstairs washing the
well see to see if you see to it that a man has
a clean body he'll see to it he has a
clean mind. It's very hard to have a clean mind what a dirty body is hard to
think clean when your feet.
Think how much of what needs to be done is being done
using about one tenth of one
percent because we so busy.
We're so busy what our system set up that is so corrupt the way we treat Nigro we have to bend
over backwards to everybody else in the world or you know we can build a hospital in
India today. You know that don't you and
all Indians can go to that hospital you know that don't you. But do you know the federal government built a hospital here in
New York only veterans could go.
Can you believe that the federal government bills the House bill and not one American kid can
go where they build it and then the Indians can go.
This is the problem we
have we need more money for Vietnam for Laos.
And they pushed one hundred thirty two million dollars through just like
that but if you needed it for a new yard. You couldn't get it.
That's the problem we have in this country today. What's your forecast what's going to happen. Well as the rate we
go and now we're headed to complete destruction.
It's like fighting a forest fire. We don't get a shift in when we can kiss it goodbye.
I'm hoping and praying for this
year we can get it while I have that much freedom
people the Negro is
demonstrating demonstrating for legitimate
right he has truth justice and United States Constitution on his
side he gets knocked down by a car.
There's a cold air inhaling going to judge a senator like
Russell have to ask the F.B.I. are to come in and investigate police
brutality towards negroes in New York and Bill
for this is a disgrace. When you stop and think we will take
a girl and a soldier and make the University of Mississippi
integrate and make Mississippi and Alabama integrate but when we asked you to integrate in New York you give
us the most.
Is degree I want to thank you.
You've been listening to an interview with the negro comedian Dick Gregory. Thank
you and goodbye for now.