The Biography of Dick Gregory
   
Dick Gregory's Childhood
 
Dick Gregory's full name is Richard Claxton
Gregory and he was born on Columbus Day of 1932
in St. Louis Missouri. He grew up in poverty
with his mother and his five brothers and sisters,
Presely, Dolores, Garland, Ronald, and Pauline.
When Dick was younger, with his father at
war, Dick and his mother would wait for him every Christmas to recieve his homemade
or stolen presents from his children. When his
father did come home, which wasn't evrey year,
he beat Dick's mama and call her names to show
her that HE was in charge.
Mama was everything to Dick and all of his
siblings. No one in the family would have
survived without their mama. She didn't want
her kids at a disadvantage but she knew that
someday they would have to compete with the richer
kids and they all knew that that was going to be
hard.
When Dick was 7 years old, he had a big crush
on a white girl named, Helene Tucker. He liked
everything about her especially her perfectness,
her blond pigtails, her nice manners, her
cleanness, and many other perfect qualities that
she had. Well, on the Thursday before the Negro
payday, Dick's teacher was asking each student
how much his or her father was going to give to
the Community Chest. The children would bring
the money to school on the next Monday. Dick wanted to
impress Helene by pledging more money then her.
When the teacher never called his name and
Dick asked why she said, "We are collecting for
you and your kind. And furthermore, we all know
that you have no Daddy." Dick felt so horrible
and worthless. He ran out of school right then
and rarely came back.
When Dick was 9 his best friend was Charles
Simmons which everyone called him Boo for some odd
unknown reason. He
was always much more mature than Dick. He was really tough and
every gang wanted him to join. He never started
any fights because he was too lazy. If someone
stated a fight with Boo he ALWAYS finished it but
he never threw the first punch. Boo always kept
Dick from getting beat up, since Dick was
considered to many as the neighborhood sissy.
He usually ran errands for people, even for
people younger than him. Boo and Dick did a lot
of bad things-minor but bad. The worst thing
that they ever did was bomb the streetcar. They
would fill up paper shopping bags with powdery
dark dust and they would stand on the corner
and wait for the streetcar to come by and right before it passed they would throw the bags in it.
Boo and Dick always liked watching the people
rubbing the dust out of their eyes and listen to
them cuss or curse after the bomb went off.


 
Dick Gregory's Adult Years
On February 2, 1959 Dick married a woman
named Lillian Smith. Befor he asked her to marry him she had
told him that she was pregnant with his child.
Right then he had flashbacks of how his father wasn't ever
there for him, supporting the family, raising the children, how
he left Dick's mama to raise all of the children by herself even after the war.
He thought about how he and Lil were both
practically broke but he promised himself that he
would be a better father than his dad was. The
first time he asked her to marry him, she refused but the second
time she accepted. Working in the night-club
business he would have to find some way to support
his new family.
 
In Jail!!
In May of 1963 Richard was arrested for
fighting for his freedom. The older kids who were arrested with him sang
church songs waiting for the night to pass more
quickly. No one who was arrested with him knew
how long they were going to be in jail.
The jailers fed them in the morning and some
hadn't eaten in 24 hours. The jailers were really
mean to them and they harrased them too. They
would also beat people like when they tried to
pull the kids out of the cell and they wouldn't go
they would get a good beating. When Dick tried to
fight one the guards he got the first good beating
that he had ever gotten.
Finally 5 days later Dick Gregory and many
others who fought for their freedom were released
from the Birmingham jail.


 
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