Civil Rights activist and entertainer Dick Gregory spoke at Fountain Street Church in 1969

Editor’s note: I have been working with Fountain Street Church and looking at a substantial amount of archival materials they have. Today’s post is only possible because Fountain Street Church has provided me access to their archives and they want this information to be public and available to the community. I will be hosting the archival material on the Grand Rapids People’s History Project site, but also posting here on GRIID. This is the second in a series of postings from the archival material at Fountain Street Church. 

Earlier this year I posted a transcript of a lecture from Kwame Ture, known as Stokely Carmichael when he spoke at Fountain Street Church in May of 1967, which you can read here.  Last week, I posted an audio recording of civil rights activist James Meredith who spoke in 1967 at Fountain Street Church.

Today, I wanted to share an audio recording of the Comedian and Civil Rights activist Dick Gregory, who spoke at Fountain Street Church in January of 1969. Gregory was also a fierce critic of the US war in Vietnam and was arrested numerous times for civil rights and anti-war actions. Dick Gregory used humor as a tool to expose the absurdity of the American Empire. Gregory died in 2017.

Some of the issues and themes in Gregory’s talk at Fountain Street Church were his affirmation of youth, talking about old folks lying, systemic racism, and changing the system. Gregory also talked about how the 1968 Democratic Convention, where the the Democrat Mayor Daley used severe repression against those protesting at the convention. Gregory said that the response of the system during the 1968 Democratic Convention woke people up.