"Nigger" by Dick Gregory

There have been only three geniuses in comedy: Mark Twain, Lenny Bruce, and Ricard Pryor. Mark Twain was the only one who came out of the madness unscathed. He was so far ahead of his time that he shouldn't even be talked about on the same day as other people. Look at what he did with his brilliant satire. For the first time in history of literature a White man talked about a relationship between a Black Man and a White boy. Black men didn't even have names; they were referred to as "nigger". Then he wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884 and talked about "Nigger Jim". Today some people are outraged by the book and they have banned it from many school districts. That's really a shame, because the truth is that Twain was the first writer to refer us to someone other than a nigger. He attached a name to nigger and made Jim human.

Now, we were always human to each other, but Twain's "Nigger Jim" made us human to white folks. They read about Jim and Huck Finn going down the Mississippi River. Nigger Jim was not putting the bait on the hook for Huck - they were fishing together as friends.

Twain once wrote an article for The Buffalo Express that outraged White folks. It was entitled, "Oh Well, It Was Just Another Nigger.". A Black man in Memphis was lynched and then they discovered that it was the wrong man. Mark Twain responded that a bunch of good Christian White folks had lynched a Black man the other day, then they found out it was the wrong guy, but so what? It was just another nigger. White folks were outraged. But Mark Twain kept writing and putting a face with the names of Black folks. He was so special that he was born during the appearance of Halley's Comet, which only comes every seventy-five years. When Halley's Comet came again, Mark Twain died that very day.

Almost a century later two other geniuses, Lennie Bruce and Richard Pryor, challenged and strengthened the right to free speech and they both used the stage as their workshop. In order to experience their genius, you had to be there to smell the sawdust...

Until we know more about Richard Pryor, we will never know what made him the comic genius he is. When Richard started using the word "nigger" in his act, he made it so that every time he said it, it lessened the sting of hearing that word aloud. Richard knew how to play that game - he'd turn every negative thing White folks said about us into a satire and turn the whole thing around... He is before his time.

I really took the word "nigger" public in 1963 when I wrote my first autobiography, Nigger, with Robert Lipsyte. Dutton publishing Company thought they were getting a humor book, but they didn't say that in the contract. So I turned in an autobiography. I turned in a book with hard-core facts about Black life in racist White America. Once I had submitted the manuscript and they read what it was really about, they wanted me to name it something humorous to trick White folks into buying it. So Dutton called a big meeting on a Friday and asked me to come back on the following Monday with a humorous title. I went back on Monday and took them the title Nigger.

Just imagine a White or Black person walking into a book store in New York and saying, "I want a copy of Nigger. People were afraid to ask for my book, and bookstore owners were afraid to put it in their stores. Some Black folks would go into a bookstore and say: "I want one of Dick Gregory's what - you - call - it." And White folks would say "You named that book a title I just can't say." Or they would complain, saying, "I just can't stand the name of your new book."

I didn't hear White folks complaining about the word nigger when I was growing up. I only heard them using it. If they had complained about the word nigger in the past, there would not have been a need to name my book Nigger. Titling my book Nigger meant I was taking it back from the White folks. Mark Twain threw it up in the air and I grabbed it.

from Callus on My Soul, written with Shelia P. Moses, 2000