Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Here's a clip of a comedian on TV in 1961. See if you recognize him.

Dick Gregory: We have a lot of racial prejudice up north, but we're so clever with it. Take my hometown, Chicago. You can't see it just going in there. When Negros in Chicago move into one large area, and it looked like we might control the vote, they don't say anything to us. They have a slum clearance. [laughter] You do the same thing on the West Coast, but you call it freeways. [laughter]

Brian Lehrer: That was the trailblazing Dick Gregory from his first TV appearance way back in 1961 on ABC's Walk in My Shoes. To end the show today and for Black History Month, we're going to be talking about the history of Black comedy as a tool for activism. Dick Gregory's career and continuing influence will guide us as we do this. The theme of Black History Month in the US this year is African Americans and the arts, and comedy is definitely an art.

From pioneers like Gregory and Moms Mabley who tackled racial inequality during the Civil Rights Movement, to contemporary trailblazers who continue to push boundaries and spar crucial dialogues on race in the 21st century, comedy has served as a platform for Black performers to share their experiences, perspectives, and frustrations.

For more now, I'm joined by Mark Anthony Neal who is the James B. Duke distinguished professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University. Professor Neal, welcome to WNYC. So glad you could join us.

Mark Anthony Neal: Thank you for the invitation, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: It was a video that you made about Dick Gregory that put us on to focusing on him for this segment today. Thank you for that. We're going to hear some more clips, but where do you begin to trace the history of what we've come to know as Black or African American comedy in the mass media era?

Mark Anthony Neal: Definitely, Dick Gregory is the breakthrough artist. Obviously, there had been Black comedians prior to that point in time. A lot of them didn't cross over to the mainstream, obviously. As long as there have been Black folks in this country dealing with the issues of racism and oppression and everything that goes with that, there have been Black folks trying to make humor of that, whether or not they would stand-up comedians, or musicians, or comedic actors in that context.

Dick Gregory is really the one who's a breakthrough, who comes through in the early 1960s, is the first Black comedian really who's a regular feature on late night television. He's the first Black performer on what becomes Johnny Carson's Late Night Show. That moment was really critical because as he told Johnny Carson as they were inviting him on to the show, his whole thing was, "I'm not just going to go there and do stand-up. I want to sit down and talk with you about what's happening in the world." That was really a shift and a breakthrough. We weren't just entertainers at that point in time. It was something more than that.

His willingness to always center race, finding the funny in both race and racism is one of the things that attracted him to many different folks. He was also really solely committed to the Civil Rights Movement at that point in time, and for a long period of time really gave up the financial success he could have had as just a stand-up comedian to be on the front lines of the civil rights and later human rights movements.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls, as we often do in this final 15 minutes or so of the show, on all kinds of things in your life. Today, we're inviting you to shout out a favorite comedian who's made you laugh and also advanced the cause of racial justice. Who has one? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. If you have a favorite comedian who's made you laugh, while advancing the cause of racial justice in the context of their comedy, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text with Marl Anthony Neal from Duke. Let's hear another clip. Here's Gregory in 1962 at an event in San Francisco.

Dick Gregory: See, 20 years ago, the light complected Negro had it made. Now it's the dark complected Negro simply because of the government contracts. In order for big business to get government contracts, they have to hire Negro and white on an equal basis. These cats go out and get the blackest cat they can find, [laughter] so that when that government inspector walk in there he can see him seven blocks away. [laughter] "Oh, you got one." [applause]

Brian Lehrer: You want to say anything about that particular clip or the one we started with?

Mark Anthony Neal: I think the last clip is really funny and important because it speaks to the issue of colorism within the Black community without getting too deeply as he does it in this context, but really the fact that there is a perception about the authenticity of Black identity as it's connected to skin color. He's, on the one hand, talking about what that might look like in terms of public policy, who gets jobs and who don't get jobs and contracts and what have you, but it's also a slight nod to what is going to become this moment of Black pride where the idea of darker-skinned African Americans and Afros and all those things began to take shape, and become much more of an aspect of what we think of as the Black experience.

Brian Lehrer: Now, Gregory was by no means the first Black performer of what we know as stand-up comedy. Some 40 years before Gregory's first TV appearance in 1961, Moms Mabley began her career on stage. She would go on to become a legend on the so-called Chitlin' Circuit. She did wind up, I think, on TV toward the end of her career. Let's hear a clip as we confirm that. This is Moms Mabley performing live on the Merv Griffin Show in 1969.

Moms Mabley: I met another old man, [laughter] older than the other one, old, older than his birthday, [laughter] and ugly. [laughter] He was so ugly, honest to goodness, he hurt my feelings. [laughter] I told him the other night, I said, "Let's sit down and have a talk. Somebody's got to die because I can't put up with you." [laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Professor Neal, do you want to say anything about Moms Mabley, and maybe even generally, the role of Black women going back to the early days of stand-up comedy?

Mark Anthony Neal: Yes. It was hard for me to listen to both her and also the Dick Gregory clips, and not sit here and laugh to myself hearing them again in this context. What's important about Moms Mabley, obviously because she's a Black woman, so she brings a gender perspective to what's happening to Black Americans at the time. Unlike Dick Gregory who did not have to toil on the Chitlin' Circuit to ride all those kind of networks of Black clubs, and nightclubs, and auditoriums, places some well known like the Apollo, she was a veteran of the Chitlin' Circuit.

It was really important when someone like her and then also Redd Foxx was a contemporary, break through to the mainstream because they had been kind of honing their craft for decades underground, out in the shadows of white America and white comedian. This was really a great opportunity for her to show up as she had been showing up for so many decades at that point in time.

Again, the whole point of her humor was to bring in the context, yes, race is important, but what's the specificity of being a Black woman in this moment. I always want to give a shout out to Whoopi Goldberg who produces a documentary more than a decade ago about Moms Mabley that really introduced her to a whole new generation of folks who didn't know she existed prior to the emergence of all of these popular Black women stand-up comedians that we know now.

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Some of the shoutouts coming in, in writing from our listeners in text messages. Listener writes, "Michael Che is constantly pushing the envelope of racism awareness with his jokes on Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live." Someone else writes, "Flip Wilson's Geraldine advanced LGBTQ rights in the African American community." Someone else, "So many, Chris Rock, Alonzo Bolden, Alzo Slade." Couple here are citing Wanda Sykes. Let's take a phone call from Carla in Essex County in Jersey. You're on WNYC. Hi, Carla.

Carla: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: We got you.

Carla: I just want to give a shoutout to Mo'Nique. Mo'Nique's a comedian, if we can talk about that a little bit. She's wonderful. She's funny. She deserves all the praise.

Brian Lehrer: Carla, thank you very much. Let me go right onto another caller. Sean in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sean.

Sean: Hi. I just wanted to shout out Paul Mooney. He came out with the line "Black Never Cracks," and that always stuck with me. He's just funny. He passed away maybe two years ago. He was always featured on Dave Chappelle's Show. I don't know if the guests could talk a little bit about him.

Brian Lehrer: Sean, thank you very much. We have a few texts coming in also mentioning Dave Chappelle. Professor?

Mark Anthony Neal: I'll start with the SNL piece in Michael Che because SNL became a space for more of the contemporary Black comedians to show their wares. If we can go directly back to Richard Pryor's first appearance in SNL in 1975, and the job interview that he does with Chevy Chase with these trigger words. It was such an incredible moment, one, because it freely represented a moment where Black community could speak freely back to whiteness in a certain way, but it's also this critical moment.

Even as we think about folks like Eddie Murphy coming along, a generation after that. To this day when I want to talk about white privilege in American culture, I show that clip of Eddie Murphy in white space showing to the world in 1984 in SNL when he was guest hosting what white privilege looked like.

Paul Mooney, who is personally my favorite comedian, he for many years was a writer for Richard Pryor. When Richard Pryor goes from SNL, and he has that short run, literally three or four episodes of that It's Richard Pryor Show because it pushed the envelope so much. Paul Mooney was really the person who was crafting and helping to sweeten some of the jokes that Richard Pryor was doing in all those years.

One of the callers or writers mentioned Flip Wilson. In the context of Flip Wilson, I also want to shout out Redd Foxx. Redd Foxx, who again, is coming through the Chitlin circuit. He was a friend and comrade of Malcolm X. Malcolm X was still Detroit Red. They both had red hair. One was Detroit Red and Redd Foxx was Chicago Red. He was someone that when he got the opportunity, he always chose to put people on.

It's actually him sitting on one of these late-night talk shows, and the host asked him who's the comedian that everybody should listen to. He was the one that said, "You need to listen to Flip Wilson." Flip Wilson appears on the show at 65. Of course, five years late, he's hosting his own popular show. The night before Redd Foxx's, Sanford and Son premieres, it's Flip Wilson giving back to favor and bringing Redd Foxx onto the show prior to the emergence of what becomes Sanford and Son, which itself becomes an incredible comedic hit in the 1970s.

Brian Lehrer: One more clip before we run out of time. Here is Richard Pryor, who I will acknowledge so many listeners are bringing up as somebody to put at the top of the list. His influence on comedy definitely persists almost 20 years after his death. This is from the 1982 special Live on the Sunset Strip.

Richard Pryor: We never was no [beep]. That's a word that's used to describe our own wretchedness, and we perpetuate it now because it's dead. That word's dead. We men and women, we come from the first people on the earth. [applause] First people on the earth were Black people because of anthropologists, white anthropologists. The White people go, "That could be true, you know?" [laughter] Dr. Leaky and them found people remains 5 million years ago in Africa. You know them [beep] didn't speak French. Black people, we, the first people had thought. We was the first one to say, "Where the [beep] am I?" and "How do you get to Detroit?" [laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Richard Pryor, who speaks for himself. I do actually have one additional clip. I'll throw it in here. 30 seconds of Wanda Sykes.

Wanda Sykes: My agent would call me and she's like, "Wanda, you don't even want to hear this?" I was like, "No, tell me what is it?" She's like, "All right. They want you to play a maid and you win the lottery, but you love working for this family so much, [laughter] you continue to be their maid." I said, "Set it up. I want to meet these people."

Brian Lehrer: Professor Neal, we've got 40 seconds left in the segment. Does it work? Does comedy, like the clips we've been hearing, advance the cause of racial justice?

Mark Anthony Neal: I think we find people's humanity very often through humor and I think to the extent that some comedians are still invested in working across the color line if you will. I think there is still a way to make humor of the ridiculousness of racism and the way that race functions in our society. I think it is not as groundbreaking in 2024 as it would've been in 1964 when it was Dick Gregory, but I do think it's still an effective tool, whether it's through stand-up comedy, comedic actors, comedic films. There's still a way to get at the humor of the situation of race in this country.

[MUSIC -- Soulive: Solid]

Brian Lehrer: Mark Anthony Neal is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University. Thanks so much for joining us for this Black History Month segment. That was really great. Thank you very, very much.

Mark Anthony Neal: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Have a great weekend. Stay tuned for Alison.

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