Every Month is Black History Month On this day... On October 12, 1932 comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory was born in St. Louis. He belonged to a new generation of black comics that dared to take on race. In one of his routines, he talked about eating down South in a segregated restaurant: “Then these three white boys came up to me and said, ‘Boy, we’re giving you fair warning. Anything you do to that chicken, we’re gonna do to you.’ So I put down my knife and fork, I picked up that chicken and I kissed it. Then I said, ‘Line up, boys!’” He was the first black comic permitted to stay and talk with Tonight Show host Jack Paar. Involved in the civil rights movement, he helped bring food to the poor in the Mississippi Delta in 1963, working with Medgar Evers just days before Evers’ assassination. He also worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and others, using his comedy as a weapon against bigotry. In 2015, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and his life story is now the subject of a one-man play produced by artist John Legend. The play is titled “Turn Me Loose,” after Evers’ last words. #OnThisDay #DickGregory #StLouis #BlackHistory #CivilRightsHistory