I Read, Nigger, by Dick Gregory in the 60s

A Prayer for Blacks and WhitesAfrican children. Painting by Shai Yossef

The title of Dick Gregory’s autobiography is shocking, I know. That’s his point.

“Dear Mamma―Wherever you are, if ever you hear the word "nigger" again, remember they are advertising my book.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger

The surprising message I first received in the 60s — Nigger, by Dick Gregory who was a civil rights advocate, writer, and stand up comedian in the 60s,

I read Nigger when I was 16 years old and spending my summer of 1967 at home with my parents and sisters, and I ask you, Mr. Gregory, what do I do now that I know? Now that I see the injustice, how do I make it better?

On vacation from an elite boarding school, I was trying to grow up so I could become rich and famous. Years later, I learned growing up is a constant process, and I’m not rich or famous after all these years.

“We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn’t it either. I’m going to be an American Citizen. First class.” — Dick Gregory

But I immediately got something far more valuable from Dick Gregory’s autobiography that summer. I got perspective on the world I was living in, a view of a black man’s world.

The era of the Great White Male left me unaware that the woman I held closest to my heart was trapped in a white web of society’s plans, which did not include her.

We’re talking injustice. Grave injustice.

Nigger, was on my summer reading list. I’d read a few chapters every night and would leave it on my bedside table. When I’d get back in bed the next night, I’d find it, cover down, on the table. The first night I thought it was happenstance.

The second night I knew the title had flown in the face of the woman I loved as a second mother, the one who held me in her arms, sat by me when I was sick, and talked to me. By example Osie (pronounced O.C.) showed me how to love.

Osie May Mosely was called a maid, cook, laundress, babysitter, but what she was was a soulmate. Her soft brown arms were always cool with sweat. They’re the ones I remember clinging to as a baby. Her sturdy legs are the ones I gripped when grownups I didn’t know came to our house and I wanted to disappear.

She was the one who played I Spy with me in the kitchen when I came home from elementary school. She laughed when I spied her brown skin. Her skin wasn’t black. She was the color of hot chocolate, not licorice. I couldn’t understand a few years later when I was told to call her black. I didn’t understand categorizing human beings.

“Just being a Negro doesn’t qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.” — Dick Gregory

Osie came running and saved me from sliding off the steep roof of our playhouse when my sheltered friend started screaming, and I got too scared to jump. Osie waited for me at the bottom of the hill of our driveway the afternoon Karen Grone, my 4th grade classmate, fainted during chorale music, and I thought she was dead, and my teacher drove me home in her old car while I was choking in tears.

Osie is the one who held my hand and walked me up the hill and sat with me in the kitchen as we ate purple popsicles until we both felt better. I’m talking about love, on both sides. I still see her in my sleep. Her voice comforts me when nothing else will.

Osie placed loving cornerstones into the building of my young gawky white life. Her smile lit up my days. Her presence erased a million disappointments. Osie May Mosley was an angel right here on earth.

And now I’m all grown up, a grandmother, with grown kids, and I still miss the happiness I felt talking to Osie, being near her, hearing her good natured snicker that slipped out of her and made everyone around her laugh with her.

I remember tragedy, too. Kissing her all over her damp face and wrapping my arms around her shoulders when she got a phone call telling her her grandson, one of those cute little twin boys who used to come to our screen door in matching overalls when they were barely old enough to walk, had drown in a hotel pool when his college football team traveled out of town.

I remember grownups shaking their heads when Osie’s son, Junior, was shot and killed by his wife, and the police didn’t even arrest her. He was her son, her child. How could his murder be ignored?

And now articles say whites are prejudice, if not racists, and I suppose we are. People can’t see what they don’t want to see, but I’m trying. I simply don’t know what to do besides pray. Help me.

Did I plead her cause to city officials when I was old enough to realize the injustice around me. I did not. Did I write letters, demanding change as a young adult? No. Did I even insist she and every other person of color be allowed into our little town’s only movie theater when I was a teen — She wanted to see The Sound of Music? No, I did not.

And today, I didn’t protest against the heartbreak of George Floyd’s murder. I cried. I had nightmares. But I stayed out of chanting COVID crowds and I prayed. Not good enough, I know. That’s why I’m pleading.

What path do I and all the others like me take? What do we do? I want to do that. I ask God to use my hands to make blacks and whites open their eyes to each other.

We need each other. Help us.

I wrote “That Was Murder” on my Facebook page and posted it in a big purple square. That was when the man who was filmed killing George Floyd had not been charged with murder. I’m not against cops. I adore cops. I need cops. You need cops. What we don’t need is killer cops.

After I posted my ‘murder’ message, a ‘friend’ said she didn’t want to speak to me anymore. Which proved again, I may not be able to please all the people all the time, but I sure can piss them off.

So, what should I do if I want to make things better, not worse?

My solution — I talk to Osie in my dreams. As an angel, dreams are the only place I feel the grace of her love. How do I keep that grace and love alive now that she’s gone, and I’m getting old, and the world is so afraid to love each other for who we are? I don’t know. God, I swear, I don’t know.

‘Use your gifts’, a voice inside my head says. So I write. ‘Listen and learn,’ the voice says, so I ask.

In his autobiography, Mr. Gregory, said, “When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It’s not good enough, but it helps.”

I want to help. I don’t want to help just one person with my smile. Oh, please, no. Surely I have more to give than that. I want to turn the world around. Where do I start?

What can whites do to help a generation of blacks and whites who are all sharing space on this globe?

How do whites make things better, not worse?

How do blacks make things better, not worse?

I’m asking. I’m begging. You have ideas, let me hear them. My skin is thick, sort of. Actually, it’s not, but this isn’t about me, so sing out. Shout out. The world is dying to know.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. — Frederick DouglassMore quotes by Frederick Douglass

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

In the Words of Dick Gregory

“I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.”

“If it wasn’t for Abe Lincoln, I’d still be on the open market.”

“I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.”

“I’m not a comic. I’m a humorist.”

“When I lost my rifle, the Army charged me 85 dollars. That is why in the Navy the Captain goes down with the ship.”

“You know why Madison Avenue advertising has never done well in Harlem? We’re the only ones who know what it means to be Brand X.”

“In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don’t know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country.”

“Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss.”

“I am really enjoying the new Martin Luther King Jr stamp — just think about all those white bigots, licking the backside of a black man.”

“I wouldn’t mind paying taxes — if I knew they were going to a friendly country.”

“We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn’t think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.”

“America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don’t misuse a household pet.”

Dick Gregory’s obituary and summation of his life, The New York Times

Carol McClain Craver is Motivational Writing Coach. motivatewrite@gmail.com. Her novel Max and the Big Fat Lie is from her Be Kind and Draw Series.

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I Read, Nigger, by Dick Gregory in the 60s was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.