NAACP 2017 Image Award Winner
With his trademark acerbic wit, incisive humor, and infectious paranoia,
one of our foremost comedians and most politically engaged civil rights
activists looks back at 100 key events from the complicated history of
black America.
A friend of luminaries including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Medgar
Evers, and the forebear of today's popular black comics, including Larry
Wilmore, W. Kamau Bell, Damon Young, and Trevor Noah, Dick Gregory was a
provocative and incisive cultural force for more than fifty years. As an
entertainer, he always kept it indisputably real about race issues in
America, fearlessly lacing laughter with hard truths. As a leading
activist against injustice, he marched at Selma during the Civil Rights
movement, organized student rallies to protest the Vietnam War; sat in
at rallies for Native American and feminist rights; fought apartheid in
South Africa; and participated in hunger strikes in support of Black
Lives Matter.
In this collection of thoughtful, provocative essays, Gregory charts the
complex and often obscured history of the African American experience.
In his unapologetically candid voice, he moves from African ancestry and
surviving the Middle Passage to the enjoyment of bacon and everything
pig, the headline-making shootings of black men, and the Black Lives
Matter movement. A captivating journey through time, Defining Moments
in Black History explores historical movements such as The Great
Migration and the Harlem Renaissance, as well as cultural touchstones
such as Sidney Poitier winning the Best Actor Oscar for Lilies in the
Field and Billie Holiday releasing Strange Fruit.
An engaging look at black life that offers insightful commentary on the
intricate history of the African American people, Defining Moments in
Black History is an essential, no-holds-bar history lesson that will
provoke, enlighten, and entertain.
