Human rights activist, anti-drug spokesman, comedian and author Dick Gregory spoke to the OU community Monday night, eliciting mixed reactions from the crowd that ranged from laughter to shock.
Gregory spoke before a crowded Great Hall in the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.
Gregory's speech lasted about two and a half hours and ranged from satirical political humor to moral attacks on students and radical conspiracy theories.
"You live in a racist, sexist, heathen ignorant culture," Gregory told students. "Most people wouldn't stand up here and tell you what I think. I couldn't give a damn what you think of me. You think the real white folks that run the country wouldn't send their dog to this school. What are you known for all around the world? Football. The institution has been reduced to the level of heathens."
Before engaging the students in a tirade of philosophical, political and moral arguments, Gregory addressed some problems he has with modern culture in a more humorous fashion.
"Why talk about black-on-black crime?" Gregory asked. "If they don't kill blacks, who is left? If I go to Asia, who kills Asians? It's the Asians. If I go to Italy, who kills the Italians? Other Italians."
Gregory argued that black-on-black crime is a useless term because people usually kill within their cultural group and there is no mention of white-on-white crime.
"Columbus. You know that fool got lost. How can you discover something that is already occupied? I can walk outside and discover your car with you in it and say 'Get in the back seat and teach me Thanksgiving,'" Gregory said.
Andrew Haskins III, Alpha Phi Alpha speakers chair and business senior, said he first came across Gregory at a leadership conference at Rust University in Mississippi and was overwhelmed by what he heard.
"He is candid," Haskins said. "What he thinks, he says."
Gregory's topic for the speech was double-consciousness, an idea espoused by author W.E.B. DuBois. However, the discussion often ranged to other topics like Gregory's involvement in the government investigations into the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy.
According to Gregory's Web site, he co-wrote a book with Mark Lane entitled Code Name Zorro in 1971, which claimed that Kennedy was assassinated by the FBI, the CIA and the Mafia.
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