Jena
Jena Skyline
Jena
Coordinates	50°55′38″N 11°35′10″E / 50.92722°N 11.58611°E / 50.92722; 11.58611Coordinates: 50°55′38″N 11°35′10″E / 50.92722°N 11.58611°E / 50.92722; 11.58611
Administration
Country	Germany
State	Thuringia
District	Urban district
Lord Mayor	Albrecht Schröter (SPD)
Basic statistics
Area	114.30 km2 (44.13 sq mi)
Elevation	155 m  (509 ft)
Population	105,129 (31 December 2010)[1]
- Density	920 /km2 (2,382 /sq mi)
Other information
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Licence plate	J
Postal codes	07701–07751
Area code	03641
Website	www.jena.de

Jena (German pronunciation: [ˈjeːna] ( listen)) is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.

History[link]

Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document. In the 11th century it was a possession of the lords of Lobdeburg but, in the following century, it developed into an independent market town with laws and magistrates of its own. The local economy was based mainly on wine production. In 1286, the Dominicans were established in the city, followed by the Cistercians in 1301.

The margraves of Meißen imposed their authority over Jena in 1331. From 1423, it belonged to Electoral Saxony of the House of Wettin, which had inherited Meißen and remained under them after the division of Wettin lands in 1485.

The Protestant Reformation was brought to the city in 1523. In the following years, the Dominican and the Carmelite convents were attacked by the townsmen. In 1558, the university (now called the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena) was founded by elector John Frederick the Magnanimous.

For a short period (1672–1690), Jena was the capital of an independent dukedom (Saxe-Jena). In 1692, it was annexed to Saxe-Eisenach and, in 1741, to the Duchy (later Grand Duchy) of Saxe-Weimar, to which it belonged until 1918.

At the end of the 18th century, the university became the largest and most famous one among the German states and made Jena the centre of idealist philosophy (with professors like Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling) and of the early romanticism (with poets like Novalis, the brothers Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck). In 1794, the poets Goethe and Schiller met at the university and established a long lasting friendship.

On 14 October 1806, Napoleon fought and defeated the Prussian army here in the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt. Resistance against the French occupation was strong, especially among the town students, many of whom fought in the Lützow Free Corps in 1813. Two years later, the Urburschenschaft fraternity was founded in the city.

At the end of the 19th century, with the building of the Saal Railway (Saalbahn) along the river Saale from Halle/Leipzig to Nuremberg, Jena became a centre for precision machinery, optics and glass making, with the formation of the world famous companies Carl Zeiss Jena and Schott Jenaer Glaswerk, by Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott.

In 1945, towards the end of World War II, Jena was heavily bombed by the American and British Allies. 153 people were killed and most of the medieval town centre was destroyed (though restored after the end of the war).

Part of the State of Thuringia from its foundation in 1920 on, it was incorporated into the German Democratic Republic in 1949 and its district of Gera in 1952. Since 1990, the city of Jena has been a part of the Free State of Thuringia in the united Federal Republic of Germany.

Economy[link]

Today, Jena is a manufacturing city, specializing in precision machinery, pharmaceuticals, optics and photographic equipment and is home to the famous Zeiss optics plant. In 1926, the world's first modern planetarium was built by the Zeiss company in the Damenviertel district of the town.

Today, the city's economy diversifies into bioinformatics, biotechnology, software and photonics. The metropolitan area of Jena is among Germany's 50 fastest growing regions, with many internationally renowned research institutes and companies, a comparatively low unemployment and a very young population structure. Jena was awarded the title "Stadt der Wissenschaft" (city of science) by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, a German science association, in 2008.

The Jen-Tower.

View over the city center of Jena

Johannisstraße, looking towards Eichplatz. Jena

Christmas Market in Jena

Main sights[link]

• The 13th century Town Hall ("Rathaus"). It has an astronomical clock featuring the "Snatching Hans" ("Schnapphans").
• The Gothic St. Michael's Church ("Michaelskirche", 1506). It has a bronze slab of Martin Luther's tomb
• Monument to John Frederick the Magnanimous (1905–08), in the Market Square
• Numerous towers from the medieval fortifications, including the Powder Tower (13th-14th centuries)
• House of Friedrich Schiller and his Wedding Church.
• The Botanischer Garten Jena, founded in 1580, the second oldest botanical garden in Germany
• Jen-Tower, a research edifice built in GDR times. There is a restaurant and viewing platform at the 27th floor.

In the neighbourhood are the Dornburg Castles and the Kapellendorf Moated Castle.

Public transport[link]

• The city is served by the Jena tramway network, and by an extensive network of buses, both run by the "Jenah" organization (a pun on Jena and Nahverkehr, German for public transport).
• Buses of the JES Verkehrsgesellschaft connect Jena with cities and villages in the region.
• The high-speed Intercity-Express trains from Berlin to Munich call at the Jena Paradies station, just to the east of the city centre (like all other trains on the north-south Saal Railway); trains from Erfurt and further west arrive at Jena West station, just west of the city centre (like all other trains on the east-west Weimar–Gera line).
• The nearest airports to Jena are Leipzig-Altenburg Airport and Erfurt Airport. However, international visitors normally arrive at Frankfurt, Berlin or Munich airports, from all of which there are convenient train connections to Jena.

Colleges, universities and research institutes[link]

• The Friedrich Schiller University of Jena was founded in 1558 as the "Collegium Jenense".
• The University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule Jena) was founded in 1991.
• The Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology is an important research center and offers a Ph.D. program.
• The Max Planck Institute of Economics
• The Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
• The Institute of Photonic Technology
• The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF)
• INNOVENT - one of the biggest private research centers in Germany
• The Leibniz Institute for Age Research is an important research center and offers a Ph.D program.
• The Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology
• Friedrich-Löffler-Institute of Bacterial Infections and Zoonoses
• Friedrich-Löffler-Institute of Molecular Pathogenesis
• The Jena Center for Bioinformatics

Museums[link]

• Optical Museum Jena - history of optical instruments
• Schott GlassMuseum - production and usage of glass
• The Göhre City Museum - urban history of Jena
• Botanical Garden
• Phyletic Museum - phylogeny and evolutionary theory
• House of Romanticism - literature
• Memorial to Goethe - literature
• Oriental Coin Cabinet Jena - Oriental history, numismatics (non public, open for scientific research only)
• Schott Villa - history of the Jena glassworks and of Otto Schott and his family

Culture[link]

The Botanical Garden of Jena

• The Jenaer Philharmonie is the largest independent symphony orchestra in Thuringia.
• Kulturarena: annual music festival held in front of the theatre

Famous citizens and alumni of the university[link]

• Ernst Abbe, physicist, social reformer, partner of Carl Zeiss and Otto Schott
• Anton Wilhelm Amo, African philosopher
• Johannes R. Becher, poet and politician
• Hans Berger, discoverer of human EEG
• Bernhard, Prince of the Netherlands
• Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, influential German naturalist, doctor, comparative anatomist and physiologist
• Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, orientalist and Protestant theologian of the Enlightenment
• Robert Enke, German footballer
• Walter Eucken, founder of neoliberal economic theory
• Rudolf Eucken, philosopher and the winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize for Literature
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte, philosopher and early German nationalist
• Gottlob Frege, mathematician, logician, and philosopher
• Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel, inventor of the kindergarten
• Johann Wolfgang Goethe, poet/writer
• Ernst Haeckel, German evolutionary biologist/zoologist
• G. W. F. Hegel, philosopher
• Friedrich Hölderlin, poet
• Martin Luther, reformer
• Philipp Melanchthon, theologian
• Johann Karl August Musäus, German author
• Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher
• Novalis, poet
• Max Reger, composer, pianist, professor and conductor
• Friedrich Schelling
• Friedrich Schiller, poet/writer
• Caroline Böhmer Schlegel Schelling
• Wilhelm Schlegel, philosopher
• Bernd Schneider, German footballer
• Otto Schott, inventor of fireproof glass, founder of the Schott glass works
• Reinhard Johannes Sorge, German poet, dramatist, and Roman Catholic convert
• Johann Gustav Stickel, orientalist
• Kurt Tucholsky, writer
• Carl Zeiss, founder of the Zeiss company
• Gabor Schablitzki aka Robag Wruhme, Electronic Musician, member of the Wighnomy Brothers

International relations[link]

Jena is twinned with:

• Porto, Portugal^[2]
• Lugoj, Romania, since 1983
• Erlangen, Germany, since 1987
• San Marcos, Nicaragua, since 1996
• Aubervilliers, France, since 1999
• Berkeley, USA
• Kamëz, Albania^[3]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jena

• Jena travel guide from Wikitravel
• Official Homepage of Jena (German) (English)

v t e Urban and rural districts in the Free State of Thuringia in Germany Urban districts Eisenach Erfurt Gera Jena Suhl Weimar Rural districts Altenburger Land Eichsfeld Gotha Greiz Hildburghausen Ilm-Kreis Kyffhäuserkreis Nordhausen Saale-Holzland-Kreis Saale-Orla-Kreis Saalfeld-Rudolstadt Schmalkalden-Meiningen Sömmerda Sonneberg Unstrut-Hainich-Kreis Wartburgkreis Weimarer Land

This article has been translated from the article Jena Lee in the French Wikipedia, and requires proofreading. If you are confident enough in your fluency of English and French, please feel free to join this translation.

Jena Lee
Background information
Born	(1987-06-29) 29 June 1987 (age 24)
Origin	Oloron-Sainte-Marie, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Aquitaine
Genres	Emo R&B, French pop
Occupations	Typesettist, author
Years active	2007–present
Labels	Mercury France (2008–present), subsidiary of Universal Music France
Website	Jena-lee.fr

Sylvia Garcia (born 29 June 1987 in Chile), more commonly known as Jena Lee is a French singer.

1987–2007: youth[link]

Born in Chile, Sylvia Garcia was adopted by a French family at the age of nine months. She grew up in Oloron-Sainte-Marie in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques and was passionate about music from the age of 4.

She recorded her first songs on a tape recorder. One of those pieces, Banalité (Banality), found its way to an editor in Paris.

2007–2009: pop stars and Urban Music Nation[link]

In 2007, Jena Lee met Sulee B Wax, who was interested in her work. When the fourth season of Popstars started, he asked Jena to try writing the instrumentals. Jena Lee wrote six songs of the thirteen that comprise Sheryfa Luna's album, including the song Somewhere. Following the composition of these songs, she received other requests, such as from Mathieu Edward with the title Like before as well as for a composition for the musical theater show Cléopâtre.^[1]

In 2008, Lee entered in and won the Urban Music Nation contest organized by radio operator Skyrock; the finale was on 26 December 2008.

2009: debut album[link]

Her first single, "J'aimerais tellement" ("I Would Love So Much"), was released in April 2009 along with a music video. It was at the top of the French singles charts for a total of eleven weeks and had the highest numbers of download in November 2009.^[1]

Lee's first Album, Vous Remercier ("Thank You"), was recorded with Bustafunk. It was released on 2 November 2009 on the Internet and to stores on 9 November 2009 on the label Mercury Records, a division of the group Universal Music French. 100,000 copies of the album are said to have been sold.

2010: Ma Reference[link]

In 2010, Jena Lee released the follow up to Vous Remercier, which contains the singles US Boy, Eternise-Moi, the duet with French group Eskemo, and Mon Ange.

In 2011, Jena Lee has started promoting her new band, Dirty Diary, on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.^[2]

Style and image[link]

Jena Lee defines her musical style as a combination of emo and R&B styles”, “having mixed the artists” whom she loves “by mixing the side saturated guitar, melody guitar of the emo with happy urban, synthé, piano”.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

Singles[link]

¹ Digital downloads

References[link]

External links[link]

• (French) Official website
• Download the new Album by Jena Lee, "Ma Référence", from iTunes

Music portal

Jena Sims

Beauty pageant titleholder
Born	Jena Michelle Sims (1988-12-30) December 30, 1988 (age 23) Winder, Georgia, U.S.
Height	5 ft 8 in (1.73 m)
Hair color	Brown
Eye color	Brown
Title(s)	Miss Georgia Teen USA 2007
Major competition(s)	Miss Teen USA 2007

Jena Michelle Sims (born December 30, 1988) is a beauty queen from Winder, Georgia who has held the Miss National Junior Teenager title and competed in the Miss Teen USA pageant in 2007.

She has been widely recognized for her work with various charities, including her own organization "Pageant of Hope".

Biography[link]

Early life and education[link]

Sims grew up in Winder, Georgia and graduated from Winder-Barrow High School in 2007.^[1] She attended Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee where she studied International Business. Jena is currently in Hollywood, California pursuing a career in modeling & acting.^[2]

Pageants[link]

In 2004, Sims was crowned Miss Georgia Junior National Teenager^[3] and later won the Miss Junior National Teenager title 2005.^[4]

A year later, Sims won the Miss Georgia Teen USA 2007 title in a state pageant held in Newnan on 11 November 2006.^[5] It was her second attempt at the title, as she placed in the semi-finals in the 2006 event. She was crowned by outgoing titleholder Brittany Sharp, who placed fourth runner-up in the Miss Teen USA pageant in August. ^[6]

Sims represented Georgia in the Miss Teen USA 2007 pageant broadcast live from Pasadena, California in August 2007, but did not place. She was the first Miss Georgia Teen USA not to place in the pageant since 2003.

Charity work[link]

Sims runs a non-profit organization that hosts beauty pageants for children with cancer and other disadvantages called the "Pageant of Hope".^[7] The pageants have been held in Winder, Tennessee, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, California and she will be expanding into South Carolina.^[8]

In 2006 she received a Southern Hero award, and won a Prudential Spirit of Community award in 2003.^[9] In 2006 she was honored with an award from the Caring Institute in Washington DC, recognizing her work with children with cancer.^[10] The following year she was one of twenty-seven American teenagers given the "Nestle Very Best In Youth" award for her community service.^[11]

Her Pageant of Hope has also been awarded numerous State and National Community Service awards such as The Nestle Very Best in Youth National Award ^[12], BRICK Do Something National Award ^[13] and the Prudential Spirit of Community Bronze and Silver medallion. ^[14] She has been named a Georgia Young Entrepreneur by NFIB <ef>[6]</ref>, a WXIA Kids Who Care winner^[15], and a Huggable Hero by Maxine Clark and Build a Bear Workshop.^[16]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jena Sims

• Miss Georgia Teen USA official website
• Miss Teen USA official website

Jena Malone
at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Jena Malone (1984-11-21) November 21, 1984 (age 27) Sparks, Nevada, U.S.[1]
Years active	1991–present

Jena Malone (/mʌˈloʊn/; born November 21, 1984) is an American actress and musician who has appeared on television, in films, and on Broadway. She made her movie debut with the film Bastard Out of Carolina (1996), and has appeared in films including Contact (1997), Stepmom (1998), Donnie Darko (2001), Saved! (2004), Into the Wild (2007), The Ruins (2008) and Sucker Punch (2011).

Malone is also an experimental musician who has released music both under her own name and as "The Shoe".

Early life[link]

Malone had lived in 27 locations by the age of nine, including Lake Tahoe, California.^[2] She was raised by her mother, Deborah, and her mother's girlfriend, whom she calls "Godmom,"^[3] and began taking an interest in acting after watching her mother, who was involved in community theatre.^[4] She briefly moved to Las Vegas, hated it, and persuaded her mother to move on to Los Angeles.^[5] Malone was home-schooled from sixth to eighth grade. She attended the Professional Children's School, for the ninth grade, in New York,^[5] and quit it after a year, when she became legally emancipated, in January 2000.^[6][7] At some point she later obtained her General Educational Development (GED).^[8]

Career[link]

Malone progressed to professional acting with the 1996 film Bastard Out of Carolina.^[9] She was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance^[10] and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance in a TV Movie or Miniseries for her role in the film, Ruth Anne 'Bone' Boatwright. From there, her roles have grown to include several Hollywood features. In 1997, she was nominated for a Golden Globe, Best Actress in a Mini-Series or TV Movie, for her role in Hope.

After working on various TV projects, and as a supporting actress in films such as Contact and Stepmom, Malone had her first cinematic leading role in the 2001 cult hit Donnie Darko as Gretchen Ross, the new girl in town who becomes the girlfriend of Jake Gyllenhaal's title character.

Malone co-produced the 2002 film American Girl, a drama in which she also acted. In the 2004 film Saved!, she got top billing in her first role as the primary star. In 2005, she played the spoiled fifth Bennet daughter Lydia in the film Pride and Prejudice. In 2006, she made her professional stage debut in the Broadway production of the Tony Award-winning play Doubt.

In 2007, it was announced that Malone was releasing her first single on The Social Registry, a New York City experimental music label. A number of tracks were posted to her MySpace page.^[11] Pitchfork Media has described Malone's music as "pretty out-there – bedroom electronics, spaced-out keyboards, and Malone's spare vocals."^[12] Malone's more recent musical work is performed as/with The Shoe.^[13]

Malone appeared in the horror film The Ruins, which was released on April 4, 2008 and co-starred Shawn Ashmore, Laura Ramsey, and Jonathan Tucker. She played Lavinia in an off-Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's play Mourning Becomes Electra in 2009.

Malone is to portray Carson McCullers in the film Lonely Hunter, directed by Deborah Kampmeir.^[14]

Filmography[link]

Jena Malone, performing with "The Shoe", downstairs at Union Hall, January 13, 2008

Awards[link]

See also[link]

• The Doomed Planet

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jena Malone

• Jena Malone at the Internet Movie Database
• Jena Malone on Myspace
• There Was An Old Woman Records
• Jena Malone at AllRovi
• Jena Malone at Yahoo! Movies

Dick Gregory
Dick Gregory in March 2010
Born	(1932-10-12) October 12, 1932 (age 79) St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Medium	Stand-up, film, books
Nationality	African American
Years active	1953–present
Genres	Satire/Political satire, Observational comedy
Subject(s)	American civil rights, American politics, American culture, African-American culture, racism, race relations, vegetarianism, healthy diet
Spouse	Lillian Gregory (1959–present) 10 children
Notable works and roles	In Living Black and White nigger: An Autobiography Write Me In!
Website	www.dickgregory.com

Richard Claxton "Dick" Gregory (born October 12, 1932 in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur.

Gregory is an influential American comic who has used his performance skills to convey to both white and black audiences his political message on civil rights. His social satire helped change the way white Americans perceived African American comedians since he first performed in public.

Early life[link]

As a poor student who excelled at running, Gregory was aided by teachers at Sumner High School, among them Warren St. James. Gregory earned a track scholarship to Southern Illinois University Carbondale.^[1] There he set school records as a half-miler and miler. His college career was interrupted for two years in 1954 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. The army was where he got his start in comedy, entering and winning several Army talent shows at the urging of his commanding officer, who had taken notice of Gregory's penchant for joking. In 1956, Gregory briefly returned to SIU after his discharge, but dropped out because he felt that the university "didn't want me to study, they wanted me to run".

In the hopes of performing comedy professionally, Gregory moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he became part of a new generation of black comedians that included Nipsey Russell, Bill Cosby, and Godfrey Cambridge, all of whom broke with the minstrel tradition, which presented stereotypical black characters. Gregory drew on current events, especially racial issues, for much of his material: "Segregation is not all bad. Have you ever heard of a collision where the people in the back of the bus got hurt?".^[2]

Career[link]

After completing military service, Gregory performed as a comedian in small, primarily black-patronized nightclubs while working for the United States Postal Service during the daytime. In 1961, while working at the Black-owned Roberts Show Bar in Chicago, he was hired by Hugh Hefner to work at the Chicago Playboy Club after Hefner heard him perform the following material before a largely white audience:

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many Southerners in the room tonight. I know the South very well. I spent twenty years there one night.

Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant and this white waitress came up to me and said, "We don't serve colored people here." I said, "That's all right. I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken."

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!".^[3]

This routine caused a direct request from publisher Hugh Hefner and he was booked as a replacement for the white comedian Professor Irwin Corey.^{[citation needed]} Until then Gregory had worked mostly at small clubs with predominantly black audiences.

Gregory's first TV appearance was on the late night The Tonight Show Starring Jack Paar.^{[citation needed]} He soon began appearing nationally and on television.

Post career[link]

Gregory is number 82 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Standups of all time and has his own star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. There is a grassroots effort afoot to get him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, spearheaded by Radio One host Joe Madison.

Gregory is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Gregory was a former co-host with radio personality Cathy Hughes, and is still a frequent morning guest, on WOL 1450 AM talk radio's "The Power", the flagship station of Hughes' Radio One. He also appears regularly on the nationally syndicated Imus in the Morning program.

Gregory appears as "Mr. Sun" on the television show Wonder Showzen (the third episode, titled "Ocean", aired in 2005). As Chauncey, a puppet character, imbibes a hallucinogenic substance, Mr. Sun warns, "Don't get hooked on imagination, Chauncey. It can lead to terrible, horrible things." Gregory also provides guest commentary on the Wonder Showzen Season One DVD. Large segments of his commentary were intentionally bleeped out, including the names of several dairy companies, as he made potentially slanderous remarks concerning ill effects that the consumption of cow milk has on human beings.

Gregory attended and spoke at the funeral of James Brown on December 30, 2006, in Augusta, Georgia.

Gregory is an occasional guest on the Mark Thompson's "Make It Plain" Sirius Channel 146 Radio Show from 3pm to 6pm PST.

Gregory appeared on The Alex Jones Show on September 14, 2010, and again on March 19, 2012.

Personal life[link]

Gregory met his wife Lillian Smith ^[4] at an African-American club; they married in 1959. They have ten children, including one who died at birth: Michele, Lynne, Pamela, Paula, Stephanie (aka Xenobia), Gregory, Christian, Miss, Ayanna, and Yohance.^[5] In 1973 the Gregorys moved to Plymouth, Massachusetts.^{[citation needed]}

Activism[link]

Political activism[link]

This section includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2012)

Dick Gregory at the Miami Book Fair International of 1984

Active in the civil rights movement, on October 7, 1963, Gregory came to Selma, Alabama and spoke for two hours on a public platform two days before the voter registration drive known as "Freedom Day" (October 7, 1963).^[6]

In 1964, Gregory became more involved in struggles for civil rights, activism against the Vietnam War, economic reform, anti-drug issues, conspiracy theories, and others. As a part of his activism, he went on several hunger strikes.

Gregory began his political career by running against Richard J. Daley for the mayoralty of Chicago in 1967. Though he did not emerge victorious, this would not prove to be the end of his dalliances in electoral politics.

Dick Gregory in 1965

Gregory unsuccessfully ran for President of the United States in 1968 as a write-in candidate of the Freedom and Peace Party, which had broken off from the Peace and Freedom Party. He garnered 47,097 votes (including one from Hunter S. Thompson^[7]) with fellow activist Mark Lane as his running mate in some states, David Frost in others, and Dr. Benjamin Spock in Virginia^[8] and Pennsylvania^[9] garnering more than the party he had left.^[10] The Freedom and Peace Party also ran other candidates, including Beulah Sanders for New York State Senate and Flora Brown for New York State Assembly.^[11] His efforts landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.

Gregory then wrote the book Write Me In about his presidential campaign. One interesting anecdote therein relates the story of a publicity stunt that came out of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago where the campaign had printed dollar bills with Gregory's image on them, some of which made it into circulation, causing considerable problems, but priceless publicity.

The majority of these bills were quickly seized by the federal government. A large contributing factor to the seizure came from the bills resembling authentic US currency enough that they worked in many dollar-cashing machines of the time. Gregory avoided being charged with a federal crime, later joking that the bills couldn’t really be considered US currency because "everyone knows a black man will never be on a US bill."

Shortly after this time Gregory became an outspoken critic of the Warren Commission findings that President JFK was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. On March 6, 1975, Gregory and assassination researcher Robert Groden appeared on Geraldo Rivera's late night ABC talk show Goodnight America. An important historical event happened that night when the famous Zapruder film of JFK's assassination was shown to the public on TV for the first time in history.^[12] The public's response and outrage to that showing led to the forming of the Hart-Schweiker investigation, which contributed to the Church Committee Investigation on Intelligence Activities by the United States, which resulted in the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation.

Gregory was an outspoken feminist, and in 1978 he joined Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Margaret Heckler, Barbara Mikulski, and original suffragists to lead the National ERA March for Ratification and Extension, a march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the United States Capitol of over 100,000 on Women's Equality Day (August 26), 1978 to demonstrate for a ratification deadline extension for the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution, and for the ratification of the ERA. The march was ultimately successful in extending the deadline to June 30, 1982, and Gregory joined other activists to the Senate for celebration and victory speeches by pro-ERA Senators, Members of Congress, and activists. The ERA still narrowly failed to be ratified by the extended ratification date, however, but the Women's Movement was largely successful in securing gender equality in the laws and society.

On July 21, 1979, Gregory appeared at the Amandla Festival where Bob Marley, Patti LaBelle, and Eddie Palmieri, amongst others, had performed. Gregory gave a speech before Marley's performance, blaming President Carter, and showing his support for the international Anti-Apartheid movements. Gregory and Mark Lane conducted landmark research into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which helped move the U.S. House Assassinations Committee to investigate the murder, along with that of John F. Kennedy. Lane was author of conspiracy theory books such as Rush to Judgment. The pair wrote the MLK conspiracy book Code Name Zorro, which postulated that convicted assassin James Earl Ray did not act alone. Gregory has also argued that the moon landing was faked and the commonly accepted account of the 9/11 attacks is incorrect, among other conspiracy theories.^[13][14]

Gregory was an outspoken activist during the US Embassy Hostage Crisis in Iran. In 1980 he traveled to Tehran to attempt to negotiate the hostages' release and engaged in a public hunger strike there, weighing less than 100 pounds (45 kg) when he returned to the United States.

In 1998 Gregory spoke at the celebration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with President Bill Clinton in attendance. Not long after, the President told Gregory’s long-time friend and P.R. Consultant, Steve Jaffe, “I love Dick Gregory; he is one of the funniest people on the planet.” They spoke of how Gregory had made a comment on Dr. King’s birthday that broke everyone into laughter, when he noted that the President made Speaker Newt Gingrich ride “in the back of the plane,” on an Air Force One trip overseas.

Gregory was diagnosed with lymphoma in late 1999. He said he was treating the cancer with herbs, vitamins, and exercise, which he believes kept the cancer in remission.^[15]

Since the late 1980s, Gregory has been a figure in the health food industry by advocating for a raw fruit and vegetable diet. He wrote the introduction to Viktoras Kulvinskas' book "Survival into the 21st Century". Gregory first became a vegetarian in the 1960s, and has lost a considerable amount of weight by going on extreme fasts, some lasting upwards of 50 days. He developed a diet drink called "Bahamian Diet Nutritional Drink" and went on TV shows advocating for his diet and to help the morbidly obese. He is probably best remembered for his attempts, chronicled in the media on daytime talk shows in early 1988, at helping 1,200 pound (540 kg) Long Island resident Walter Hudson drop nearly 600 pounds (270 kg) in only a few months on a liquid diet. In 2003, Gregory and Cornel West wrote letters on behalf of PETA to Kentucky Fried Chicken's CEO, asking that the company improve their animal-handling procedures.^[16]

At a Civil Rights rally marking the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Gregory criticized the United States, calling it "the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet. As we talk now, America is 5 percent of the world's population and consumes 96 percent of the world's hard drugs".^[17]

Gregory announced a hunger strike on September 10, 2010, saying in a commentary published by the Centre for Research on Globalisation in Montreal that he doubted the official U.S. report about the attacks on September 11, 2001. "One thing I know is that the official government story of those events, as well as what took place that day at the Pentagon, is just that, a story. This story is not the truth, but far from it. I was born on October 12, 1932. I am announcing today that I will be consuming only liquids beginning Sunday until my eightieth birthday in 2012 and until the real truth of what truly happened on that day emerges and is publicly known."^[18]

Health Enterprises, Inc.[link]

In 1984 he founded Health Enterprises, Inc., a company that distributed weight loss products. In 1985 Gregory introduced the "Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet", a powdered diet mix.^[19]

Discography[link]

• In Living Black and White (1961)
• East & West (1961)
• Dick Gregory Talks Turkey (1962)
• The Two Sides of Dick Gregory (1963)
• My Brother's Keeper (1963)
• Dick Gregory Running for President (1964)
• So You See... We All Have Problems (1964)
• Dick Gregory On: (1969)
• The Light Side: The Dark Side (1969)
• Dick Gregory's Frankenstein (1970)
• Live at the Village Gate (1970)
• At Kent State (1971)
• Caught in the Act (1974)
• The Best of Dick Gregory (1997)
• 21st Century "State of the Union" (2001)

Books[link]

• Nigger: An Autobiography, with Robert Lipsyte, E.P. Dutton, September 1964. (one account says 1963) (reprinted, Pocket Books, 1965-present)
• Write me in!, Bantam, 1968.
• From the Back of the Bus
• What's Happening?
• The Shadow that Scares Me
• Dick Gregory's Bible Tales, with Commentary, a book of Bible-based humor. ISBN 0-8128-6194-9
• Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' With Mother Nature! ISBN 0-06-080315-0
• (with Shelia P. Moses), Callus on My Soul : A Memoir ISBN 0-7582-0202-4
• Up from Nigger
• No More Lies; The Myth and the Reality of American History
• Dick Gregory's political primer
• (with Mark Lane), Murder in Memphis: The FBI and the Assassination of Martin Luther King
• (with Mel Watkins), African American Humor: The Best Black Comedy from Slavery to Today (Library of Black America)
• Robert Lee Green, Dick Gregory, daring Black leader
• African American Humor: The Best Black Comedy from Slavery to Today (editor) ISBN 1-55652-430-7

Filmography[link]

• "One Bright Shining Moment" (2006)
• The Hot Chick (2002)
• Children of the Struggle (1999)
• Panther (1995)
• Sweet Love, Bitter (1967)

See also[link]

• African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)
• African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968)
• Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement
• Gregory v. Chicago

References[link]

External links[link]