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The social environment, social context, sociocultural context, or milieu, refers to the physical or social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops. It may be the culture that the individual was educated or lives in, or the people and institutions with whom they interact.^[1]

The interaction may be in person or through communication media, even anonymous or one-way, and may not imply equality of social status. Therefore the social environment is a broader concept than that of social class or social circle. Nevertheless, persons with the same social environment often develop a sense of social solidarity; they often tend to trust and help one another, and to congregate in social groups. They will often think in similar styles and patterns even when their conclusions differ. In order to enrich his life, man has used natural resources and in the process he has brought about many changes in the natural environment. Human settlements, roads, farmlands, dams and many other things have all developed through this. All these man made components are included in our cultural environment

References[link]

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Michael Shermer
Shermer on the Skeptics Society Geology Tour on June 8, 2007.
Born	Michael Brant Shermer (1954-09-08) September 8, 1954 (age 57) Glendale, California, USA
Residence	Altadena, California, USA
Occupation	Academic historian of science and editor
Title	Editor-in-Chief of Skeptic and Adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University
Religion	None (Agnostic)
Website
www.michaelshermer.com

Michael Brant Shermer, PhD (born September 8, 1954 in Glendale, California, USA) is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic,^[1] which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members.^[2] Shermer also engages in debates on topics pertaining to pseudoscience and religion in which he promulgates the need for scientific skepticism.

Shermer is also the producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family (now ABC Family) television series Exploring the Unknown. Since April 2001, he has been a monthly columnist for Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column. Shermer states he was once a fundamentalist Christian, but converted from a belief in God during his graduate studies, and has described himself as an agnostic,^[3] nontheist,^[4][5] atheist^[6][7] and advocate for humanist philosophy^[8] as well as the science of morality.^[9] He has expressed reservations about such labels, however, as he sees them being used in the service of "pigeonholing", and prefers to simply be called a skeptic.^[6]

Early life, education and career[link]

Shermer was born on September 8, 1954,^[10] and raised in Southern California.^[11] His parents divorced when he was four.^[10] Both of his parents remarried, his mother to a man with three children, who became Shermer's stepsiblings, and his father to a woman with whom he had two daughters, Shermer's half-sisters. His father would later die of a heart attack in 1986, and his mother of brain cancer in 2000.^[12]

Although Shermer went to Sunday school, he says that neither his biological nor stepparents or siblings were religious nor non-religious, as they did not hold much discussion on the topic, and did not attend church nor pray together. In 1971, at the beginning of his senior year in high school, Shermer announced he was a born again Christian, which came about through the influence of his best friend, George. For the next seven years he would evangelize door-to-door as part of his profoundly held beliefs.^[12]

He graduated from Crescenta Valley High School in 1972. He began his undergraduate studies at Pepperdine University, initially majoring in Christian theology, later switching to psychology.^[11] He completed his bachelor's degree in psychology/biology at Pepperdine in 1976.^[13]

Shermer's graduate studies in experimental psychology at California State University, Fullerton, led to many after-class discussions with professors Bayard Brattstrom and Meg White. These,^[14] along with his studies in ethology and cultural anthropology, led to him to question his religious beliefs, and by mid-way through his graduate training, he removed the Christian ichthys that he had been wearing around his neck.^[12][14] Shermer completed his master's degree from California State University in experimental psychology in 1978.^[13]

Shermer began competitive bicycling in 1979, and spent a decade in the sport. During the course of his cycling, Shermer worked with cycling technologists in developing better products for the sport. During his association with Bell Helmets, a bicycle-race sponsor, Shermer advised them on design issues regarding their development of expanded-polystyrene for use in cycling helmets, which would absorb impact far better than the old leather "hairnet" helmets used by bicyclists for decades. Shermer advised them that if their helmets looked too much like motorcycle helmets, in which polystyrene was already being used, and not like the old hairnet helmets, that no serious cyclists or amateur would use them. This suggestion led to their first model, the V1 Pro, which looked like a black leather hairnet, but functioned on the inside like a motorcycle helmet. In 1982, Shermer worked with Dr. Wayman Spence, whose small supply company, Spenco Medical, adapted the gel technology Spence developed for bedridden patients with pressure sores into cycling gloves and saddles to alleviate the carpal tunnel syndrome and saddle sores suffered by cyclists.^[15]

During the decade in which he raced long distances, he helped to found the 3,000-mile nonstop transcontinental bicycle Race Across America (along with Lon Haldeman and John Marino), in which he competed five times (1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1989), was assistant race director six years, and executive race director seven years.^[16] An acute medical condition is named for him: "Shermer's neck" is pain in and extreme weakness of the neck muscles found among long-distance bicyclists. Shermer suffered the condition during the 1983 Race Across America.^[17] Shermer's embrace of scientific skepticism crystallized during his time as a cyclist, explaining, "I became a skeptic on Saturday, August 6, 1983, on the long climbing road to Loveland Pass, Colorado"^[18] after months of training under the guidance of a "nutritionist" with an unaccredited Ph.D. After years of practicing acupuncture, chiropractic, massage therapy, negative ions, rolfing, pyramid power, fundamentalist Christianity, and "a host of weird things" (with the exception of drugs) to improve his life and training, Shermer stopped rationalizing the failure of these practices.^[19] Shermer would later produce several documentaries on cycling.^[16]

Shermer earned his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University in history of science in 1991 (with his dissertation titled "Heretic-Scientist: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Evolution of Man: A Study on the Nature of Historical Change").^[13] Shermer later based a full-length, 2002 book on his dissertation: In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History.^[20]

Before starting the Skeptics Society, Shermer was a professor of the history of science at Occidental College, California. Since 2007, Shermer has been an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University.^[13][21][22]

Skeptics Society and Caltech Lecture Series[link]

In 1992 Shermer started the Skeptics Society, which produces Skeptic magazine and currently has over 55,000 members.^[23] In addition, the group organizes the Caltech Lecture Series which offers speakers on a wide range of topics relating to science, psychology, social issues, religion/atheism, skepticism, etc. Past speakers include Stephen Jay Gould, Jared Diamond, Donald Johanson, Julia Sweeney, Richard Dawkins, Philip Zimbardo, Steven Pinker, Carol Tavris, David Baltimore, Lisa Randall, Daniel Dennett, Tim Flannery, Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, Susan Blackmore, Christof Koch, Alison Gopnik, Ursula Goodenough, Edward Tufte, Bjorn Lomborg, Sam Harris, Jeff Schweitzer and many others. The lectures occur on Sunday afternoons, and are open to the public for a nominal fee.^[24]

Published works[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer, 2008.

Shermer is the author of several books that attempt to explain the ubiquity of irrational or poorly substantiated beliefs, including UFOs, Bigfoot, and paranormal claims. In 1997 he wrote Why People Believe Weird Things, which explores a variety of "weird" ideas and groups (including cults), in the tradition of the skeptical writings of Martin Gardner. A revised and expanded edition was published in 2002. From the Introduction:

So we are left with the legacy of two types of thinking errors: Type 1 Error: believing a falsehood and Type 2 Error: rejecting a truth. ... Believers in UFOs, alien abductions, ESP, and psychic phenomena have committed a Type 1 Error in thinking: they are believing a falsehood. ... It's not that these folks are ignorant or uninformed; they are intelligent but misinformed. Their thinking has gone wrong.

— Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, 1997, 2002, Introduction

In How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, Shermer explored the psychology behind the belief in God. In its introduction Shermer wrote "Never in history have so many, and such a high percentage of the population, believed in God. Not only is God not dead as Nietzsche proclaimed, but he has never been more alive."

In early 2002, Shermer's Scientific American column introduced Shermer's Last Law, the notion that "any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God." Shermer's Last Law is a spin on Clarke's Third Law.

In 2002, Shermer and Alex Grobman wrote their book Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? which examined and refuted the Holocaust denial movement. This book recounts meeting various denialists and concludes that free speech is the best way to deal with pseudohistory.

Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown was released in 2005. Then his 2006 book Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design, marshals point-by-point arguments supporting evolution, sharply criticizing Intelligent Design. This book also argues that science cannot invalidate religion, and that Christians and conservatives can and should accept evolution.

In June 2006, Shermer, who formerly expressed skepticism regarding the mainstream scientific view on global warming, wrote that, in view of the accumulation of evidence, the position of denying global warming is no longer tenable.^[25]

The Mind of The Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics was released in 2007. In it Shermer reports on the findings of multiple behavioral and biochemical studies that address evolutionary explanations for modern behavior.

In February 2009, Shermer published The History of Science: A Sweeping Visage of Science and its History, a 25-hour audio lecture.

In May 2011, Shermer published The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths.

Media appearances and lectures[link]

Shermer has appeared on several television shows and documentaries. In addition, he appears regularly at conferences and other speaking engagements.^{[citation needed]}

Shermer appeared as a guest on Donahue in 1994 to respond to Bradley Smith's and David Cole's Holocaust denial claims, and in 1995 on The Oprah Winfrey Show to challenge Rosemary Altea's psychic claims. Shermer made a guest appearance in a 2004 episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, in which he argued that events in the Bible constitute "mythic storytelling," rather than events described literally. His stance was supported by the show's hosts, who have expressed their own atheism. The episode in question, The Bible: Fact or Fiction?, sought to debunk the notion that the Bible is an empirically reliable historical record. Opposing Shermer was Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University.^[26]

Shermer made several appearances on NBC's daytime paranormal-themed show The Other Side in 1994 and 1995. After getting to know that show's producers, he made a formal pitch to their production company for his own skepticism-oriented reality show whose aim would be to present points of view of both believers and skeptics. His proposals were not fruitful, but several years later, one of the executives of that company went to work for the then-newly formed Fox Family Channel, and impressed with Shermer's show treatment, requested he pitch it to the network. The network picked up the series, Exploring the Unknown, of which Shermer became a producer and cohost. The series, which was budgeted at approximately $200,000USD per episode, was viewed by Shermer as a direct extension of the work done at the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine, and would enable Shermer to reach more people. The equivocal title was chosen so as to not tip off guests or viewers as to the skeptical nature of the show.^[27] Various segments from Exploring the Unknown can be found on Shermer's YouTube channel.^[28]

Shermer has been a speaker at all three Beyond Belief events from 2006 to 2008. He also spoke at the 2006 TED Conference on "Why people believe strange things."^[29]

Shermer is a frequent guest on Skepticality, the official podcast of Skeptic.^{[citation needed]}

On August 21, 2010, Dr. Shermer was honored with an award recognizing his contributions in the skeptical field, from The IIG during its 10th Anniversary Gala.^[30]

[edit] Exploring the Unknown

The following are segments Shermer's 1999 Fox Family TV series, Exploring the Unknown.

• "Michael Shermer and Out of Body Experiences"^[31]
• "Michael Shermer on How to Fake UFO Photographs"^[32]
• "Michael Shermer on Spoonbending"^[33]
• "Michael Shermer Firewalking Across Hot Coals"^[34]
• "Michael Shermer Tests the Polygraph and Lie Detection, Part 1"^[35]
• "Michael Shermer Tests the Polygraph and Lie Detection, Part 2"^[36]
• "Michael Shermer Learns the Art of Con Games, Part 1"^[37]
• "Michael Shermer Learns the Art of Con Games, Part 2"^[38]
• "Michael Shermer Decodes the Bible Code"^[39]
• "Michael Shermer Explores Graphology/Handwriting Analysis, Part 1"^[40]
• "Michael Shermer Explores Graphology/Handwriting Analysis, Part 2"^[41]
• "Michael Shermer Remote Viewing Experiment Part 1"^[42]
• "Michael Shermer Remote Viewing Experiment Part 2"^[43]

Other television and film appearances[link]

• August 1983 news segment on Shermer bicycling in Race Across America^[44]
• Unsolved Mysteries, James Van Praagh segment, 1994
• The Phil Donahue Show, 1994
• "The Power of Belief", ABC News, 1998
• Politically Incorrect, December 22, 2000
• 20/20, December 5, 2003
• Dennis Miller, May 19 and May 20, 2004
• "The Bible: Fact or Fiction?", Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, 2004^[26]
• The Question of God: Sigmund Freud & C.S. Lewis, 2004
• The Eyes of Nye on "Pseudoscience", 2005
• The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, October 4, 2006
• "Doomsday 2012", Decoding the Past, 2007
• Larry King Live, July 13, 2007 and January 24, 2008
• Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, 2008
• "Does God Have a Future?", Nightline, ABC, March 23, 2010^[45]
• "What Were You Thinking?", Dateline NBC, April 25, 2010^[46]
• "Did You See That?", Dateline NBC, July 16, 2010^[47]
• The Colbert Report, July 11, 2011
• Paranormal Challenge, Linda Vista Hospital, August 26, 2011

Radio and Web appearances[link]

• Coast to Coast AM, September 1, 2007
• Mr. Deity and the Skeptic YouTube, September 15, 2009^[48]
• Skepticality^{[episode needed]}
• Coast to Coast AM, May 21, 2011 ^[49]
• KGO May 25, 2011

Personal life[link]

Shermer lives in Altadena, California, on the edge of a cliff in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains atop which Mount Wilson stands.^[50]

Politically, Shermer has described himself as a libertarian.^[51]

List of books by Shermer[link]

• Sport Cycling: A Guide to Training, Racing, and Endurance 1985 ISBN 0-8092-5244-9
• Cycling: Endurance and Speed (Sportsperformance) 1987 ISBN 0-8092-4775-5
• Teach Your Child Science 1989 ISBN 0-929923-08-1
• Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. (1997, 2nd Revision edition 2002) ISBN 0-8050-7089-3
• Teach Your Child Math and Mathemagics 1999 ISBN 0-7373-0134-1
• The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense 2001 ISBN 0-19-514326-4
• How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science 2001 ISBN 0-613-35413-3
• The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (ed.) 2002 ISBN 1-57607-653-9
• Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? 2002 ISBN 0-520-23469-3
• In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History 2002 ISBN 0-19-514830-4
• The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule 2004 ISBN 0-8050-7520-8
• Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown 2005 ISBN 0-8050-7708-1
• Secrets of Mental Math: The Mathemagician's Guide to Lightning Calculation and Amazing Math Tricks 2006 ISBN 978-0-307-33840-2
• Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design 2006 ISBN 978-0-8050-8121-3
• The Mind of The Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics 2007 ISBN 978-0-8050-7832-9
• The History of Science: A Sweeping Visage of Science and its History 2009 audio lecture
• The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths 2011 ISBN 978-0-8050-9125-0

[edit] List of Skeptic columns published in Scientific American

See also[link]

• James Randi

References[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Michael Shermer on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Official website
• Official YouTube Channel
• Skeptic.com – Official website of The Skeptics Society
• Skepticality – Official podcast of The Skeptics Society
• Michael Shermer at the Internet Movie Database

Media[link]

• Multimedia files featuring Michael Shermer
• “Michael Shermer's Baloney Detection Kit”, Richard Dawkins Foundation, YouTube Channel, June 22, 2009
• On strange beliefs, Ted Talks, February 2006
• The pattern behind self-deception, TED Talks, February 2010
• Real Detroit Weekly Interview, February 7, 2007
• Skeptiko Audio Interview: Darwin, Evolution and Creativity, February 14, 2007
• Is Christianity Good for the World? – Debate with Dinesh D'Souza at the Oregon State University Socratic Club on October 15, 2007, part 1
• Is Christianity Good for the World? – Debate with Dinesh D'Souza at the Oregon State University Socratic Club on October 15, 2007, part 2
• Michael Shermer interviewed about The Mind of the Market, The Polyschizmatic Reprobates Hour
• Video of an hour-long interview/discussion with Shermer by John Horgan on Bloggingheads.tv
• “Michael Shermer debates Jonathan Wells on Evolution v. Intelligent Design” at the Cato Institute, Part 1 of 7, YouTube, taped October 12, 2006, posted May 11, 2008
• “Michael Shermer visits the Kentucky Creation Museum", YouTube, March 15, 2009
• “The Nightline Face-Off: Does God Have a Future? (1 of 12)”, ABC News.com/YouTube, Taped March 14, 2010, Posted May 23, 2010
• Michael Shermer debates John Lennox on God on YouTube (October 29, 2008)
• "Michael Shermer visits Sydney", Maynard, September 28, 2011

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]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Dick Gregory

• Dick Gregory on IMDb
• A short biography from www.dickgregory.com
• Dick Gregory Photographs from the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri–St. Louis
• The Juice on Dick Gregory (dietary habits)
• Dick Gregory's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project
• Booknotes interview with Gregory on Callus on My Soul: A Memoir, March 4, 2001.
• Speech by Dick Gregory given on October 20, 1969. Audio recording. From the University of Alabama's Emphasis Symposium on Contemporary Issues.