RACISM is no laughing matter. But ridicule can erode it. Until Dick Gregory broke into the mainstream, American black comedians had only two choices, playing to black audiences, or being the butt of white performers' jokes. That changed at the Playboy Club in Chicago in January 1961. The young man took the wrong bus, and ran 20 blocks in shoes cold-proofed with cardboard to get to his first big break, only to be told to collect his fee and go. The audience was a convention-load of frozen-food industry types: male, Southern and white. An uppity black man would be jeered, or worse.
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