Civil rights activist Dick Gregory: Abortion is Black ‘genocide’

Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory died August 19, 2017, and although he is best known for his humor, the satirist once called out government-funded abortion and birth control as a genocide effort targeting the Black community.

Gregory was the father of eleven children but tragically, one of his children died as an infant. He often used his humor to touch on the social ills of the day, and as a result, many white people attended his comedy events. He became a strong voice in the Black community during the tumultuous times of the 1960’s and 70’s during the African American civil rights struggle.

In 1967, Gregory joined more than 1,100 Black delegates for the First National Conference on Black Power where he along with others in the group adopted a black power manifesto that called for the “refusal to accept birth control programs on the basis that they seek to exterminate Negroes,” among other demands, according to a July 24, 1967, New York Times report obtained by Live Action News.

In the Journal of Social History, researcher Simone M. Caron described the view just after that conference saying, “The following year, the Third Annual National Conference on Black Power in Philadelphia called on all blacks to ‘resist the increasing genocidal tendencies of American society.’ Resistance ranged from a small California group called Efforts to Increase Our Size (EROS) to groups in Pittsburgh and Cleveland that protested Planned Parenthood programs to the ultramilitant group in New York known as the Five Percenters. These organizations asked two main questions: ‘Is birth control just a “white man’s plot” to “contain” the black population?’ and ‘Is it just another scheme to cut back on welfare aid or still another method of “keeping the black man down”?’ An editorial in The Thrust questioned why blacks could not get a free aspirin for a headache ‘yet when you’re a Black woman old enough to look sexy you can get a truck loaded down with control pills free. . . . The whole plot makes Hitler look like a Boy Scout.'”

The following year (1968) Gregory ran for president of the United States on the “peace and freedom” ticket calling the two-party system “corrupt and immoral.”

Then, in 1971, Gregory penned a controversial Op-ed piece entitled, My Answer to Genocide, which was published in Ebony Magazine.

Gregory, like many other Black leaders of his day, believed that large families were important to the Black power struggle of their time. And, the civil rights activist perceived that the government might be attempting to limit the Black population through their funding of abortion and birth control.

This idea that abortion and birth control were plots to exterminate African Americans was not new.

In fact, there were many prominent African American leaders, including Jesse Jackson, Samuel Yette, Fannie Lou Hamer, Whitney Young and more who were suspicious of government programs that pushed “family planning”, especially those that were placed within Black communities.

That suspicion appears to have had merit.

Research shows that family planning centers and abortion facilities often set up their locations in or near minority communities. In addition, the largest provider of abortions, Planned Parenthood, was founded by a radical advocate of racist eugenics who spoke with the Klu Klux Klan. And, Planned Parenthood’s ties to eugenics go well beyond their founder Margaret Sanger, as Live Action has reported previously.

Today, with Planned Parenthood receiving half a billion in government dollars every year to promote their agenda, not only is the abortion corporation’s market share of abortions increasing, but nationally Black abortions are at frighteningly high levels as well.

In the Ebony article, Gregory begins by criticizing “planned parenthood groups” that call for people to only have 2.5 children.

He dismissed the terminology that claimed a preborn person was merely a fraction of a human to the way Blacks were described during slavery as “three-fifths” human:

My answer to genocide, quite simply is eight Black kids – and a another baby on the way […]

Now planned parenthood groups are saying that a couple should have a maximum of 2 1/2 children. I’m still trying to figure out that half a kid. I know my American history well enough to know what ‘three-fifths’ of a man is, but half-a-kid?

Gregory, who was born into a poor family, denounces birth control as something that “goes against Nature,” writing:

Can you believe that human beings are the only creatures who would ever consider developing birth control pills? You mention contraception to a gorilla and he will tear your head off.

Although Gregory’s humor is weaved throughout his piece, he is clear about the seriousness of genocide or as he also called it “subtle forms of genocide.” He said:

Genocide has come to mean, acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such; by killing members of the group […] imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group […]

Like many Black leaders today, Gregory pointed to a host of ills facing the Black community including police brutality, segregation, the KKK, poverty, and war. But of genocidal measures to “prevent births” within a group, Gregory wrote in Ebony:

There is ample evidence that government programs designed for poor black folks emphasize birth control and abortion availability, both measures obviously designed to limit black population.

In November of 1971, following the birth of Gregory’s ninth child, Jet Magazine pointed again to the civil rights leaders opposition to planned parenthood groups:

At the time, Gregory’s colleague Jesse Jackson shared his views and decried abortion.

In 1971, during public hearings of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, the Rev. Jesse Jackson warned that, “Birth Control as a National policy will simply marshal sophisticated methods to remove ( and control when not remove) the weak, the poor – quite likely the black and other minorities whose relative increase in population threatens the white caste in this nation. Contraceptives, will become a form of drug warfare against the helpless in this nation[…]”

(Source: Statements at public hearings of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future as quoted in: Genocide? Birth Control and the Black American by Robert G. Weisbord, Greenwoor Press, 1972; P. 165)

In 1973, Jesse Jackson stated, “Abortion is genocide,” in a Jet Magazine interview.

In that Jet Magazine, Mar 22, 1973, article Jackson added:

“Anything growing is living…If you got the thrill to set the baby in motion and you don’t have the will to protect it, you’re dishonest…You try to avoid reproducing sickness. You try to avoid reproducing deformities. But you don’t try to stop reproducing and procreating human life at its best. For who knows the cure for cancer won’t come out of some mind of some Black child?”

In 1975, at an event sponsored by the National Youth Pro-Life Coalition, Gregory joined Jackson in speaking against abortion.

The Winnipeg Free Press described the group as, “a non-sectarian, non-partisan group working for ‘positive alternatives’ to abortion, war, capital punishment, euthanasia, compulsory sterilization and ‘other forms of violence.'”

In 1975, at an event sponsored by the National Youth Pro-Life Coalition, Gregory joined Jackson in speaking against abortion.

The Winnipeg Free Press described the group as, “a non-sectarian, non-partisan group working for ‘positive alternatives’ to abortion, war, capital punishment, euthanasia, compulsory sterilization and ‘other forms of violence.'”

According to the media outlet, the Black activists told the group that, “that the nation’s pro-abortion mentality undermines the value and dignity of every human life and that ‘killing babies’ is symptomatic of a civilization
and culture which operates without sacred absolutes.”

Upon news of Gregory’s death, CNN described his first-hand experience with injustice:

In a 1963 protest in which Gregory participated in Birmingham, Alabama, he was arrested and beaten by the police for championing the right of blacks to vote. After that incident, Gregory wrote, ‘It was just body pain, though. The Negro has a callus growing on his soul, and it’s getting harder and harder to hurt him there.’

Like a majority of dishonest media which support abortion, CNN failed to mention Gregory’s opposition to the horrific taking of human life in the womb.

But, stats do not lie, and sadly, reported abortion numbers in the Black and minority communities ring of a certain confirmation about the concerns Gregory and Jackson had.

As a result, the numbers of abortions performed on minorities and specifically Black women remain disproportionately high. As Live Action News has previously documented, in 2011, the CDC revealed that almost 56% of all abortions reported for race were committed on minority women.

The CDC’s 2012 report (dated November 27, 2015) reveals that 55% of abortions reported for race/ethnicity were performed on Black or Hispanic women.

The latest numbers for 2013 (published in 2016) show those numbers remained relatively the same (54.6%).

While Dick Gregory is rightly remembered for his many accomplishments, it is doubtful the news media will discuss how his suspicions about birth control and abortion proved to be true.

After all, if government-funded abortion and birth control are, in fact, genocide against Black community, then why does the media remain supportive of forced taxpayer dollars to such agendas?

And, more importantly, why does Congress continue to fund Planned Parenthood?