Freedom in Laughter: Dick Gregory, Bill Cosby, and the Civil Rights Movement by Malcolm Frierson, and: Laughing to Keep from Dying: African American Satire in the Twenty-First Century by Danielle Fuentes Morgan (review)

Two recent monographs explore the complex cultural life and legacies of Black humor practices. Malcolm Frierson's Freedom in Laughter: Dick Gregory, Bill Cosby, and the Civil Rights Movement elaborates a history of Black comedy gone mainstream. Frierson frames the account of Dick Gregory's and Bill Cosby's respective ascendancies to superstardom as an unlikely iteration of ideological debates that have long characterized Black struggles for freedom. The success of Gregory and of Cosby, two charismatic crossover stars with diametrically opposed strategies for confronting the obdurate racism of the midcentury United States, provide a ready analogue to "Delaney and Douglass, Washington and Du Bois, and Malcolm X and Dr. King" (129). Far from indulging in hyperbole, Frierson uses this contention to draw attention to Black comedy specifically—Black culture, especially music and film already heralded as important instruments in civil rights-era struggles for freedom. Utilizing humor as a social tool with which to remake society, Gregory and Cosby set about their confrontation of white supremacy quite differently. Whereas Gregory fiercely confronts the violence of white supremacy within and without the entertainment industry, Cosby slowly accrues social and material capital, and then once personally secure and esteemed, quietly and irrevocably changes the industry from within.

Frierson's volume is comprised of five chapters and includes a bifurcating selection of photographs of Gregory and Cosby, an index, and a useful Epilogue. Beginning with the uncanny similarity between Gregory's and Cosby's childhoods, Freedom in Laughter ends with the slow unraveling of both comedians' careers—Gregory's due to financial overreach and mismanagement, Cosby's due to sexual impropriety and scandal. The intervening chapters chronicle the shifting landscape of the United States in the throes of the civil rights and Black Power movements, and Frierson makes a persuasive argument for the importance of both Gregory and Cosby to changing mainstream attitudes during the period. Frierson engages in significant historical recovery work: He details Dick Gregory's beginnings as a remarkable track star-turned-activist after being slighted by a local newspaper during his high school years; he relates Bill Cosby's beginnings as a comedian who regularly turned to racial material before abjuring it absolutely, realizing that he could not escape Gregory's shadow otherwise.

The middle chapters of Freedom in Laughter provide detailed histories of the decisions Gregory and Cosby made within the industry while emphasizing the effects of their divergent strategies. Rather than praising one in favor of the other, Frierson follows the model set by the comedians themselves, including moments where Gregory and Cosby admiringly praised the courage and influence of the other. Perhaps, most significant in Frierson's volume is his attention to Dick Gregory's prodigious activism. After becoming the first Black comedian to regularly take the stage before predominantly white crowds, Dick Gregory makes a sharp turn toward activism, using his talents to support the various civil rights efforts around the country. Frierson contextualizes Gregory's actions across the late 1960s and early 1970s and into the new millennium in a way that not only exceeds many extant accounts, which privilege Gregory's activist publications, but also draws attention to the geographical and political diversity of his labor. On this latter point, in fact, Frierson notes Gregory's increasing alienation from the general public due to his unpredictability and his varied political commitments. Quite simply, Frierson argues, most Americans could neither understand nor relate to Gregory after his activist turn. During the same period, Cosby makes strides by breaking down many barriers within the entertainment industry while remaining, for the most part, publicly silent about racial issues. Even so, Cosby often stipulated in his contracts...