The Richard Pryor National Monument

Without question, Richard Pryor will  always be a top-ranked comedian on any ‘Greatest Comedians’ list. There are many reasons why Pryor is considered to be one of the greatest comedians of all time.  Just like with the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, South Dakota, Pryor shall be celebrated in the same monumental way one day.  He is most known for his humorous depictions of inner-city life, but there is more to him than what we see on the surface. In memoriam, his star still shines among the brightest in comedy.  The parallels that connect comedy and tragedy are what make his life unique. 

There are two important books that provide some critical details about the transformation.  One is a memoir entitled, Pryor Lives!, authored  by Pryor’s friend, novelist, and University of California, Berkeley professor Cecil Brown. The second book is, Becoming Richard Pryor, by UC Berkeley English professor Scott Saul.  We mention these two books to display Pryor’s connection to the San Francisco Bay Area and the era that influenced Pryor during the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Additionally, Richard Pryor met Alan Farley in February, 1971 and recorded comedy material with him in The Bay.  In the California Magazine, Spring 2015 Drop Outs and Drop Ins issue, the article, Killing It in Berkeley: Richard Pryor Crushed His ‘Cosby’ to Become Comedy’s Top Badass, by Will Butler, explains the whole story.  Books like, Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him, by David and Joe Henry touch on Pryor’s time in the Bay area, but not with the same detail as  was described in the books listed above.

Free speech became a rallying cry during the 1960s and early 1970s.  During that time, Richard Pryor was said to have transformed from being a Bill Cosby-like clean comic, to becoming the one-of-a-kind comedian that he is remembered for being today. He spoke the language of an emerging youth counterculture, and this was during a time when Pryor was completely transforming his approach to comedy. At that same time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) created a COINTELPRO strategy that would, “… prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially among youth…”(Churchill, Ward; Vander Wall, Jim (1990); The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent).  Any chance for a 1970s, youth-led social revolution  was destroyed, because of the way street culture and drug use were being promoted and embraced in U.S. society. The irony was the fact that Richard Pryor warned about the perils of drug abuse, but in a humorous way that was not taken seriously. People forget about how cocaine use grew during the 1970s and ushered in the crack epidemic of the 1980s.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was formed at Merritt Community College, in Oakland, California in 1966.  Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton were the main founders of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Richard Pryor became friends with Huey P. Newton during his time in the Bay Area.  The book, Furious Cool also mentioned their friendship.

Whether something happens on a street corner, in a university’s library, or was something  imagined, Pryor used humor to articulate his own life experiences. The honesty, storytelling, sharp wit, and cutting edge frankness of his of comedy made his performances legendary.