On October 5, Dick Gregory came to Selma. His wife, Lillian, had been jailed in Selma while demonstrating. He spoke to a crowded church meeting that evening. It was an incredible performance. With armed deputies ringing the church outside, and three local officials sitting in the audience taking notes, Gregory lashed out at white Southern society with a steely wit and a passion that sent his Negro listeners into delighted applause again and again. Never in the history of this area had a black man stood like this on a public platform, ridiculing and denouncing white officials to their faces. It was a historic coming of age for Selma, Alabama. It was also something of a miracle that Gregory was able to leave town alive. The local newspaper said that a wildly applauding crowd listened that night to the most scathing attack unleashed here in current racial demonstrations. Gregory told the audience that the Southern white man had nothing he could call his own, no real identity, except segregated drinking fountains, segregated toilets, and the right to call me nigger. He added, And when the white man is threatened with losing his toilet, he's ready to kill! He wished, Gregory said, that the whole Negro race would disappear overnight. They would go crazy looking for us! The crowd roared and applauded. Gregory lowered his voice, and he was suddenly serious: But it looks like we got to do it the hard way, and stay down here, and educate them. He called the Southern police officials peons, the idiots who do all the dirty work, the dogs who do all the biting. He went on for over two hours in that vein; essentially it was a lesson in economics and sociology, streaked with humor. The white man starts all the wars, then he talks about cuttin' somebody.... They talk about our education. But the most important thing is to teach people how to live....