John Kirk, who wrote earlier this weekend about comedian Dick Gregory going to jail in Pine Bluff in 1964 for attempting to eat in a segregated restaurant, passes along a note from Bill Hansen, the SNCC leader who was jailed along with Gregory:

Listening to Dick Gregory go through an endless (except for sleeping) stream of consciousness comedic routine for about 4 or 5 days running in which he satirized southern mores directly into the ears of a couple of dozen white PB cops was one of the more surreal experiences of my civil rights days. Unfortunately, for them, they’d been ordered by the city fathers not to harm us because the national and international media were all standing outside the jail.

We’ll call this an open line.

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