AMERICA AT 250 – A BLACK RETROSPECTIVE
1976-2025 Battling To Belong In A Nation Built On Our Backs
By TONYAA WEATHERSBEE
“ You white folks been so good to us … split us all up, took my momma over dat way, took my wife dat way, took my kids over yonder. I’ m just so happy I don’ t know what to do. I don’ t know what to do if I don’ t get 200 more years of this. Lawdy mercy!”
- Excerpt from Richard Pryor’ s 1976 album,“ Bicentennial Nigger.”
On September 10, 1976, the day Richard Pryor’ s critically acclaimed album,“ Bicentennial Nigger,” was released, there were few visitors to the American Freedom Train, a traveling museum of American history that was parked near the Atlantic City, New Jersey rail station.
The 26-car train, which made stops in each of this nation’ s 48 contiguous states as part of the bicentennial celebration, offered visitors a chance to see 200 years of American history unfold before their eyes, according to a full-page ad that ran in The Press of Atlantic City, the beach town’ s local newspaper.
But Pryor’ s satirical recording – which earned him a Grammy for Best Comedy Album of 1976 – offered listeners an account of Black history that lacked the whitewash of the version that visitors to the American Freedom Train received.
The unvarnished history of Black life in America was a staple of Pryor’ s albums and standup act, sidesplitting routines that caused The New Yorker to brand him“ America’ s Comic Prophet of Race.”
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