23 may 1968 & dick gregory, u.s. presidential candidate

#OTD 23 May 1968 Dick Gregory, a U.S presidential candidate, filed an injunction at the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia (333 Constitution Ave, NW). He sought to prevent Secretary of State Dean Rusk (white), Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach (white) and President Lyndon B. Johnson (white) from excluding him from National Security briefings that other presidential candidates were receiving from the administration.

Gregory initially ran on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket with Dr. Benjamin Spock (white). After failing to win that candidacy, he ran as a write-in candidate with Mark Lane (white) on the Freedom and Peace Party ticket. They garnered more than 111,000 votes in the general election on 5 November 1968.

John Duesenberry (white), a junior at Walt Whitman HS, remembers meeting Dick Gregory (and H. Rap Brown) in Spring 1967 at the northeast home of Bill Higgs, white civil rights attorney. Higgs threw a fundraiser for Gregory to support his campaign. Duesenberry remembers that Gregory was "talking politics and was very witty." 

Click here for a 1968 interview with Dick Gregory. (It runs 3 minutes). 

Dick Gregory wrote about his experience as a presidential candidate in the book, Write Me In! 

Your comments are welcome below. Do you, a family member or neighbor remember Dick Gregory's run for the presidency? Did you work on his campaign? Did you vote for him? Did you hear him speak on your campus? He may be wearing one of his campaign buttons. Do you have one? You may comment privately here.

Photo source: Courtesy of DC Public Library Special Collections. UPI Telephoto. Photographers rkm/rem. 
Loren Gatch, "Dick Gregory’s 'One Vote' Note."
Dick Gregory, Write Me In! Bantam, 1968.
Author conversation with John Duesenberry, 16 May 2018.