How ‘The Black Pack’ Used Comedy to Combat Racism

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, a group of five African American men — all famous comedians — created a body of work that shifted popular culture, altered the entertainment industry and impacted generations to come.

Known collectively as “The Black Pack,” Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Robert Townsend and Arsenio Hall created a monumental body of work that included the films Boomerang, Coming to America, Hollywood Shuffle and I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, as well as the shows In Living Color and The Arsenio Hall Show — not to mention numerous standup comedy specials.

Now, more than three decades later, San Francisco State University professor Dr. Artel Great’s book The Black Pack: Comedy, Race & Resistance (Rutgers University Press) contextualizes their achievements. On Wednesday, Feb. 11 at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library, Great will share excerpts from his book and discuss how this ensemble of comedians shifted the foundation of the Hollywood establishment, creating an impact still felt to this day.

As The Black Pack makes clear, the idea of comedy as a form of Black resistance didn’t start with this group. It’d been around for more than a century — and they skillfully amplified it.

“In working on the book,” Great tells me during a video call, “I was able to pull this thread to go all the way back transgenerationally, looking at how this mode of ‘Black resistance humor’ developed as a cultural expression that dates back to the 19th century.”

He cites the works of vaudeville-era comedians Bert Williams and George Walker as early examples of the craft. He adds that pioneering African American playwright William Wells Brown and even famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass used comedy to critique white power structures.

In the 20th century, Great points out, legendary comedians Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx and Dick Gregory (as well as famed essayist James Baldwin) all used satirical storytelling to combat oppression. But it was the work of iconic comedian and actor Richard Pryor that really broke the mold.

“What Richard Pryor was doing,” Great tells me, “was rewriting the rules for standup comedy.” Pryor’s ability to weave modern slang into riveting comedic routines put Black culture front and center. Additionally, Pryor was able to present his own personal experience — specifically, his pain — in “a way to make us think,” says Great. “Also, in a way to provoke laughter.”

But Pryor, who initially broke into showbiz as a singer and a much more reserved stand-up, wouldn’t have had the career he did were it not for the guidance of the late writer, actor and comedian Paul Mooney.

“Mooney and Pryor met in Los Angeles,” Great tells me. “At that time, Richard Pryor’s comedic identity was really a facsimile of Bill Cosby.” Mooney, who was born in Shreveport, Louisiana and came of age in Oakland during the politically charged 1960s, told Pryor that if he wanted to do something substantial in the world of comedy, he’d have to tackle the most pressing social topic: “the issue of race in America,” explains Great.

With successful films and comedy records already to his name, Pryor took Mooney’s advice, moving to the Bay Area and remaking himself as a more outspoken comedian. “That’s when they began to experiment with the use of the N-word and talking about pressing social issues,” says Great, characterizing the duo’s work as “tenets of this resistance humor framework.”

The two collaborated on standup-up specials, The Richard Pryor Show and a Saturday Night Live episode that prompted NBC to adopt a seven-second delay in the live broadcast in order to censor any profanity.

Mooney’s comedic genius surfaced again years later, when he, Eddie Murphy, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Robert Townsend and Arsenio Hall came together as a collective. “We don’t have ‘The Black Pack’ without Paul Mooney,” notes Great. (Mooney even came up with the name.)

While often working in the background, Mooney managed to posses a monumental influence on popular culture. Take the immensely popular character of Homey D. Clown, which was Mooney’s brainchild, played by Damon Wayans in the 1990s sketch comedy show In Living Color. The character was an extremely ornery formerly incarcerated person who, despite dressing in full clown regalia and working at children’s birthday parties, remained militant.

At the first sight of some nonsense, Homey would smack other actors with a stuffed sock while delivering his catchphrase: “Homey don’t play that.”

In his book, Great places the character in a larger sociological framework. “Homey satirized the quaint middle-class archetype of the cheerful, friendly clown,” he writes, mentioning that Homey’s popularity coincided with the mass expansion of McDonalds, and referring to the character as “the anti–Ronald McDonald.”

“[Homey D. Clown’s] acerbic jokes shattered the veneer of childhood innocence with a no-holds-barred commentary on America’s anti-Black ideologies,” Great writes, crediting Mooney with a character that “fearlessly mocked the establishment, condemning attempts to constrain Black Americans and perpetuate systemic injustices.”

The Black Pack also highlights the contributions of the four other members, prominently noting Eddie Murphy’s rockstar persona, and ability to leverage Hollywood connections to center African Americans in ways not previously seen in blockbuster films. Keenen Ivory Wayans’ creativity, Arsenio Hall’s charisma and Robert Townsend’s ingenuity are all explored in depth, too. But it’s the sections about Paul Mooney that stand out, mainly because his contributions are so often overlooked.

Paul Mooney is credited for discovering Robin Williams and Sandra Bernhard, as well as writing for Chappelle’s Show, where he also played the character ‘Negrodamus.’

So why isn’t Mooney more widely known? Great says it’s because “his work was so outspoken.”

Mooney himself described his comedy as “a nuclear bomb” that “blows up and flattens everybody.” He was an “equal opportunity offender,” says Great, who explains that “if white folks weren’t walking out of his comedy sets, he felt like he was doing something wrong.”

That success proved to be a double-edged sword. “On the one hand,” Great says of Mooney, “we’re familiar with his work, but on the other hand he was so outspoken and so revolutionary, in terms of his commitment to Black resistance humor, that the industry couldn’t hold that genius.”

This week, as Oakland hosts the Bay Area Black Comedy Competition and Festival, comedians nationwide will pour into the Town, a longtime hotbed for Black resistance humor. As The Black Pack makes clear, no one used humor as a weapon to fight racism quite like Paul Mooney.

Dr. Artel Great reads and discusses ‘The Black Pack: Comedy, Race & Resistance’ on Wednesday, Feb. 11, at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library (100 Larkin St.m, San Francisco). Details and more information here.