Quadroon 245Pryor, Richard. Th e Offi cial Biography of Richard Pryor. Accessed
February 20, 2009. http://www.richardpryor.com.
Pryor, Richard. Pryor Convictions: And Other Life Sentences. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1997.
Watkins, Mel. “Richard Pryor, Iconoclastic Comedian, Dies at 65.”
Washington Post December 11, 2005.
Williams, John A., and Dennis A. Williams. If I Stop, I’ll Die: Th e
Comedy and Tragedy of Richard Pryor. New York: Th under’s
Mouth Press, 2006.Quadroon
Th e word “quadroon” comes from the Spanish word cuar-
teron, which was a racial category given to people with
one-quarter, or one cuarto, of black ancestry. With the rise
of the Atlantic slave trade during the 16th and 17th cen-
turies, many people of African and European descent
engaged in sexual acts that produced mulatto off spring,
or children of mixed race. Most European lawmakers, in
both Africa and North America, looked down on such ac-
tivities as “shameful” and “unnatural.” Ultimately, colonial
leaders enacted miscegenation laws that forbade or lim-
ited sexual interaction and marriage between people of
diff erent races. Many of these laws remained intact into
the 20th century.
Although people of European and African descent
sometimes chose to develop unions, more oft en, white
slaveholders forcibly engaged in sexual intercourse with
enslaved women. Th is combination of factors produced a
diverse spectrum of racial categories and skin colors. Many
“free people of color,” as they came to be known, established
communities in urban areas in both the North and the
South. Free people of color might be quadroons, octoroons
(one-eighth black), or any other percentage of blackness,
but they were almost always considered black by society’s
standards. Aft er the American Revolution, many people
of European descent, particularly in the South, began to
equate whiteness with freedom and blackness with slavery.
Th ough it was sometimes possible for people of African
descent to “pass” as white, the emerging tensions between
the North and South compelled many white slaveholders to
insist on a strict legal separation based on race.
Aft er the Civil War and Reconstruction, emancipated
people of African descent still experienced the burden
of racial categorization. Segregation laws were the mostschool and enlisted in the army, and when he was dishon-
orably discharged for allegedly stabbing another soldier in
a fi ght, he began playing in small strip and jazz clubs along
the infamous “chittlin’ circuit” throughout the Midwest.
Th e earlier phases of his notoriety found him playing clubs
in New York as the opening act for Bob Dylan and Richie
Havens among others, but his routines did not contain
the razor’s-edge social commentary for which he would
later become famous. It was not until aft er a two-year hia-
tus spent in exile in the politically charged atmosphere of
Berkeley, California, hanging out with such iconic fi gures
as Ishmael Reed and Huey P. Newton, reading the Auto-
biography of Malcolm X, and observing people in bars and
clubs and on street corners, that he returned to the stage.
Th is new Pryor no longer mimicked the clean-cut Cos-
by’s image. In his Washington Post obituary, Mel Watkins
says that Pryor’s body language conveyed the ambivalence—
at once belligerent and defensive—of the African Ameri-
can male’s provisional stance in society. His monologues
evoked the passions and foibles of all segments of black
society, including working-class, churchgoing people and
prostitutes, pimps, and hustlers. He began to create side-
splitting comedy out of blatant racism, sex, and his bizarre
upbringing in a house of prostitution in his native Peoria,
Illinois.
Eventually, his popularity skyrocketed, and his career
as a stand-up comedian expanded to that of television and
fi lm star. Pryor appeared in, wrote, or directed a variety
of fi lms, including the following: Th e Busy Body (1967),
Wild in the Streets (1968), Th e Green Berets (1968), Lady
Sings the Blues (1972), Car Wash (1977), Superman (1983),
and Brewster’s Millions (1985). Th roughout his career, he
won fi ve Grammy Awards and one Emmy. In 1998, he
was awarded the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for
American Humor.
On December 11, 2005, Richard Pryor died aft er a
lengthy battle against multiple sclerosis.
See also: Cosby, Bill; Poitier, Sidney
Raymond JaniferBibliography
Acham, Christine. Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Strug-
gle for Black Power. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2004.
Merrit, Bishetta. “Pryor, Richard.” Th e Museum of Broadcast Com-
munications. February 20, 2009, http://www.museum.tv/
archives/etv/.