The mid-sixties brought more celebrities to Frank’s Landing. Known for his “biting brand of comedy that attacked racial prejudice,” Dick Gregory played a nightclub in Seattle when the invitation arrived from Billy and other activists to join them at a Washington powwow in February 1966. The African American had sympathized with the Indian all of his life. He fished in Washington to correct an injustice, he says. “America had gone all over the world dropping bombs and upholding treaties. . . . Now we turn our backs on the Indian in America, who is the oldest resident American, and say, ‘Your treaty was no good.’ . . . The day must come when America shows the same concern for her treaties with the Indians, as she does for her treaties with other countries.” Gregory also knew something about hard knocks and fighting for what you’ve got. “When there was no fatback to go with the beans, no socks to go with the shoes, no hope to go with tomorrow, [Momma would] smile and say: ‘We ain’t poor, we’re just broke.’”

At the powwow, a fishing activist was hooked. Calling it a campaign of dignity for all men, Gregory headed to Olympia with his wife, Lillian.

“I deplore these self-appointed guardians of the Indians’ fishing rights when they have little knowledge of what the situation is all about,” Evans lamented in response. Unless there was a threat to the resource, the governor discouraged the state from arresting “celebrities,” especially noting Gregory’s run for mayor of Chicago at the time.

“This is going to be about as much a publicity stunt as the Boston Tea Party,” Gregory snapped.

From the other side of the river, Game officers watched the Gregory fish-in, but heeded the governor’s warning and never apprehended him. “I fail to get very excited about this sort of thing,” said Biggs. “I can’t see where a comedian can play any important role in the problem of off-reservation Indian fishing.” Days later, however, authorities arrested both Dick and Lillian Gregory. At the Thurston County jail, the celebrity inmates received telegrams from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., British philosopher Bertrand Russell, and James Farmer, national director of the Congress of Racial Equality.

With wife Lillian still in jail, Gregory posted five hundred dollars bail to slip on a suit and take part in a college panel discussion on Indian fishing rights at St. Martin’s College in Lacey. After the forum, the activist returned to the riverbank. That’s where he found Billy, wearing hip boots and poling a canoe. “This is for Evans,” Billy shouted as he and three other fishermen pulled a handful of steelhead from their net. Gregory and a rousing crowd yelled in approval from the shore. In its sweep of the river the night before, the Game Department had missed a submerged net, hidden by the bridge on Old Highway 99.

Both sides took a beating in the press for Gregory’s involvement in the fish-ins. Elmer Kalama, a Nisqually Indian, said Gregory’s presence was hurting their cause. “We are not fighting for civil rights,” Kalama said. “We have our civil rights. We can vote and do anything any other citizen can do. We just want our fishing rights.”

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