FORT WORTH, Texas, June 15 (UPI) -- Some minority leaders in Texas plan to boycott an appearance by comedian D.L. Hughley to protest comments he made about blacks.
Hughley touched off the controversy on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" when he discussed the racial remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team that got Don Imus fired from his CBS Radio and MSNBC TV show.
"He literally said the same thing" as Imus, Eddie Griffin of Fort Worth told the Austin Star-Telegram.
Griffin said he was an "old-school activist" and would join the boycott of Hughley's performance Saturday at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth.
The performance is part of a series of events across Texas to commemorate Juneteenth -- the observance of the June 19, 1865, celebration in Galveston, Texas, of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Hughley, who is black, refused to apologize and told the newspaper freedom of speech is "a zero sum proposition."
"Too many times I have watched clowns like these pretend to speak for the masses," he said through a publicist. "Isn't there a child you can help teach to read, a war to help stop, an unjustly accused man you can help out of jail? I will not apologize for telling a joke about the world as I see it."
