BBC.

“The vegan movement also has deep roots with the American Civil Rights Movement. Dick Gregory, a famed civil rights activist and comedian who marched alongside Martin Luther King, gave up meat in 1965 and later became a strict vegan. 

“Because I’m a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn’t be a part of it,” he said.”