richard pryor was then, and remains our greatest comedian. he ignored his written speech that day, and got one small laugh at the beginning when he made a quick joke about himself. then, speaking to an audience of heroes who had joined martin luther king in the civil rights protests, and paid the plight price for it, being beaten by police and arrested, and worse, richard pryor stood in awe of those heroes and martin luther king, and said this. >> i never rode on a bus in my life until the abuse that some of you out there took. i was flying on a plane here from california. i was reading a book about dr. king. there were pictures in the book, and it brought back memories of that time for me. i was too frightened to go down to municipally, alabama, georgia, i was too scared to sit in the church at night and planned meetings. i was too frightened to be a part of that, but if it wasn't for you people who were down there and did that, believe me i know in my heart that i would not be here today. [applause] >> joining us now is democratic congressw

. >> jimmy: richard pryor. >> i do know who richard pryor is. >> jimmy: i know, but you haven't met him, right? >> no. >> jimmy: andre the giant? [ laughter ] burt reynolds? oh my god. [ laughter ] i'm going to find one who's alive. muhammad ali, no. oh, boy. oh, just finding out? [ laughter ] michael jordan. you ever meet michael jordan? >> i have not met mr. m.j., i would love to, though, he's super cool. >> jimmy: yeah, me too. [ laughter ] here's one. he happens to be here tonight. seal, have you met seal? >> i have not met seal tonight or ever. >> jimmy: he's in the building. >> i'm doing so bad. >> jimmy: will you go out, meet him, come back and tell us how it went? [ laughter ] all right, you're going to meet a lot of people along the way. i have no doubt about that. it's great to have you here. >> so nice. >> jimmy: good luck in college. i hope the food improves. >> please, can you help us out? we're really struggling. >> jimmy: i'm going to get right to work on that. [ laughter ] >> thank you. thank you for having me. >> jimmy: storm reid, everybody. her movie is called "missin

pryor, jerry seinfeld robin williams eddie murphy ellen degeneres chris rock in david letterman. carson also advance the careers of emerging like steve martin and woody woody allen and jay ld joan rivers and then of course he provided a venue for an established performers like don rickles and but he hackett. there are really four ways to measure cars and success. first of all of course it 10 year. 30 years as the head of the tonight show compared to 22 per jay leno and six so far for jimmy fallon. the tonight show is the longest-running entertainment show in the united states. started in 1954 at the dawn of television. even though he has long been off the air the late night format fields -- is built a lot the way cars and buildup in terms of an audience carson had an audience of 50 million people. that's an astonishing number for his time and for hours. jimmy fallon the tonight show which ranks third has less than 2 million viewers a night on average. a lot of that has to do with the rise of the internet were audiences have splintered that make no mistake about it it's an astonis