Peace,
I am going to lay it down how I came into this state of Black Green (damn...I gotta make up a funky name...stay tuned) consciousness called 'Black to Nature'. Look for it in Original Thought Metazine in the upcoming months under the By Seed and By Soil Section. Yet until then I'll let you in on some of the things that aided in my development.
Dick Gregory was definitely one of those people outside of my own personal experience that added to my world view. As a comedian pre-civil rights he was gangsta. In a restaurant surrounded by some white folk he was about to eat some chicken. They said to him that whatever he did to that chicken they were going to do to him. So my man laid a big sloppy kiss on it and told them to line up...gangsta.
Anyway what is great about him is he became an activist for human right and a vegan.
His book "Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' With Mother Nature!" was one of my first books on vegetarian diets. It was straight forward with no mystic mumbo jumbo that alot of later Black vegetarian books mixed into their work. He broke down fasting. He broke down why it was better to go veg. The greatest tool in there for me was the analogy of the body to a car. By explaining how certain parts of the car didn't function right if not cared for it was SO clear to me how my body was being hurt. That explanation was simple and until this day it is what I use to explain the benefits of this way of life to others.
If you don't have that book in your library pick it up. Also check this article written about him