The comedy team of Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen, who crisscrossed the country in the late '60s and early '70s, is a little-known chapter in the annals of entertainment and race relations.

But it's one that has been compellingly revealed in their memoir, "Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White," co-authored with Ron Rapoport.

"We were America's first black and white comedy team, and we were the last," said Dreesen, who went on to find success as a solo stand-up comedian with numerous stints on "The Tonight Show" and as an opening act for Frank Sinatra.

Sitcom fans know Reid from his breakout hit, "WKRP in Cincinnati," the critically acclaimed "Frank's Place" and "Sister Sister," which is in syndication.

But before all the glitz and glamour, the two men paid their dues and then some at a time when the country was about to burst at the seams from racial tensions, anti-war sentiments and the devastating assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

But the two never gave a thought to the racially charged times.

"What I had apprehensions about was eating," said Reid, about the difficulty of scraping together a living. "Race never ever entered into it. It certainly should have. ... It never dawned on me to let that be an issue to stop us, and it should have. Today it would have."

The rise of President-elect Barack Obama should prompt more discourse on race, which may not matter to young people but is still an issue for folks 30 and older, Reid said. "It's in our DNA."

Mr. Obama's election has resulted in a number of news articles looking at whether or not comedians will feel comfortable making jokes about the first African-American president.

Although they didn't try to put across any messages about race, Dreesen said their stand-up routine was the racial discourse that at the time no one else would have.

"A lot of our routines were just based on two guys on stage observing life," Dreesen said. "The politically correct police would destroy Tim and I today.

"Tim and I had no restrictions, and we'd go anywhere we wanted to go," Dreesen added. "Any crossing over into cultures usually should happen with humor."

In 1968, as newly minted members of the Chicago Jaycees, Reid and Dreesen started out teaching grade school children about the dangers of drugs by using humor. It was an idea Dreesen had conceived and Reid asked to be a part of.

"We'd go in the classroom, make 'em laugh. We'd play some music and then we'd plant our seed," explained Dreesen.

One day after their presentation, an eighth-grade girl told the two they were so funny that they should be a comedy team.

"Now, I'd never had any thought of going into show business; neither did Tim," Dreesen said.

Reid was a sales rep for DuPont at the time and Dreesen was an insurance salesman. But both gave the eighth-grader's suggestion some thought and decided to go for it.

"In the history of show business there's never been a comedy team to pay the dues that Tom Dreesen and Tim Reid did," Dreesen said.

But both were up for the challenge, having survived rough childhoods. Dreesen was one of eight children, who often had to take care of each other because their parents drank. A tough street kid who grew up around African Americans, he described his family as "raggedy-ass poor." Reid grew up in segregated Norfolk, Va. His stepfather, a heroin addict, often abused his mother. At one point, the family went to live with an aunt who ran a bordello. After getting into trouble as a teen he went to live with his father and his father's wife.

Tough times on the road were nothing.

Reid and Dreesen played integrated clubs, meaning white clubs with a few blacks in attendance, white clubs and that informal network of black clubs often referred to as the chitlin circuit.

"Through all that chaos here was a black guy and a white guy going across the country trying to make people laugh," Dreesen said. "We thought if people could laugh together they could live together."

One evening after about their third performance ever, a white guy walked up to Reid, who was drinking a beer, and put a cigarette out in his face.

A fight ensued with Reid and Dreesen taking on a man who outweighed both of them by about 100 pounds.

The guy was thrown out of the bar, and the two comedians made it to their car, Dreesen barely able to breathe and Reid sporting a large bruise.

"I looked over at [Dreesen] and said, 'Welcome to show business,'" Reid recalled.

The actor/director/producer, who built a production studio in Petersburg, Va., said he doesn't know if he would make it in entertainment if he started out today.

"I was a much more selfish person then than I am now," Reid explained. "I probably wouldn't make the decisions I made then."

One of those decisions was to quit his high-paying job at DuPont right after his wife had their second child.

Dreesen, also married and the father of three, had already given up his day job.

During the six years the duo performed together, they could see stardom, but it always seemed to elude their grasp.

Eventually, Reid, perhaps with a little encouragement from his then-paramour Della Reese, decided that a solo career was more feasible.

"I was bolder then. I left my job, I left my first wife, I left my comedy partner," Reid explained.

Dreesen was devastated after Reid left the act and moved to Los Angeles with showbiz vet Reese in her palatial home.

By contrast, Dreesen was living in the spare room of a friend, who eventually kicked him out. After that, he ended up sleeping in an abandoned car.

After many false starts, he landed a spot on "The Tonight Show," and his career skyrocketed from there.

It would take Reid a few more years of low-paying club work before he started getting sitcom gigs.

"Once I got my acting going, I said, 'to heck with stand-up.'"