Rappin' Black in a White World

Emerging from the aftermath of the 1965 Watts Uprising in Los Angeles, CA, the spoken-word group the Watts Prophets embodied a Black aesthetic that rejected the respectability politics of the Civil Rights movement in favor of cultivating a radical Black consciousness in their own community. Offering neither a program nor an ideal, they sought to empower their audience to free themselves from the shackles – mental, physical, political, and economic – by which they were constrained. Paralleling the outlook of the Black Arts Movement, their work, a mixture of music, poetry, and theater, was dynamic, dialectical, critical, and exhortative. Part of a broader Black counterpublic that emerged from the Watts uprising, the Prophets manifested a cultural politics that was of key importance in the struggle against the politics and practices of white supremacy. Offering what Fanon called a “restructuring of perception,” they sought to educate, inform, and equip their audiences to create their own democratic future.

Biology · White (mutation) · Music History and Culture · Race, History, and American Society · Theater, Performance, and Music History