The Watts Writers Workshop was a creative writing group initiated by screenwriter Budd Schulberg in the wake of the devastating 1965 Watts Riots in South Central Los Angeles (now South Los Angeles). The group was composed primarily of young African Americans in Watts and the surrounding neighborhoods. The group expanded its facilities and activities over the next several years with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. Government files later revealed that the Workshop had been the target of covert operations by the FBI. Well-known writers to emerge from the Workshop include Quincy Troupe, Johnie Scott, Eric Priestley, Ojenke, Herbert Simmons, and Wanda Coleman, as well as the poetry group Watts Prophets.
Along with Budd Schulberg, the following were the original co-founders of the Writers Workshop: Ernest Mayhand, Leumas Sirrah, James Thomas Jackson, Birdell Chew Moore, Sonora McKeller, Jimmy Sherman, Johnie Scott, Guadelupe de Saavedra, Harley Mims, Eric Priestlery, Alvin Saxon Jr. (Ojenke), Ryan Vallejo Kennedy, and Blossom Powe. Early on, the Workshop expanded to include a theatrical component and one of the founders was the actor Yaphet Kotto. Kotto dedicated his time, earnings, and safety by going to Watts right after the riot to teach and support.
Harry Dolan was the director of the Watts Writers Workshop in 1975 when the workshop was burned down by FBI informant Darthard Perry. He had taken his own hard earned money and kept the workshop going after federal funding had been cut.
Famous quotes containing the words watts, writers and/or workshop:
“Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home;”
—Isaac Watts (1674–1748)
“I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“Had I made capital on my prettiness, I should have closed the doors of public employment to women for many a year, by the very means which now makes them weak, underpaid competitors in the great workshop of the world.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)