It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation (12 page)

On October 16, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, African-American sprinters, are suspended from the Olympic Games in Mexico City for holding up their fist in a Black Power salute while receiving their gold and silver medals at the awards ceremony. In addition, they wear no shoes to comment on the poverty endured by the majority of Blacks in America.

On October 29
, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that school districts must end segregation “now and hereafter.” With clear language, the court, which now had Thurgood Marshall as a member, left little room for misinterpretation or delay.

James Brown records “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud!” and “Funky Drummer;” the latter would become one of the most sampled tracks in hip-hop history. Brown would also record “Get on the Good Foot,” a song promoting very high-energy, acrobatic dancing that Zulu Nation founder Afrika Bambaataa asserts led to break dancing.

Don Campbell, a young street dancer from Los Angeles, creates the Campbellock, a robotic funk dance style that would evolve into the hip-hop locking and influence the dance styles of popping, breakdancing, and liquiding.

Angela Davis, a Black scholar
and political organizer, becomes the third woman to appear on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List after being charged with conspiracy, kidnapping, and homicide, due to her alleged participation in an escape attempt of Black Panthers George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette,
known as the Soledad Brothers. She would later be acquitted of all charges.

The Last Poets, a music/poetry group whose members included Abiodun Oyewole, Alafia Pudim, and Omar Bin Hassan, record
The Last Poets
, an LP that combines spoken word with jazz and drum instrumentals and lays the foundation for rap music. Their name is taken from a poem by the South African revolutionary poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who believed he was in the last era of poetry before guns would take over.

On May 4, the largest student strike in U.S. history takes place and four Kent State University students demonstrating against the Vietnam War are shot dead by the National Guard in Ohio. Ten days later, on May 14, during a student protest at the historically Black Jackson State College, police fire more than 460 rounds of ammunition, killing two African-American students.

On July 21
,
The New York Times
runs a front-page article on graffiti writer TAKI 183. The article, titled “‘Taki 183’ Spawns Pen Pals,”
puts national attention on graffiti writing, one of the four elements of hip hop. The article also ignites competitive tagging among youth across the five boroughs and eventually the world.

On September 13, 1,500 New York State troopers storm Attica prison, killing forty-three prisoners after the inmates led a rebellion. The prison, built to house 1,200 inmates, had over 2,000 inmates, 54 percent of whom were African-American and 9 percent Puerto Rican. All of the 383 correctional officers at Attica were white and frequently abused inmates. The inmates had demanded an improvement in their living conditions, showers, education, and vocational training, as well as reduced censorship of their mail and visitors. Before the uprisings, inmates were given one bucket of water a week as a “shower” and one roll of toilet paper a month.

The Tuskegee Experiments end.
Beginning in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service’s forty-year experiment on hundreds of poor, mostly illiterate, Black men was described by one news anchor as using “human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone.”

Soul Train
, a Black music TV dance program created by Don Cornelius and backed by Johnson hair products (manufacturers of the Afro Sheen line), moves into syndication and becomes a hit. Tagged by some as the “Black American Bandstand,”
Soul Train
would become the longest-running first-run nationally syndicated program in television history.

Nelson Rockefeller
, Republican governor of New York, introduces and signs the Rockefeller drug laws in his last year in office. Under these extremely harsh laws, the penalty for selling two ounces (approximately fifty-six grams) or more of heroin, morphine, “raw or prepared opium,” cocaine, or cannabis, including marijuana, or possessing four ounces (approximately 128 grams) or more of the same substances, was made the same as that for second-degree murder: a minimum of fifteen years to life in prison, and a maximum of twenty-five years to life in prison. As a result New York’s prison population jumped from 12,500 in 1971 to 71,000 in 1999, and is now over 150,000.

Jalal Mansur Nuriddin of The Last Poets releases his first solo album,
Hustlers Convention
, under the alias Lightnin’ Rod. The album is a poetic narrative exploring a day in the life of two hustlers and would later be remade by rappers Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five.

Afrika Bambaataa, a student at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in the Bronx, inspired by a trip to Africa, founds the Universal Zulu Nation, an organization of racially and politically conscious rappers, B-boys, graffiti artists, and other people involved in hip-hop culture. The name “Zulu Nation” was inspired by the images of Zulu warriors attacking British colonizers in the Michael Caine film
Zulu
.

President Richard Nixon
, who once complained to Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs John Erlichman that Great Society programs were a waste “because Blacks were genetically inferior to whites,” resigns on August 9 due to the firestorm surrounding the Watergate scandal. He becomes the first president to resign from office. His vice president, Gerald Ford, assumes the presidency and pardons Nixon on September 8.

Kool DJ Herc, a year after DJing
his first gig at his older sister’s birthday party, garners a reputation for his legendary, high-decibel, high-quality mobile sound system and establishes himself as the first hip-hop DJ. Considered the originator of breakbeat DJing, Herc was initially exposed to similar sounds while growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, at dance hall parties.

The Jeffersons
, one of the first sitcoms
about an African-American family, premieres on CBS. The show centers around George and Louise Jefferson (played by Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford)
and increases ratings for CBS, climbing the Nielsen Rating’s top ten in its first season, and is in the top ten again for three consecutive seasons from 1979 through 1982. During its eighth season,
The Jeffersons
becomes the number-three show on network television, behind only
Dallas
and
60 Minutes
.

North Vietnamese forces take Saigon on April 30, reuniting the country. In total, seven million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam, more than twice the number dropped in Europe and Asia during World War II. Additionally, the CIA’s Operation Phoenix, a covert intelligence operation and assassination program, kills over twenty thousand civilians.

The first three-dimensional graffiti pieces
, pioneered by KING 2, show up on subway cars in New York City.

Afrika Bambaataa, considered the founding father of hip hop, plays his first gig at the Bronx River Community Center and is dubbed “Master of Records” by those in attendance. He soon becomes the center’s official DJ, spinning records on a sound system given to him by his mother as a graduation present the previous year.

Hundreds of students and protesters in the Black township of Soweto lead a rally against the imposition of the Dutch language Afrikaans in their schools and are killed by the South African apartheid government. African-American rap artists including Melle Mel, RUN-D.M.C., and Kurtis Blow would later condemn the racist system of apartheid in their music.

Steve Biko, a nonviolent
, antiapartheid activist famous for proclaiming that “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed,” and “Black is beautiful,” is brutally beaten to death by South African police. His death sparks international awareness about the brutal regime of apartheid.

Grandmaster Flash and Grand Wizard Theodore create scratching, a turntable-based technique and instrumental advancement in DJing where scratches are produced by moving a vinyl record back and forth while it plays on the turntable. Flash describes scratching as “nothing but the back-cueing that you hear in your ear before you push it [the recorded sound] out to the crowd.”

On February 3, ABC airs the final episode of the miniseries
Roots
, based on Alex Haley’s genealogical novel
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
. The final episode of
Roots
achieves the highest-ever ratings for a single program.
Roots
, which stars Maya Angelou, LeVar Burton, O. J. Simpson, and Louis Gossett Jr., would go on to win nine Emmys, a Golden Globe, and a Peabody Award.

The Roland Corporation
introduces the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, one of the first programmable drum machines. Because of the 808’s kick drum sound and deep sub-bass, it provides the basis for the majority of the early baselines in rap and is still widely utilized today.

Disco Fever
, a small nightclub in the Bronx, crosses over to a hip-hop club and becomes the first club to play rap music exclusively. Among the performers at Disco Fever are Grandmaster Flash, Lovebug Starski, DJ Hollywood, Eddie Cheba, DJ Junebug, Brucie Bee, Sweet Gee, and Reggie Wells.

“Rapper’s Delight” by the
Sugar Hill Gang is the first hip-hop hit single and is released on Sugar Hill Records, a label formed in New Jersey by former R & B singer Sylvia Robinson. “Rapper’s Delight” goes gold and hits number 36 on the U.S. pop charts, number 4 on the U.S. R & B charts, and number 3 on the U.K. singles chart.

Tanya “Sweet Tee” Winley, the first hip-hop female vocalist to record on vinyl, releases “Vicious Rap” on her father’s label, Paul Winley Records.

Assata Shakur, the aunt of Tupac Shakur and a political prisoner, aided by Tupac’s stepfather, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, escapes Clinton Correctional
Facility for Women in New Jersey. No one is injured during the escape; however, Dr. Shakur and Silvia Baraldini would be charged in aiding Assata in her escape.

Kurtis Blow, the first mainstream solo rapper, releases the single “Christmas Rappin’,” which goes gold and allows him to start recording the self-titled album
Kurtis Blow
for Mercury Records.