From Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties
It was the biggest all-Black gathering in American history: 100,000 people at the L.A. Coliseum in August 1972. The event was not a civil rights rally; instead it was a “celebration of Blackness” on the seventh anniversary of the Watts uprising: the Wattstax music festival. Organized by Stax Records, the Memphis soul label, it featured the Staple Singers, doing a stirring version of “Respect Yourself”; the irresistible Rufus Thomas, wearing a pink cape, pink shorts, and shiny white disco boots, for whom thousands of people
