A daylong festival 50 years ago on Aug. 20, 1972, first called Wattstock, grew into an event that would speak to the entire social movement with the participation of community activist Tommy Jacquette and Reverend JesseJackson, Black film icons Melvin Van Peebles and Richard Roundtree, as well as many of the soul stars who built Stax Records. The label was back to making hits, but also eager to extend its name beyond music, aiming for the footprint that Motown Records had in Hollywood, and investing in Broadway productions. And when the success of Wattstax, in the words of Stax historian Robert Gordon, made the label "a household name," it led to a distribution deal with CBS.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Everybody took credit for Wattstax. But nobody wanted to do Wattstax. Forest was just dog-ass about it. He got corporate backing from Schlitz beer and persuaded local Black radio to talk it up.  Director Mel Stuart was hired to film the event. Wattstax was a signature moment for black people. "It wasn't about the money--the artists probably didn't make any from Wattstax," said William A. Burke, businessman, philanthropist and founder of the Los Angeles Marathon. A young entrepreneur from South Los Angeles named Forest Hamilton was booking shows around town and advertizing acts. His dad was jazz drummer Chico Hamilton,his uncle actor Bernie Hamilton. Burke and Hamilton were friends. Al Bell, co-owner of Stax Records wanted to get Stax into the movies and liked Hamilton enough to make him his label's West Coast point man in the early 1970s. First Hamilton sold Bell on sending a couple of his artists west to the 1972 Watts Summer Festival. With the addition of Isaac Hayes, the project ramped up into a Woodstock like showcase of talent at the Colliseum. Wattstock they first were going to call it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          The name Wattstax was a reference to the famed Memphis-based Stax record label and the Watts riots of August,1965. 85,000 plus fans would see the day long festival at the LA Memorial Coliseum, intended as a Black Woodstock. Isaac Hayes was top billing, along with The Staple Singers and twenty plus other groups. Wattstax was intended as a display of culture and autonomy, and to raise money for the Summer Festival. The street dance crew The Lockers from Los Angeles were 'popping and locking' to the music in their giant hats and striped sox in the crowd.  Onto the stage came Jesse Jackson, whose just-founded Operation PUSH was applying pressure on corporations to finance change. His speach was powerfully interactive, a call and response that had the Coliseum answering his "what time is it?" with shouts of "nation time!"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Then Weston, a magnificent singer performed "Lift Every Voice and Sing," known as "the Black National Anthem, and the whole stadium was singing along, fists in the air. They didn't have a positive association with the national anthem, but they did when that Black national anthem came on. It was a highlight in all their lives as African American citizens. Shortly, the Staple Singers were performing "Respect Yourself" and "The Things I Like About Me."  Some 26 acts hit the two stages set up on the football field, and legend has it that way more than that were ready to go on.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      But perhaps the most famous moment of the day happened when Rufus Thomas arrived. Thomas was 55 in 1972, a vaudevillian in the 1930s who had tap danced and emceed his way to modest success. But in 1972, it became clear, he was a master of time, leading an itchy, emphatic band, and moving with the kind of delayed-knowingness that owned the moment. He drove the crowd crazy in his white go-go boots and pink hot pants and cape. Rufus had a presence to him, almost like a magician. He could read a crowd and knew what he had to do. He performed the "funky chicken" and everbody rose to their feet and most were dancing along.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       There was also Richard Prior's monologuing into the camera. Then a rising but little-known nightclub comic and TV writer, Prior's running commentary on life in Watts and in Black America introduced him to a larger American audience.  In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.   In his remarkable video "Remnants of the Watts Festival," made in 1972 and 1973 and available on the Criterion Channel, video and performance artist Ulysses Jenkins recorded scenes from the Summer Festival of 1972. The video features fascinating debates about community control of the culture it produces and corporate sponsorship, and it never mentions the biggest feature of the Watts Festival that year: Wattstax.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           William Bell is 83 now and the Wattstax performer has a new single coming out Aug. 26. He puts the accomplishment of the concert this way:  "There was an affirmation that yes, we can get better. And, for a while things did get better."