Operation Bootstrap. A Glass House Shattered. By Edwin Baldwin. An Original Play About Watts

Directed by Herman James. Illustrated flyer (8.5” x 11”). Edgewear, small stain at top edge, with “T-Th 4pm 2/10/68” written in blue ink in top right corner.
 
A one act play in two scenes developed and copyrighted in November 1966, a little over a year after the Watts Riots in August 1965. The flyer notes, “To be followed by open discussion,” which aligns with the aims of Operation Bootstrap’s community-minded outlook. The play and discussion occurred at one of Operation Bootstrap’s buildings at 4171 South Central Ave. Lou Smith founded Operation Bootstrap, a community project and training center, after the 1965 Watts Riot, with the goal of helping to “prepare ghetto youth for jobs” (see Jet, Dec. 21, 1967, “How Negroes Fight Poverty in Watts,” p. 16-22). The organization’s motto was “Learn, Baby, Learn” and they partnered with IBM and other industries to offer classes in computer programming, electronic assembly, typing, etc. The article notes that “Perhaps as important as what Bootstrap does in job training…is group discussions between whites and blacks. The object is to promote self-help and raise the low self-esteem of ghetto blacks.”
 
A scarce flyer of an early performance of this play about the Watts Riots, a few years removed from the riots themselves by an organization dedicated to improving African-American life in the riot’s aftermath. Item #943

Price: $350.00