Wade Watts

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Wade Watts on the cover of Justice American Style, a biographical book project by Wade A. Watts and Gregory A. Dixon.

Wade Watts (September 23, 1919–December 13, 1998) was an African-American gospel preacher and civil rights activist from Oklahoma. He served as the state president of the Oklahoma chapter of the NAACP for sixteen years,^[1] challenging the Ku Klux Klan through Christian love doctrine. He worked with Thurgood Marshall and developed a friendship with Martin Luther King during the American civil rights movement, and has been cited as a mentor by the current leader of the NAACP in Oklahoma, Miller Newman, and his nephew, former congressman, J.C. Watts.

Watts worked to desegregate public facilities and institutions during the 1940s and 50s. He worked with Thurgood Marshall on Ada Lois Sipuel challenge to segregation in the law school of Oklahoma University; consequently the Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that barring Sipuel from the school was unconstitutional.^[1] In the late 1950s, Watts and then Oklahoma State Senator Gene Stipe entered a restaurant, when a waitress stopped them at the door and told them that the restaurant "did not serve Negroes," Watts replied, "I don't eat Negroes. I just came to get some ham and eggs."^[2] He also worked to desegregate local institutions and together with his brother, Buddy, ensured that his nephew, J.C. Watts, was one of the first black children to attend the newly integrated elementary school in their community.^[3] He rose to become the head of the NAACP in Oklahoma, and became friends with national leaders of the civil rights movement like Martin Luther King.

In 1976 Watts' nephew, J.C., had a daughter out of wedlock with a white schoolmate.^[4] Both families felt that an interracial marriage would be impractical because of contemporary racial attitudes,^[3] and some members of the mother's family did not want to raise a black child.^[4] The families decided that the pregnancy should be brought to term and that Wade Watts and his wife would adopt and raise the girl.^[3]

As the state leader of the NAACP, Watts was a target of the Ku Klux Klan and in 1979 had the opportunity to debate the Grand Dragon of the Oklahoma KKK, Johnny Lee Clary, on an Oklahoma City radio station. Clary refused to shake Watts hand before the broadcast, but Watts shook his hand any way and introduced himself by telling Clary that Jesus loved him. ^[5]^[2] When they were leaving the radio station Watts introduced Clary to his wife and the niece that they were raising and asked Clary how he could hate the little girl, causing Clary to realize at the time that he could not. ^[2] Watts reminded Clary whenever they spoke that God loved him, even responding to a threatening phone call from Clary, in which he told Watts that the he and other Klansmen were coming for him, to which Watts responded by telling Clary that it was unnecessary because Watts would meet Clary and buy him dinner. When Clary renounced the KKK, he and Watts became close friends. ^[5]

Watts' was a life long Democrat^[1] and took issue with his nephew's position as a national leader in the Republican party—which Watts viewed as opposing the interests of "poor people, working people, [and] common people."^[1] His nephew countered by saying his support of the Republican party stemmed from his perception that the Democrats had let his uncle down, saying that his uncle had, "delivered more black votes for the democratic ^[sic] Party than any black person in the state of Oklahoma,"^[1]and yet it was a Republican who gave his uncle a decent job, a point his uncle conceded. ^[1] Despite the disagreement, Watts still said he was proud of what his nephew had achieved ^[1], and J.C. Watts continues to express admiration for his uncle^[6]

The current leader of the Oklahoma NAACP, Miller Newman, considers Watts—who was pastor of the Jerusalem Baptist Church in his hometown of McAlester, Oklahoma for many years—to have had a great influence on his life. ^[7]