J. C. Watts

Watts was born in Eufaula in McIntosh County, Oklahoma to J. C. "Buddy" Watts Sr., and Helen Watts (d. 1992). His father was a Baptist minister, cattle trader, the first black police officer in Eufaula, and a member of the Eufaula City Council. His mother was a homemaker. Watts is the fifth of six children and grew up in a poor rural African-American neighborhood. He was one of two black children who integrated the Jefferson Davis Elementary School in Eufaula and the first black quarterback at Eufaula High School.

While in high school, Watts fathered a daughter with a white woman, causing a scandal. Their families decided against an interracial marriage because of contemporary racial attitudes and Watts' family provided for the child until she could be adopted by Watts' uncle, Wade Watts, a Baptist minister, civil rights leader and head of the Oklahoma division of the NAACP.

He graduated from high school in 1976 and attended the University of Oklahoma on a football scholarship. In 1977, Watts married Frankie Jones, an African-American woman with whom he had fathered a second daughter during high school.

Watts began his college football career as the second-string quarterback and left college twice, but his father convinced him to return, and Watts became starting quarterback of the Sooners in 1979 and led them to consecutive Orange Bowl victories. Watts graduated from college in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism. Watts was selected by the New York Jets of the National Football League in the eighth round of the 1981 NFL Draft. The Jets tried Watts at several positions and could not guarantee that he would play quarterback, so he opted to sign with the CFL's Ottawa Rough Riders. As Ottawa's quarterback, he helped the team reach the 1981 Grey Cup game, which they nearly won in an upset. Watts stayed with the Rough Riders from 1981 to 1985 and played a season for the Toronto Argonauts before retiring in 1986.

Watts returned to Oklahoma and became a youth minister in Del City and was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1993. He is a teetotaler. Watts opened a highway construction company and later cited discontent with government regulation of his business as reason to become a candidate for public office. Watts' family was affiliated with the Democratic Party and his father and uncle Wade Watts were active in the party, but it did not help Watts when he ran for public office and he changed his party affiliation in 1989, months before his first statewide race. Watts later stated he had first considered changing parties when, as a journalism student, he covered the 1980 U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Don Nickles. Watts' father and uncle continued to strongly oppose the Republican party, but supported him. Watts won election to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission in November 1990 for a six-year term as the first African-American elected to statewide office in Oklahoma. He served as a member of the commission from 1990 to 1995 and as its chairman from 1993 to 1995.

After he left Congress, Watts was appointed by President Bush to be a member of the Board of Visitors to the United States Military Academy for a term expiring December 30, 2003. Watts founded a lobbying and consulting firm, J. C. Watts Companies, in Washington, D.C., to represent corporations and political groups and focus on issues he championed in Congress. The John Deere Company hired Watts as lobbyist in 2006 and Watts later invested in a Deere dealership and sought financial support from United States agencies and others for a farm-related project in Senegal. Watts wrote an autobiography, wrote regular opinion columns for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and joined the boards of several companies, including Dillard's, Terex, Clear Channel Communications, and CSX Transportation, and served as chairman of GOPAC.

Watts supported the Iraq War in 2003, stating: "America did not become the leader of the free world by looking the other way to heinous atrocities and unspeakable evils." He was later hired as a political commentator by CNN and following the 2006 House election, Watts argued the Republican Party had lost seats because it failed to address the needs of urban areas and did not offer a positive message. He stated: "We lost our way, pure and simple."

In 2008, Watts announced he was developing a cable news network with the help of Comcast, focusing on an African-American audience, and that he considered voting for Barack Obama, criticizing the Republican party for failing in outreach to the African-American community. Reports showed he contributed to John McCain, but not to Obama.

Watts considered running to succeed Brad Henry as Governor of Oklahoma in the 2010 gubernatorial election, but declined in May 2009, citing his business and contractual obligations.

Watts served as a campaign surrogate for Newt Gingrich's 2012 presidential campaign. On April 7, 2015, Watts joined U.S. Senator Rand Paul on stage during Paul's announcement speech for U.S. president.

For most of 2016, Watts served as the president and CEO of Feed the Children (FTC). The board of directors announced his appointment on January 21. On November 15, the organization and Watts announced that he was no longer serving in those roles. The following April, Watts sued both FTC and its board of directors for wrongful termination. According to Watts, he was fired after uncovering rampant financial mismanagement at the charity and notifying the state's Attorney General Office of potentially illegal practices. Feed The Children denied there was any validity to Watts' claims and proceeded to file a counter-suit against him. The case was settled in 2019, after FTC agreed to drop their counter-suit and pay Watts $1 million to resolve all his claims against them.

In 2019 Watts began plans to start the Black News Channel, which launched on February 10, 2020, as a 24-hour news channel aimed at an African American audience. The channel went out of business in April 2022, in the face of lagging cable and satellite provider subscriptions and an unsuccessful 2021 revamp that added commentators at odds with Watts's views.