JC Watts is known to Oklahomans for many reasons including his heroics on the football field for the University of Oklahoma and later in the halls of Congress representing the state’s 4th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Watts is a Baptist minister and was elected in 1990 to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission as the first African-American in Oklahoma to win statewide office. He successfully ran for Congress in 1994 and was re-elected to three additional terms with increasing vote margins.

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. 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. Watts wrote an autobiography, wrote regular opinion columns for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and joined the boards of several companies.