If you love hip hop, then chances are you’re already familiar with the name Cynthia Delores Tucker.  In the 90s, her crusade against what she and many other voices of the Civil Rights generation as well as conservative politicians dubbed “gangsta rap,” was relentless and consequential. As a result, she earned the ire of many certified rap stars and was widely rejected from hip hop culture. 

Today, that campaign still seems to be what Tucker is best known for. As I’ve come to learn more about Tucker’s life at least one thing is clear to me:  although some of her actions were fairly questioned and critiqued, her overall contributions to Black freedom and consciousness movements deserve just as much space in our collective memory as her controversies.  What follows is not intended as a biography, but some context. 

Black-grown, Black-owned. Black women is the backbone. — Nas 

Cynthia Delores Nottage, a Philly native, was born in 1927 to enterprising Bahamian parents. After graduating high school, Nottage dropped out of Temple University to open an employment agency for Black folks migrating from the South.  In 1951 she married construction company owner, William Tucker; she later inherited tenement properties from her parents and continued to rent them out to low-income families as they did. 

Tucker also served as a fundraiser and officer for the Philadelphia NAACP and in 1965, led the organization’s Philadelphia delegation in the march from Selma to Montgomery. From this background it’s clear that Tucker knew the power of Black folks running their own businesses, local government, and community organizations. 

In 1971, Tucker became the first Black woman to serve as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State. While Tucker was in that seat of power,  she pushed Pennsylvania to become one of the first states to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, and led efforts to implement voter registration by mail and lowering the voting age from 21 to 18

Tucker’s political career declined after she was fired by then Philadelphia Governor Milton Shapp allegedly for profiting from speeches written by office staff. Tucker, however, believed she was fired for not supporting Shapp’s chosen replacement.  It’s worth noting that District Attorney LeRoy Zimmerman, who investigated the case, didn’t prosecute Tucker because he found her to be  “a very effective ambassador of the state whose speeches encouraged minorities to participate in government.” 

Be careful, the validations y’all seek/ I been in them offices, they don’t look like you and me./ I learned lessons bout my essence and this industry.

 — Rapsody  

Hip hop is a very Black artform with roots in Afro-American, Afro Caribbean, and Afro Latino music traditions. The music industry however, is very white, especially at the executive level. In 2021, an overwhelming 86 percent of music industry executives were white men. There were also no women of color at the senior executive level at any of the “big three” music groups’ (Warner, Sony, and Universal) or at major radio companies like iHeartRadio or Cumulus, according to a University of Southern California annual study. 

In 1993, C. Delores Tucker declared war on exceedingly violent and misogynistic content in gangsta rap. The civil rights veteran, along with soul legends Dionne Warwick and Melba Moore formed an entertainment commission within the National Council of Black Women in Politics, an organization she co-founded, and bought stock in Sony so that she could protest at shareholder meetings.

“We must understand clearly that violence comes in many forms and is acted upon by many sources, whether we’re talking about physical violence, spiritual violence, economic violence or sexual violence the end result is the same: the destruction of human life. Enough is enough.”  Tucker said during a press conference. “Principal must come before profit.” 

The progressive value of Black women leading a divestment campaign from an industry that degrades Black women and men alike, and devalues Black consumers and artists alike, is perhaps clearer today than it was back then. In 1995, Time Warner cut ties with Interscope which served as the distributor for Death Row Records; this marked a brief but significant victory for Tucker’s cause.

By targeting the economic power of white-led music corporations and their company of Black artists, producers, and label executives Tucker’s campaign could be seen as a precursor to the conscious consumerist and divestment movements of today. Movements that are too often conflated with the hysteria of “cancel culture.”

If cancellation is the end of a career, there are only a few people who’ve come close to being effectively canceled. R. Kelly is one example, as the target of an actual divestment campaign launched in 2017 by Atlanta Arts Administrator, Oronike Odeleye and activist Kenyette Barnes. To date, the #MuteRKelley campaign has involved a petition to remove Kelly’s music from Atlanta radio stations, a public call to action to “Thumb Down” Kelly’s music on streaming platforms like Pandora and Tidal, nationwide protests, and the 2019 docuseries, Surviving R. Kelly produced by Dream Hampton.

After over 20 years of documented predation and abuse, it took all of those cumulative efforts just to disrupt the cultural normalcy of playing Kelly’s music and allowing the R&B star to continue to profit from it; Kelly wasn’t convicted for his actual crimes until just last year. All of that is to say, it actually takes quite a lot to end a hugely popular artist’s (particularly Black male artist’s) career or even sway public perception.

I’d be remiss not to mention the recent sentencing of Canadian singer Tory Lanez (government name Daystar Peterson) for the 2020 shooting of rap phenom Megan Thee Stallion. While Peterson’s 10- year prison sentence offers consolation for some, the hideous combination of lyrical punchlines, co-signs, and lying allegations spewed by influential Black male voices in the music industry in concert with Peterson aren’t forgotten and expose a deeper brokenness. Misogynoir thrives under a lack of conviction that continues to put Black women and girls through hell.

Instinct leads me to another flow, anytime I hear a brother call a girl a bitch or a ho. Tryna make a sister feel low.

— Queen Latifah

Hip hop is vast. Even her subgenres have layers and nuances, and she demands respect for her depth and range. One fair critique of Tucker’s activism levied by other Black activists, scholars, and politicians at the time, is that she didn’t know enough about hip hop to try to censor it or assess its value, let alone lead a warpath against it. Her distance from the culture was evident in her tendency to label a lot of music as “gangsta rap,” regardless of whether artists thought of their own music that way (there’s a lot to be unpacked in her feud with Tupac Shakur, but I’ll save that for another time) and the fact that many were talking about a lot more than gang activity. Deeper than drive-bys and drug deals, rappers also told stories of intra-racial community violence, substance abuse, police brutality, mass incarceration, and poverty.

By targeting their business, it’s clear that Tucker wanted to disrupt the social currency of celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, and others, but I don’t think she wanted to break them as artists. The message that I think she was trying to get across is that the violence targeting Black women and girls was and is an emergency that deserves the same sense of urgency as the others plaguing our communities. Homicide is a leading cause of death for Black women and girls in the 1–19 and 20–44 age groups, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention; 53 percent of Black women also report experiencing some form of intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

Through her activism, Tucker was closing the mental gap between such stats and lyrics that unapologetically place Black women at the scene of everyday emotional and physical violence, from cat-calls, to arguments turned physical, to sexual assaults; that violence plays out in both public humiliation and intimate spaces. In essence, Tucker knew that what people were saying about Black women mattered not because this content caused violence, but because of how it normalized it, making a damning statement about the value of Black women’s lives.

…That’s the U.N.I.T.Y. love a Black man from infinity to infinity….love a Black woman from infinity to infinity…

There are some lessons to be gleaned from Tucker’s life and activism, especially when it comes to multigenerational movement building. Though Tucker’s intentions to hold the music industry accountable for the content it produces and to protect the psyche of America’s Black youth, women, and girls were good, there was perhaps, more calling-out than calling in. We can only imagine what would have come from genuine conversations with some of the rappers in question, acknowledgment for their ability to represent voices within Black communities, and greater appreciation for hip hop as an artform with revolutionary origins and potential (too much smoke, not enough flowers).

On the flip side, Tucker has at times been unfairly painted as someone with more interest in being in the spotlight than supporting Black communities. I simply don’t believe her record of service supports that notion. Her activism and advocacy demonstrated a keen understanding of how interconnected the issues facing our communities are and in the company of Race Women like Dorothy Height, Shirley Chisholm and others, she built coalitions like the National Political Congress of Black Women to further catalyze Black civic engagement. By making her the face of lyrical punchlines too, members of the culture gave this elder way too much smoke.

Hip hop is 50 this year and as we look toward a new era, Tucker’s work reminds us that by having communal conversations, we can identify shared values and find unity. And that unity can disrupt political and corporate systems.

In a 1995 Washington Post interview, Tucker told reporters that the “C” in her name stood for compassion, courage, charisma, competence and Cynthia.

I can see that, and I offer my flowers.