Whitey on the Moon

"Whitey on the Moon" is a 1970 spoken word poem by Gil Scott-Heron. It was released as the ninth track on Scott-Heron's debut album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. Recorded over a simple drum accompaniment, it tells of medical debt, high taxes and poverty experienced at the time of the Apollo Moon landings. The poem critiques the resources spent on the space program while Black Americans were experiencing social and economic disparities at home. "Whitey on the Moon" was prominently featured in the 2018 biographical film about Neil Armstrong, First Man. It was also featured in the second episode of HBO's Lovecraft Country. It received renewed interest in 2021 following spaceflights by billionnaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, which were seen as emblematic of the inequities highlighted by the poem. Gil Scott-Heron was a poet, jazz musician, scholar, and novelist of Jamaican and African American descent. His 1970 debut album, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, showcased his many influences, including Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, and the Last Poets, and combined musical influences with social commentary. Scott-Heron stated that he was inspired to write "Whitey on the Moon" by a statement from writer and activist Eldridge Cleaver, who argued that the space program was intended to distract the United States from problems within, and to suppress discontent. Scott-Heron wrote the poem the summer before it was released. Scott-Heron's mother suggested the refrain and the closing line. "Whitey on the Moon" was released as the ninth track on Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, which was recorded late in the summer of 1970 in a studio belonging to Atlantic Records. Scott-Heron speaks the poem alongside a bongo drum accompaniment of a sort common in street poetry, and used by contemporaneous artists such as The Last Poets. The track is just under two minutes long. Although the album has been frequently described as being recorded live in a nightclub in New York City, it was in fact recorded in a studio, with an audience present to simulate a live crowd.