How Artists, Workers Are Helping to Diversify Music Road Crews

Rolling Stone: By the time he signed on for Justin Bieber’s Believe tour in 2012, Lance “K.C.” Jackson had more than 30 years under his belt as a stage manager and touring pro; he’d worked with Prince, Destiny’s Child, Luther Vandross, and Earth, Wind, and Fire, among others. Now, on a tour headlined by a white artist, he drew quizzical looks backstage whenever he went to help Bieber with a harness that allowed him to descend onto the stage sporting wings. “There aren’t a lot of black props workers out there, so people were looking at me like, ‘Who is this guy? Can he make it happen?’” Jackson recalls. “It was a prejudgment.”