They were dangerous with a pen – and loved their people. So the world wasn’t ready when they decided to join forces and shake things up.
When Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, Abiodun Oyewole, and Umar Bin Hassan came together in Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem to spit their powerful poems, they didn’t know they laid the foundation for hip hop.
These just weren’t any old poems. They had something to say.
The Last Poets were known for their powerful spoken word, often called protest poetry, performed over the beat of a conga drum. But it was the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X that inspired them to speak up.
When they spoke, it was of unity, self-determination, and liberation. They didn’t play about their people, and decades of activism made that clear. The group even led poetry workshops with incarcerated people on Rikers Island in recent years.
The Last Poets were never afraid to say what needed to be said and stayed true to their Blackness despite living in an anti-Black world. We must commit to doing the same – no matter the medium, it’s our job to speak truth to power on our path to liberation.