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Last Poets were rappers of the civil rights era. Along with the changing domestic landscape came the New York City-hip group called The Last Poets, who used obstreperous verse to chide a nation whose inclination was to maintain the colonial yoke around the neck of the disenfranchised.

Shortly after the death of Martin Luther King, The Last Poets were born. David Nelson, Gylan Kain, and Abiodun Oyewole, were born on the anniversary of Malcolm X's birthday May 19, 1968 in Marcus Garvey Park. They grew from three poets and a drummer to seven young black and Hispanic artists: David Nelson, Gylan Kain, Abiodun Oyewole, Felipe Luciano, Umar Bin Hassan, Jalal Nurridin, and Suliamn El Hadi (Gil Scott Heron was never a member of the group). They took their name from a poem by South African poet Willie Kgositsile, who posited the necessity of putting aside poetry in the face of looming revolution.

"When the moment hatches in time's womb there will be no art talk," he wrote. "The only poem you will hear will be the spearpoint pivoted in the punctured marrow of the villain....Therefore we are the last poets of the world."

During their late 1960s and early 1970s they connected with the violent
factions of the SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), the
SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), and the Black Panther party.
They went through confrontations with the FBI and police, and were arrested
for robbing the Ku Klux Klan and various other ventures with
Revolution in mind. Member <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm1918923/?ref_=nmtrv_trv">Abiodun Oyewole</a> received a 12-to-20-year jail
sentence, but served less than four years.

Members included David Nelson, <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0435062/?ref_=nmtrv_trv">Gylan Kain</a>, <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm1918923/?ref_=nmtrv_trv">Abiodun Oyewole</a>, <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0524588/?ref_=nmtrv_trv">Felipe Luciano</a>, <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0069922/?ref_=nmtrv_trv">Umar Bin Hassan</a>, <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0638173/?ref_=nmtrv_trv">Jalal Nuriddin</a> and <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0252662/?ref_=nmtrv_trv">Suliamen El Hadi</a>.

Trivia

The Last Poets

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