![]() ![]() If we don’t, I’m going to do something stupid.’” “I supported but wasn’t an active member of the civil rights movement,” explains Oyewole, “and I’d never considered being a poet, but I said to him, ‘Let’s get it together. Nelson was a poet and had asked Oyewole to form a collective with him to promote black consciousness and solidarity. Thankfully, he called his friend and the director of the anti-poverty programme David Nelson instead. What had he ever done to deserve to get the bullet, and in such a cowardly way? It made me feel like the US was steeped in violence, and the only answer was violence in return. The whole world knew this man was working on a non-violent platform, he was calling for peace and love. When they killed King, I felt insulted, offended. My dad taught me that if someone puts a hand on you, then you break that hand off. “I wasn’t a turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy. “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” declares Abiodun Oyewole, one of the group’s co-founders, who in 1968 was working on a New York anti-poverty programme. The Last Poets were formed during a time of social and political unrest, fuelled by racial hatred, culminating in the assassination of Martin Luther King on 4 April, 1968. ![]()
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