Poet in motion
Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets may no longer be arming for battle the way they once did, but his lyrical mission continues
Abiodun Oyewole
Oyewole: “We needed to come together”
“I robbed the Ku Klux Klan and went to jail”
IT’S not every day you speak to somebody who was arrested for holding up the KKK at gunpoint, but there aren’t many people like Abiodun Oyewole. We’re ostensibly discussing his new record, Gratitude, but it isn’t long before he is recalling some of the hair-raising moments from his past. “People were calling me a revolutionary but I hadn’t done anything,” he says of his early days with The Last Poets. “I hadn’t shot anybody, I just wrote some damn poetry. I wanted to do more, so I began to get involved with social activity and that led me to North Carolina, where I robbed the Ku Klux Klan and went to jail.”