The Last Poets are a group of poet and musicians, arising from the late 1960s African American civil rights movement. Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, an Army paratrooper is one of the founding members of The Last Poets, a group of poets and musicians that evolved out of the Harlem writers workshop in New York.

He was incarcerated and was given early release on condition that he join the army where he trained as a paratrooper but was locked up by the army for refusing to salute the US flag. He received an honourable discharge from the army however, and went to work for a bank on Wall street.

He converted to Islam, and learning to spiel, an earlier form of rapping. With Umar Bin Hassan and Abiodun Oyewole, Nuriddin joined the East Wind workshop in Harlem, and began performing their speils, along with music, on the street.

They adopted the name the Last Poets in 1969 from a South African writer named Little Willie Copaseely, who believed he was in the last era of poetry before guns would take over.

They released an LP in 1970, The Last Poets, which reached the Top Ten album charts. Oyewole was arrested for robbery before a tour could begin, and he was replaced by Nilajah The follow-up, This Is Madness, featured more politically charged, radical poems, which resulted in the group being listed as part of the counter-intelligence program, founded by then-President Richard Nixon.

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