KRS-One and Dr. Kwame Ture Event Poster, University of Kentucky

Lexington, Kentucky, 1980. 10 ¾ x 16 inch sheet. Very slight staining, some pinholes; excellent to near fine.. Poster for an event at the University of Kentucky featuring KRS-One and Kwame Ture (misspelled “Toure”), formerly known as Stokely Carmichael. Ture was a central figure in the civil rights and Black power movements: among numerous other activities, he led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was an “Honorary Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party and—following his move to Africa due to targeting by COINTELPRO—led the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party. Lawrence “Kris” Parker, or KRS-One, is a rapper and activist from the Bronx, known for his politically conscious lyrics; in a New York Times op-ed, he wrote that “Rap music, stigmatized by many as mindless music having no artistic or socially redeeming value, can be a means to change.”[1] Though the exact format and topic of the event is not clear, the poster advertises that KRS-One “uses the words of the street to confront REAL life in America, especially Black Life”, and that Ture is “at the heart of the struggle”. The poster is likely from the late 1980s or 1990s; KRS-One’s debut album with Boogie down Productions, Criminal Minded, was released in 1987, and Ture died of cancer in 1998.

[1] KRS-One, “A Survival Curriculum for Inner-City Kids”, The New York Times, September 9, 1989, 23.