The Last Poets are a group of poet and musicians, arising from the late 1960s African American civil rights movement. Their name is taken from a poem by the South African revolutionary poet Keorapetse Kgositsile. 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. Following This Is Madness, Hassan joined a southern-based religious sect and was replaced by Suliam El Hadi in time for Chastisement (1972). The album introduced a sound the group called "jazzoetry", a mix of jazz and funk with poetry. At Last (1974), was a free jazz album.

The remainder of the 1970s saw a decline in the group's popularity, as well as the departure of Nilajah. In the 1980s, however, the group became popular with the rise of rap, collaborating with Bristol based British post punk band The Pop Group and others. They returned to recording in their own right in 1984 with Oh My People and the follow-up, Freedom Express (1988). Suliman and Jalal worked on several projects until 1995, when two groups using the name formed. Jalal and El Hadi released "Scatterrap" while Oyewole and Hassan released Holy Terror. Recently, The Last Poets collaborated with Common on the song "The Corner," and Wu-Tang Clan-affiliated political rap group "Black Market Militia" on the song "The Final Call."