Kwami k. kwami
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- The correct title of this article is kwami k. kwami. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
| kwami k. kwami | |
| Pseudonym: | Tehuti Aamaakheru, Iapetus, The Chameleon |
|---|---|
| Born: | November 07, 1970 (age 36) Little Rock, Arkansas, USA |
| Occupation: | Author / Radio & TV personality / Spoken Word Poet / Film Producer / Activist / Educator |
| Nationality: | United States |
Kwami Malik Shabazz Abdul Bey (born Lorne Brandon Moore on November 7, 1970 in Little Rock, Arkansas), better known as kwami k. kwami, is an American author, spoken word poet, radio and television personality, film producer, and educator. He is best known for his book THE TABLES HAVE TURNED: A Street Guide to Guerrilla Lawfare and his radio show PHAT LIP! YouthTalk Radio.
In 2003, at the age of 33, he became the youngest person to be certified eligible to be a District Justice in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
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[edit] Background
kwami k. kwami was born Lorne Brandon Moore on November 7, 1970, in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was the second of three sons for Maudella Lorene Morehead and Edward James Moore. His older brother is Kenneth Edward Moore. His younger brother is Jarriel Demond Moore.
He attended Pulaski Heights Junior High and Little Rock Central High, where he was both an athlete and a scholar. He lettered in football and track. He was elected to National Honor Society.
At the age of 17, he joined the United States Army Reserve where he became a medical specialist and an ambulance driver.
In April 1988, he was promoted to the rank of cadet colonel and appointed as the first wing commander in the history of any Air Force Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program in Arkansas.
In June 1988, he was elected lieutenant governor of Arkansas Boys State.
After graduating from Little Rock Central High School in May 1989, he attended the United States Air Force Academy Preparatory School (USAFA Prep), in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with the goal of becoming a flight surgeon.
[edit] USAFA
With three years of military experience upon entering the USAFA Prep, kwami held several leadership positions in his class. He increasingly became frustrated with the perceived mistreatment of black cadet candidates and tried to use his leadership positions to make change.
With the death of his beloved grandfather, Albert Bernard Morehead, and his inability to effect the change that he desired, he resorted to secretly joining the Nation of Islam and changing his name to Kwame' Malik-ul-Mulk al-Shabazz Abdullah.
He organized the black students and earned the nickname Cadet X, in memory of his idol Malcolm X.
In 1990, he graduated from the USAFA Prep School with honors and was appointed to the United States Air Force Academy (AFA).
Upon reporting to the AFA, he refused to respond when he was called Lorne Brandon Moore and demanded to be referred to by his new name. This move effectively made him the first and only known member of the Nation of Islam to attend a United States service academy.
During the Persian Gulf War, he publicly denounced George H.W. Bush as a modern slavemaster. As a result, he was detained, accused on attempting to overthrow the government, and taken before the AFA Honor Court.
During his first trial, he represented himself and caused a mistrial. To avoid a second trial, he negotiated with his commander to resign as a conscientious objector with an honorable discharge provided that he sign a 10-year confidentiality agreement. During his time within Cadet Squadron 40, he was very anti-social towards his fellow cadets and openly racist to white cadets.
His experience at the AFA is chronicled in the book A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America by David K. Shipler.
[edit] Homelessness
Before resigning from the AFA, he applied, and was accepted into, the Honors College at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, with a full scholarship. However, upon arrival, the administration could not locate his file and refused to allow him to enroll.
Full of pride, he decided to live in his car parked just off campus and go to classes anyway throughout the Atlanta University Center.
He eventually became a known campus activist, lecturer, and intellectual, even though he was homeless. Few people were aware of this fact.
Professor Paula Knight-Ofusa at Clark Atlanta University hired him as her instructor-provocateur in her graduate course "Moral Problems in Contemporary Society."
Whenever he was not on campus, he was at the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library for hours at a time reading mainly legal, medical, and religious texts.
He was homeless for almost a year and never contacted his family during this time.
[edit] Radio show
After getting on his feet, starting two mildly successful businesses with friends, and attending school to become a certified medical assistant and a registered surgical technician, he returned to his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas when he learned that his uncle had had a heart transplant. He was interested in assisting in the recovery process.
While back, he began teaching at Henderson Junior High School and Parkview High School. Noticing that his students desired an avenue to express themselves, he created his own multi-media company called imagine-a-nation edutainment media, LLC, in 1993. The next year, he created, produced, and hosted PHAT LIP! YouthTalk Radio.
PHAT LIP! was an award-winning, internationally self-syndicated, youth-oriented radio talk show that ran from 1994 to 2002. The show originally aired on KABF-FM 88.3 in Little Rock, Arkansas. However, it relocated to WNSB-FM 91.1 in Norfolk, Virginia in 2000. After the move, he renamed the show PHaT LiP! 4.2.
The show was also broadcast on the Shortwave Relay Service in Milan, Italy.
After two years of silence, he returned to the radio in 2004 with a new show called "'Round Midnite with kwami k. kwami" on WPEB-FM 88.1 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. However, this show only lasted for 14 months because the station went off the air.
His work with the radio show is chronicled in the book Face Forward: Young African American Men in a Critical Age by Julian C.R. Okwu.
[edit] Book
During multiple sessions of his radio show, young people would call in and complain about how they were treated by the police. As a result, kwami k. kwami would spend hours of his free time at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law library studying so that he could be more informed when they called.
After a string of police shootings of unarmed black men by the Little Rock Police Department, he wrote and self-published the semi-autobiographical book THE TABLES HAVE TURNED: A Street Guide to Guerrilla Lawfare to be a self-help guide to teach young people how to safely deal with police-citizen interactions.
[edit] Films
He was the production assistant on the 2006 independent feature film Rebecca's Window. He was the producer and co-executive producer on the 2006 independent short film Multiple Letters.
He is the writer of several screenplays, most notably If We Must Die which is about Scipio Africanus Jones and the Elaine Race Riot, and A Peace of Just Us which is semi-autobiographical and based on his book THE TABLES HAVE TURNED.
[edit] Honors
Arkansas Young Entrepreneur of the Year (1995), National DO Something Brick Award for Community Service (semi-finalist) (1996), Robert Sarver Memorial Volunteer Service Award (1996), Dr. R.K. Young Humanitarian Award for Youth Leadership (1996), Media Achievement in Community Service Award (1996), Little Rock Free Press Citizen of the Year Award, (1997), Independent Publisher Book of the Year Award (nominee) (2001), Black Book Awards Honoree (2002)
[edit] References
Shipler, David K., A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America. New York City: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
Okwu, Julian C.R., Face Forward: Young African American Men in a Critical Age. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997.
Wimsatt, William Upski, No More Prisons. Brooklyn: Subway and Elevated Books, 1999.
kwami, kwami k., THE TABLES HAVE TURNED: A Street Guide to Guerrilla Lawfare. Virginia Beach: imagine-a-nation edutainment media, LLC, 2000.
[edit] External Links
- THE TABLES HAVE TURNED
- 'Round Midnite with kwami k. kwami
- "Chicken Come Home...Food For Thought" an essay written by kwami k. kwami about 9/11.
