About Kwami

Kwami Abdul-Bey is a native of Little Rock who was reared in the Hope neighborhood in the area now called Midtown off 12th Street. He is one of the co-founders of the Washitaw Youth Media Arts & Literacy Collective (www.WFYMALC.org) and the Arkansas Peace & Justice Memorial Movement (www.APJMM.org), along with his wife, Clarice, with whom he has three children Dreama (24), Kalyanii (13) and Lorne (8). He is also the founder of the Do-It-Yourself L.A.W. (Legal Advocacy Workgroups) and the self-published author of the award-winning underground hip hop best-seller "THE TABLES HAVE TURNED: A Street Guide to Guerrilla Lawfare."

While in the 11th grade, Kwami joined the U.S. Army Reserves as a medic and ambulance driver. Upon graduation from Little Rock Central High School in 1989, he attended the U.S. Air Force Academy with the dream of becoming a flight surgeon. However, his Academy experience ended early due to the 1992 Persian Gulf War. He soon returned home to Little Rock to teach seventh grade social studies at the former Henderson Junior High School, while also serving as a member of the Little Rock Task Force for the Prevention of Youth Violence. And, he also eventually served as a member of the Little Rock Racial and Cultural Diversity Commission.

A few years later, HBO had released the documentary “Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock.” The documentary upset many Little Rock residents, including Kwami’s social studies students who wanted to protest it by boycotting HBO. Kwami challenged them to reconsider attempting to do something that may quickly fail due to lack of widespread popular support, and to instead just beat them at their own game. He coined the phrase, “Don’t hate the media, be media.” This led to him working with his students to create what became PHAT LIP! YouthTalk Radio, America’s very first youth-oriented radio talk show that debuted on KABF 88.3 FM Community Radio, lasting for a total of fourteen groundbreaking seasons as an internationally syndicated, acclaimed and award-winning radio show.

Kwami graduated summa cum laude from the Liberty University School of Law, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Paralegal Studies, and magna cum laude from the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, where he received a Master of Public Service. He also has earned a Graduate Professional Certificate in Restorative Justice for Vermont Law School. While attending the Clinton School, his research in civic engagement and participatory democracy led to the publication of the inaugural 2023 Arkansas Civic Health Index. As the co-chair of the Clinton School Social Entrepreneurship Committee, he also was a member of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville's People, Planet, and Profit Project and the Arkansas Global Changemakers as part of his research in developing a statewide entrepreneurial ecosystem.

During his Clinton School years, Kwami became the Purple Chair for Braver Angels Arkansas, a Civility Leadership Institute cohort member for Renew America Together, and a Civic Saturdays Fellow at Citizen University The year before attending the Clinton School, Kwami founded Arkansans for a Unified Natural State (AFUNS), a confederation of hundreds of volunteers throughout the state who joined to gather signatures to repeal several laws of the 92nd General Assembly. He ended his Clinton School years serving as the Senate President of the inaugural Arkansas Model Student Legislature convened by the Academy for Public Service.

He is the grandson of Johnnie Elizabeth Dixon Morehead who was an unsung hero that worked closely with Daisy Gaston Bates as one of the planners for the desegregation of LRCHS and she regularly "passed" to go into the seats of white power to extract information clandestinely. Following in his grandmother's civil rights warrior footsteps, Kwami ws a member of a group of two dozen southern Black college students that were trained in the Summer of 2020 by the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law as redistricting cartographers so that alternative fair, equitable, competitive, non-partisan, and community-driven maps could be drawn and submitted for consideration. With those skills and knowledge, he convened the Arkansas Fair & Equitable Mapping Awareness, Planning & Action Team whose work led to both state and federal voting rights litigation cases, one still pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, as of May 1, 2024.

He is the grandnephew of Lonnie Dixon, who was killed on his 17th birthday in the Arkansas electric chair after being wrongfully accused, and then wrongfully convicted after a trial that lasted less than 20 minutes, of the 1927 murder of Floella MacDonald. This ordeal is intimately tied to the lynching of John Carter whose body was burned at the intersection of 9th & Broadway after a lynch mob was prevented from breaking into the state prison and kidnapping Lonnie.

Kwami currently works as the Election Coordinator/Organizer at the Arkansas Public Policy Panel where he works with citizens and organizations throughout the State of Arkansas to build a robust and sustaining direct democracy infrastructure to ensure that Arkansans keep, maintain, and strengthen their constitutional rights to legislate for their best interests when their legislature fails or refuses to do so. In addition to being a military veteran and a former educator, he is also a former advanced EMT and a trained tactical EMT. He is a lifetime member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League, as well as a member of several boards, including the Delta Presents Alumni Association, the Arkansas Coalition for Peace & Justice, the UAMS Center for Research, Health and Social Justice Community Advisory Board, the Arkansas History Association, and the National Lawyers Guild--Arkansas Chapter, to name a few. He also volunteers with the AARP Arkansas Livable Communities Initiative.