CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/3/2024

Citizen Printer Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. prints for the glory of ALL peoples

Featured spreads are from Letterform Archive Books’ gorgeous and galvanizing new release, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.: Citizen Printer, on the legendary Detroit-based letterpress master whose type-driven messages of social justice and Black power have been stating truth and spreading inspiration for the last four decades. “Understand that, for me, printing is commerce, not capitalism,” Kennedy, Jr. writes. “It is a trade between one who practices a skill and another who values it. This trade directly empowers the skilled worker, not the capitalist who profits off that worker.
Understand that my very existence is protest.
The existence of Black people in America is an act of protest, of survival.
Everything I do is a manifestation of that protest.
Understand that my connection with the universe is most present in the printshop—that my deep love of printing for the masses has led me to a deep connection with ALL.
With time, I have realized that my people are actually ALL peoples.
Some folks have told me that my story has changed their lives—that my decision to leave a life as a business bureaucrat in favor of one as a letterpress printer gave them permission to leave the path they happened to be traveling for the path they truly wanted to travel. ‘I must go forth,’ they said.
I feel it is my duty to continue to make these cracks in our inhumane society so that others will have space to live their lives.
And the spaces that they make will expand the cracks for others, just as the space I make expands the cracks made by my ancestors.
One day our growth will rumble down the walls that separate our humanity.
I try to print a world into existence that is as welcoming and nurturing as the universe is to me, and I urge others to agitate, agitate, agitate for a world that is welcoming and nurturing to them.
I print for the glory of my peoples.”