“Artists are the gatekeepers of truth.”
Those words from singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson are emblazoned in bold black type on a vibrant yellow and green background. The image is one of hundreds of Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.’s posters collected in his new book Citizen Printer. The Library of Michigan has selected it for its 2025 Michigan Notable Books list.
My colleague Paulette Parker and I visited Kennedy's warehouse studio in Detroit. The walls are covered with his works.
To hear Kennedy tell it, his process is not that complicated.
“You just put ink on paper. That's it. It's that simple," he says. "Any way that you want to do it, that's the way you do it.”
One look around tells you there’s more to it than that.
There are cases and cases with thousands of blocks of movable type — individual letters that can be set in a press. Some are small and made of lead. The larger ones are made of wood.
Kennedy’s prints can be silly — one says "Ladies no fighting in the bathroom" — but most feature anti-capitalist, anti-racist messages. Many quote prominent Black figures throughout American history, Sojourner Truth, George Washington Carver, and Rosa Parks to name a few.
Kennedy was printing phrases from Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower. He led us to one of his large metal presses where he was printing colorful backgrounds.
"I'm just stacking them up, and then I put them back through the press two or three more times and then I will finally put the text on it," he explained.
Letterpress printing has been around for more than 500 years. And, Kennedy told us, it played a vital role in Black history.
"Printing was essential for the emancipation of the enslaved peoples of these United States of America," he said. "It is through the pamphlets and the slave narratives that the general public was aware of the abuses that took place in the slavery that made the United States what it is."
Kennedy also noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass' newspaper The North Star.
"By the 1880s and onward, newspapers started to flourish wherever there were large groups of Black people," Kennedy said. "So there has been a long history of printing in the Black community as a way of disseminating news that the traditionally segregated newspapers would not."
Kennedy said printers traditionally learned the trade through apprenticeships, but historically Black colleges and universities also began to teach the skill.
Kennedy was born in East Lansing, Mich., but for much of his early life he lived near one of those HBCUs, Grambling State University in Louisiana. He also went to college there.
"I went to Grambling to avoid going to Vietnam," he said. "And I studied mathematics there."
It was in Grambling that Kennedy had his earliest experiences with letterpress printing.
"My earliest influence was my mother taking my Cub Scout troop to a local newspaper, and they were still doing primarily letterpress printing," he said.
The college's printer was also his neighbor.
"In college, I happened to pass by the print shop one time, and I just stuck my head in and he told me to come in. And I kept going back for like half a semester just because it was something different to do."
Kennedy returned to printing — and got more training — in his 30s.
Many of his prints include layers and layers of words and color in the background, but with a legible message on the top.
"I was poor and I messed up a commission," Kennedy said. "And I didn't have any more paper. So I had to do something because they wanted to work. And so I just layered words on top of it. And I like the way that looked. And so I tried it again."
Each layer is related to the print's bigger message, and the layers together act as a foundation for the text on top.
"I imagine a person passing by the poster for years and then suddenly just the twist of the head, they say, I never saw that word before. It's been there all along. What else is back there?"
Throughout the book, Kennedy talks about how printing is the way he shows up for his community. He told us it's about survival.
"My community goes, I go. You know, I am here. I am part of it," he said. "Despite all the accolades that I may think I have, when it gets down to it, I'm a Black man in a country that doesn't like Black people."
As we drove through Kennedy's neighborhood to his studio, we saw his posters in several different windows. I asked Kennedy why, with new digital mediums available to fight oppression, he sees letterpress printing as still relevant.
"My medium is totally digital because I have to take these little digits right here" — he wiggled his fingers — "and I got to put the type in place."
Jokes aside, Kennedy used the example of a website.
"You can go to a website and get all sorts of information about pollution, but you have to want to go to that website. It's passive because it's just sitting there until someone either bumps into it or intentionally looks for it," he said. "But a poster violates your visual space."
If you don't like the subject matter, you may be even more likely to remember it.
"And that's why I do it... It is a interruption. It is a trespassing. It is agitating."
Editor's note: Quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full interview near the top of this page.
