Kalamu ya Salaam was born Vallery Ferdinand III in New Orleans in 1947. While a student at St. Augustine High School, he participated in civil rights protests as a member of the New Orleans NAACP Youth Council—the beginning of a lifetime of critical engagement and activism. After serving in the Army in South Korea, he returned to Louisiana, became involved with the Free Southern Theater, and helped to establish BLKARTSOUTH. Since then, he has served variously as the director of the Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Health Center, the director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, the editor of Black Collegian magazine, the founder of the NOMMO Literary Society, a DJ on the New Orleans radio station WWOZ, and the curator of the literary website Neo-Griot. For many years, before and after Katrina, he helped to lead a writing program for New Orleans teenagers called Students at the Center.