Picture this: a postal worker in South Central Los Angeles, weaving through the streets, delivering more than just mail. In Poetic Justice, Tupac Shakur’s Lawrence “Lucky” Knight is a musician—not just a guy with a mailbag—he’s a modern echo of America’s Black messengers, those sailors, couriers, and postmen who carried hope, coded messages, and revolution for centuries. Their stories? Too often buried. Let’s unearth them.

Long before Lucky, Black seafaring messengers were navigating uncharted waters. In 1311, the eldest brother of Mansa Munsa, Abu Bakr II, emperor of the Mali Empire, ditched his throne to sail west, chasing the ocean’s edge, as Ivan Van Sertima writes in They Came Before Columbus. Artifacts like gold-tipped spears and manila made of “gua-nin”—a Mande-named alloy—prove Black couriers reached Española (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) centuries before Columbus. By the 1600s, African mariners from the Kingdom of Kongo, dubbed “Black Jacks,” were the backbone of Atlantic trade, steering Portuguese and Spanish ships with Akan and Igbo know-how, according to W. Jeffrey Bolster’s Black Jacks.

Big Facts: These sailors didn’t just carry cargo—they smuggled whispers of resistance. Think Frederick Douglass, escaping slavery in 1838 disguised as a seafaring courier, thanks to one Black Jack who passed Douglass his freedom papers. Or Moses Grandy, an enslaved ferryman who became Captain Grandy, bought his freedom for $600 around 1831, and penned his 1843 memoir, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy. Or Crispus Attucks, a Black Jack and the first to die at the Boston Massacre in 1770, sparking the Revolutionary War.

Black couriers were the war’s pulse—at the service of Benjamin Franklin, who became America’s first postmaster general in 1776—they outsmarted British forces with coded messages. Similarly, a century later, Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia used his own postal network to outmaneuver Italian colonizers in 1896, as J.A. Rogers notes in World’s Great Men of Color.

The Fight to Deliver

Black “Star Line” couriers were trusted—Postmaster Timothy Pickering praised their reliability in 1794. But trust didn’t equal opportunity. In 1802, Congress banned Black Americans from postal roles, spooked by the Haitian Revolution and Túpac Amaru II’s uprisings in Peru. That ban fell in 1865, and Black couriers delivered emancipation itself, carrying General Order No. 3 to Galveston, Texas, on Juneteenth.

OAN: The post office built the foundation for Black communities. In places like Boston, William Cooper Nell was appointed as a postal clerk — the first known appointment of an African American to a civilian federal position. Yet, by the late 1800s — following the federal directive that “no person, by reason of color, shall be disqualified from employment in carrying the mails” — there were more than 243 Black postmasters and 323 carriers, backed by Native American land grants in places like Tulsa. They were making their mark, as Phillip F. Rubio documents in There’s Always Work at the Post Office.

Fast Forward: Beyond opportunity, the mail industry became a launchpad for Black innovation. Phillip B. Downing patented a secure postbox. This was followed by many Black patents in messaging and telecommunication. Dr. Mark E. Dean co-invented the ISA bus, powering early PCs and connecting the world to email client servers, (ECS). Lisa Gelobter’s web animations transformed emails for Hulu and many more. Marian Croak’s 200+ VoIP patents fueled real-time communication. Jesse Russell’s wireless tech changed how we connect.

Sidenote: These weren’t just postal jobs, they were gateways to Black brilliance. These opportunities for Black families made way for Black celebrities too—Danny Glover’s postal worker parents, Spike Lee’s grandfather, Nas’s mother, J. Cole’s mom, and Motown’s Freddie Gorman, who wrote “Please Mr. Postman.” Plus, Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. born Jesse Burns was adopted by his mother’s husband, Charles Jackson, a post office maintenance worker. As Ebony put it in 1949, the post office went from a “graveyard of Negro talent” to a springboard for liberation in art and science.

Lucky’s Road Trip, Poetic Justice’s Heart

In Poetic Justice, John Singleton crafted a story about more than a mailman, Lucky. He’s a nod to this legacy. Singleton toyed with making the film a war romance, maybe inspired by Phillis Wheatley’s poetry of love and turmoil that was carried across the sea by Black Jacks. He even considered writing the film’s poems himself, but chose Dr. Maya Angelou’s words instead. The story’s inspiration? A friend’s tale of driving mail routes from Los Angeles (City of Messengers) to Vegas, sometimes with a companion. That became Justice (Janet Jackson) and Lucky’s road-trip romance, fueled by Angelou’s resilient poetry.

Angelou herself grounded Shakur, the actor playing Lucky, on the set. In a 2013 interview, she recalled pulling a fiery Shakur aside during a heated moment. “Do you know how important you are?” she asked. She spoke of his ancestors' survival, their sacrifices paving a path forward from ships, horseback, train, cargo van and the internet. Her words sharp as a letter opener. Her words blunted Shakur’s personal pains. Shakur moved to tears, embraced her, his anger transformed into reflection and set him off on a journey as Lucky.

More Than Mail

Without these stories—without Angelou’s words—there’s no Lucky. He’s not just a character; he’s the spirit of Black messengers who carried more than letters from coast to coast. They delivered coded hope, freedom, and justice, even when it felt out of reach. From ancient mariners to modern innovators, their legacy lives in every step Lucky takes.

— I’m Lucky Lawrence

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