BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT REVIEW

Revolutionary painter/sculptor

Elizabeth Catlett Mora

She was poet Marvin X's contact in Mexico City when he went into exile against serving the US war in Vietnam, 1970. When he entered her casa, she was working on the piece above, a tribute to the Black Panther Party. She asked Marvin what he thought about the Panthers. He told her of his relationship with Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver, and how they were associated with the Black Arts Movement. See Rudolph Lewis's review of Marvin's memoir, Eldridge Cleavery, my friend the devil in the book review section.


Bobby Seale and Huey Newton,
founders of the Black Panthers



BAY AREA WRITERS/ARTISTS/ACTIVISTS
CELEBRATE AMIRI BARAKA'S 75TH BIRTHDAY

Banner of Black Arts West,

founded by Marvin X,

Ed Bullins, Carl Boissire,

Ethna Wyatt (Hurriyah),

Hillalry Broadous, Duncan

Barber , 1966

Dancer Raynetta Rayzetta
on knees in praise

Black Studies Panel

(partial) Ptah Allah El,

Dr. Dorothy Tsuruta,

AB and MX

Jerri Lange,Queen Mother
of Bay Area journalists,
author, Jerri, A Black Woman's
Life in the Media, gave Barakra

words of praise

She is mother of Ted

and Michael Lange

MX and

Peter Fitzsimmons,

director of the

Fillmore Jazz

Heritage Center

and Lush Life Gallery

Journalist Lee Hubbard, MX and Dr. J. Vern Cromartie, a Marvin X scholar. Dr. J heads
sociology department at Contra Costa College.



Event took place at the Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center, San Francisco. Theme: Black Studies
Went to College but Never Came Home. Panelists included Baraka, Ptah Allah El, Dr. Dorothy Tsuruta, Dr. James Garrett, Rev. George Murray, Abdul Sabry. Marvin X moderated.



Abdul Sabry, BSU founder
and editor of Black Dialogue
magazine, former chair of
black studies at San Jose
State University






Panelist Cecil Brown, author Hey,
Dude, What Happened to
my Black Studies Department?

Rev. George Murray,

BSU and strike leader

at SFSU, English instructor

who was arrested during

strike, performed in Baraka's

Communications Project to

establish Black Studies, played the preacher in Ben Caldwell's

drama The First Militant Preacher. George was Black Panther

Minister of Education

BSU and Black Studies, Forty Years Later

by

Marvin X

While Amiri Baraka was in the Bay Area recently, I took the privilege to accompany him at a few venues. At University of California’s Wheeler Hall, I read with him to a mostly white audience of poetry and literature students and professors. Even though I am one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement, the whites had never heard of me. They are under the illusion that Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni were the sole members of the Black Arts. The Asian student who introduced Baraka informed me he had no knowledge there was a West Coast and especially a Bay Area BAM formed by playwright Ed Bullins, myself and others. He thought BAM was an East Coast thing, even though BAM artist Sun Ra and I taught in the Black Studies department at UCB (1972) and the UCB Bancroft library recently acquired my archives (2006). The next night he read before an audience of black students at a residence hall. The Black Studies department was celebrating their Diaspora studies program, the latest genre in Black Studies, a field of study to enlighten students on the Pan African nature of our people. I have a problem with this broad focus of Black Studies because it dilutes the national mission which was to liberate North American Africans. Of course a Pan African perspective is necessary because the North American African is indeed a man of the world as Elijah Muhammad taught: “Wherever you go on the planet earth you will find the black man or evidence he was there.” And certainly the works of J. A. Rogers proved this thesis, along with DuBois’ The World and Africa. It has been said further that one cannot claim a knowledge of Black Studies without studying the history of Arabia and Persia. But my concern is simply a matter of focus and I claim the central focus of Black Studies was as a tool of liberation for North American Africans, not to expand our minds to other worlds to prove our universality, although on the surface this sounds like a grand idea, but in the deep structure it takes our minds off the central theme of liberating our communities from the addiction to white supremacy. For example, isn’t it ironic that UC’s Black Studies was celebrating its Diaspora program but students are totally ignorant of the radical foundation of the Black Studies Department at UCB , ignorant of the fact that the entire radical faculty was removed in 1972 and replaced with a reactionary regime that has remained since then until now. And with the removal of the radical black nationalist faculty came the imposition of the more acceptable internationalist perspective with its focus on, in the words of Dr. Nathan Hare, “other worlds,” including searching for bones in Egypt (Kemit for the scholarly negro students) while dry bones in America sinks deeper and deeper into the graveyard of white supremacy, as evidenced by the almost total feminization of the Black Studies faculty and students. Alas, where are the male faculty and students? We know that many are imprisoned, drugged out, mentally disabled, lost and turned out in the hood, rapping about it’s hard out here for a pimp or just posing cool with pants sagging, smoking blunts, but perhaps they are precisely on the money when their analysis is that it’s a “stupid” world, so why participate? Let’s get rich quick or die trying, why bother fighting white supremacy. After all, even if Obama is elected president, he will simply be a white imperialist in black face! Adding insult to injury, many Black Studies departments hired Continental and Caribbean Africans as heads. With all respect to Pan Africanism, how many North American Africans are teaching in Africa and the Caribbean, in particular, teaching African and Caribbean studies? After all, what does a so-called Negro know about African studies or Caribbean studies? Thusly, what do Africans and Caribbean scholars know about us? Quite simply, many of these African scholars were brought in to purposely divert and redirect our liberation struggle into neo-colonialism. The foreign scholars are more pliant and certainly less radical than those sometimes violent Negroes who were the pioneers in Black Studies, many of whom evolved from the struggle of Black Student Unions for justice and equity in academia, but few remain to spread their radicalism to the current generation who are taught, among other topics, revisionist history, with the sin of omission a prominent device—just leave certain critical moments and personalities out of the narrative. UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University are just two examples of what happened nationwide. Needless to say, when Baraka addressed the UCB Black faculty and students, I was informed there was no room for me to read on the program, even though I have been a comrade and cultural worker with Baraka for forty years. Yes, for the last forty years there has been no room on the program for my comrades and me, Baraka excepted, mainly because he is an old man so let him rant. I departed the Baraka reading to avoid stress, although after I departed, he called me up to perform against the wishes of his host. Before proceeding, I want to clarify that Africans from the Continent and Caribbean can become experts on the North American African, just as there are Europeans who are experts—in fact, if it were not for the scholarship of some European American professors, the history of Black Studies, Black liberation and the Black Arts Movement would be suppressed since Black American scholars have written few books on the subject in the last forty years. The recent book The Black Arts Movement is by a white scholar, James Smethurst. After forty years, young black scholars are finally becoming aware of the importance of BAM in raising the consciousness of our people and other ethnic groups, and although short-lived has had far more impact than the Harlem Renaissance. Since the Black Arts Movement was the body of literature that gave birth to Black Studies, we would imagine that this literature would be the foundation of Black Studies, but it is only now that BAM literature is getting long over due recognition. Was it not the BAM literature that radicalized Black students in general and in particular those at San Francisco State University that led to the creation of the first Black Studies program at a major university? Yes, it was indeed the poetry and plays of BAM writers Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Jimmy Garett, Ben Caldwell, Charles Fuller, Ron Milner,Ed Bullins, Marvin X and many others who gave consciousness to BSU students at San Francisco State University, many of whom joined the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam to continue their revolutionary activism. After his UCB appearance, a week later, Baraka returned to the Bay to speak and read at San Francisco State University and to perform in the community with Roscoe Mitchell of the Chicago Art Ensemble. One day at noon he addressed the SFSU Black faculty and students—well, the black faculty who bothered to attend. In the tradition of black scholars who are always in a hurry going nowhere, one faculty member stuck his head in the door to praise Baraka but claimed he had to meet his class. We wondered why the esteemed professor did not bring his class to meet Baraka, especially since accompanying the poet was the original leadership of SF State’s infamous Black Student Union, including Benny Stewart, Jerry Varnado, Terry Collins, Jimmy Garrett, Ron Bentley and Nesbitt Crutchfield. I am also one of the founding members of the BSU, having joined in 1964 when it was the Negro Students Association, but when the strike occurred in 1968, I was underground in Harlem, after refusing to fight in Vietnam. Of course the meeting with the BSU leadership and Baraka was a historic moment. He recalled how he was invited in 1967 to SF State by the BSU to organize a communications project which led to the creation of Black Studies. This project symbolized and actualized the mission of Black Studies as envisioned by the BSU at SFSU: to bring knowledge and consciousness to the community—emphasis on community as opposed to merely establishing an outhouse in academia. Imagine if this mission had been realized by the establishment of independent institutions of higher learning in the community—today there might be less crime, less murder, less family disintegration, less political apathy and a host of other problems with the presence of centers of enlightenment in the hood. One example was Black House, founded by Eldridge Cleaver, Ed Bullins, Ethna Wyatt (Hurriyah Asar) and myself. Black House (1967) became the off campus center of the communications project Baraka headed. Black House extended the West Coast Black Arts Movement Ed Bullins and I established with Black Arts West Theatre on Fillmore Street( 1966). Black Arts West was partly the result of the SFSU’s Drama department producing my first play Flowers for the Trashman which I appreciated but rejected their paternalistic attitude, so I decided to establish my own theatre in the hood, rather than struggle with academic white supremacy, hoping to be discovered—it was never my intention to be discovered by anyone except my own people. And even if they don’t discover me, as Langston Hughes noted, that’s all right too. But after Baraka addressed the audience, the BSU leadership told a short version of their story. I had to clarify that before the real struggle began with the forces of white supremacy, black students struggled over changing the name from Negro Student Association to Black Student Union. Yes, there were those who wanted to remain Negroes but lost out to blackness. And the struggle began properly when we realized we were not getting our proper share of funding from Associated Students. We were determined to get the funding by any means necessary. Baraka was at the meeting with the AS and told of a person with a knife who threatened the white supremacy athletes who showed up to defend the AS against those “black thugs.” Benny Stewart corrected Baraka, reminding the old man he was the one with the knife. Eventually the AS granted funding for the Black Communications project and Baraka began his work organizing theatrical productions up and down the West coast, eventually leading to a Black Studies department. His project produced a documentary film Black Spring, which is lost unless it turns up in the SFSU film archives. The film documents events of the time, including at SFSU, Black House, Black Panther rallies and events in Los Angeles with Ron Karenga’s US organization. Of course this was before the split between cultural and political nationalists, although I suggested to the audience that making a distinction between cultural and political nationalists was false because it was impossible to make a distinction between a student, a black arts movement person, a black Panther, or a black Muslim, for many if not most of the time they were one and the same. George Murray was in Baraka’s production of Ben Caldwell’s First Militant Preacher, also a BSU revolutionary, also Black Panther Minister of Education who served jail time for defying the authorities during the strike. Emory Douglas was a student at SF City College who came to Black House, got radicalized and joined the BPP becoming Minister of Culture. Even Eldridge Cleaver participated in the cultural activities at Black House before I took him to meet Bobby Seale, and soon after became Minister of Information. Eldridge symbolized the connection of the prison movement to black liberation. While students at SFSU, we edited Black Dialogue magazine, and our staff was invited to Soledad prison to address Cleaver’s black culture club. We later published Cleaver’s essay My Queen, I Greet You, along with the poetry of Alprentis Bunchy Carter. Thus BSU students helped radicalize the prison movement. We recently heard Brother Kumasi lecture on the birth of the prison movement and declared it began in that Black Culture club at Soledad prison. Samuel Napier, Black Panther Minister of Distribution, came to Black House for cultural consciousness, then joined the BPP. Actor Danny Glover was a member of the BSU who later performed with Black Arts West theatre on Fillmore Street. So one must be cautious in making such a clear distinction between participants in the liberation struggle who were at the same time students, artists and activists. The line was clearly defined by those who believed in armed struggle and those who did not, those who did not were called cultural nationalists, especially by the Black Panther Party until they attended the Pan African Cultural Festival in Algiers and got a healing on the importance of culture in revolutionary struggle. Probably what caused the riff between the cultural and political nationalists was the murder of Bunchy and Mark Clark in the BSU meeting room on the campus of UCLA by members of Karenga’s US organization which at the time was associated with the FBI, LA police department, cointelpro and Governor Ronald Reagan’s office. We don’t know if those connections still remain, but they have been documented to have existed at the time. But there is no doubt our movement was infiltrated by police agents and snitches posing as students and professors and we know this continues, especially since 9/11, but throughout the years there has been a consciousness attempt by Black Studies departments to stay clear of radicalism especially of the strident nationalist variety. During the question and answer time, Baraka was asked by students what to do when they encounter problems with the administration, for example, when they want to do a dramatic production and can’t get support from the department. Baraka replied with a rhetorical question, “Is it difficult?” Benny Stewart chimed in, “We didn’t ask—we took authority. We put on our plays with no money, didn’t think about money, were happy just to get something to eat.” Baraka pointed to the BSU elders. Look at these guys, you’ve heard what they went through, beatings, jailings, I got my head busted open during the Newark rebellion, teeth knocked out. So I ask you again, is it difficult for you? A public school teacher cried about her problems with the administration in the school district. Baraka again replied, “Is it difficult?” In other words—and there were some in the audience who felt Baraka was insensitive—I think he was irritated and impatient with expressions of fear in the present generation. I told the audience we must think outside the box to solve our problems with white supremacy. Even if you are in academia, you must find solutions and attack problems from a frame of reference beyond the white supremacy paradigm. When the BSU wanted a Black Studies program, students had to transcend the old way of doing things, had to be fearless and determined to get ours by any means necessary. Fear exists in the mentality of slaves, not men and women on the road to freedom. Fearlessness is the legacy of the BSU at San Francisco State University. Dr. Nathan Hare was appointed the first director of Black Studies at SF State, but was ultimately removed by the President of the College and Governor Ronald Reagan. But as I have indicated, this purging of radical black faculty happened nationwide and continues to this day. We understand African American Studies at Columbia University was recently closed. In the final analysis, it matters not whether Black Studies or black people are radical or reactionary—when the forces of white supremacy tire of your presence, you shall be removed. Did it matter to them whether it was the radical Malcolm X or the reformist Martin Luther King, Jr.? Finally, the Black Student Union and Black Studies grew out of the people’s movement for freedom and justice. When the people determine the BSU and Black Studies are relevant to our liberation these institutions will receive the necessary support so they are independent and sovereign, and they shall again be an essential arm of our cultural revolution.

On Friday, November 16, 8pm, there will be a Champagne and Dessert Reception, sponsored and hosted by the Black Students Union Founders Institute at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street (near Telegraph) Oakland, CA. RSVP to Nesbitt Crutchfield 510-704-1347. The purpose is a fund raising to write a book telling the story of the first Black Studies Program on a major college campus in the US, founding the San Francisco State Black Students Union, the fight and the strike, and our struggle over thirty-nine years ago. --Dr. M (Marvin X)

Note from Dr. Nathan Hare

Marvin, like I said just while ago, everybody is a star. I see you even got me in there, though I didn’t arrive until February 1, 1968 -- not yet forty years – but had already been bombed out at Howard for writing a letter to the Hilltop in September of 1966 suggesting Howard didn’t have to turn itself white (or polka dot for that matter -- “60 per cent white by 1970” was the administration’s announced and official plan); then writing in short time a “Black University Manifesto” calling for “the overthrow of the Negro college with white innards and to raise in its place a black university relevant to the black community and its needs.”

That’s why, as I explained to you the other day, I didn’t get invited to the BSU and Black Studies, Forty Years Later bash at State. At Howard it was the Black Power Committee, but they didn’t fare as well as the BSU at State; they’re all either dead or somehow gone and nobody is here to celebrate. I didn’t know Reagan had any notable part in my firing beyond the governor’s rubber stamp; I know it was S.I. Hayakawa who came out and fired me. I point this out because I keep seeing what looks like forces in the Third World lately trying to clean up Hayakawa, in the rash of revisionism emerging these days.

The struggle continues,

NH