John Davis, thanks for your compliment, but we have no idea how powerful we are. Tommy Fuentes, our classmate at Edison High, told me recently, "Marvin, we didn't wait for the teacher to come to class, we waited for you because we wanted to hear what you were going to say in class that day!"
Look at the black power of the film Black Panther, a billion dollars in a couple of weeks! Black Power! When Black Power stands white power shall fall in an instant, quicker than you can say Jackie Robinson! lol You stand up, they stand down. Marcus Garvey said it best, "Up you mighty people, you can accomplish what you will!"
As per my son, thank you for your condolences, but I enjoyed him for 39 years, probably longer than many parents enjoyed their children in this Valley of the Shadow of Death! Dr. Nathan Hare noted that we had Martin Luther King, Jr. for 39 years and Malcolm for about the same. Dr. Hare said Martin and Malcolm suffered homicide, my son suffered suicide, two sides of the same coin of life in America for North American Africans.
When I interviewed James Baldwin in his New York apartment, December, 1968, he said, "It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad. It's a miracle for a black father to raise a son in this madness. And I applaud all the fathers who have done so. Imagine, it is December and we are celebrating the Prince of Peace while we bomb the hell out of Vietnam."
FYI, that December of 1968, James Baldwin had no heat in his apartment! Ancestor Amiri Baraka said, "Our artists give us visions and prophesy. If we don't take care of them we shall get no visions nor prophesy!"
Amiri Baraka also taught me to get the reward, fuck the award, the reward is the money! I have a house full of awards but an empty bank account. I also have boxes of awards to Drs. Nathan and Julia Hare, along with their archives and mine, but our bank accounts are empty. Supposedly, this is the fate of pioneers that everyone else benefits, but the founders who gave their lives, sweat and blood and tears for the cause, the cause, the cause, just because live in poverty, virtual house arrest, by the white man and the black bourgeoisie, especially the socalled progressive black bourgeoisie. With over 400 Black Studies Departments across America, why could not these tenured niggas give Dr. Nathan Hare, with two PhDs, in Sociology and Clinical Psychology a position, yet they honor him with awards but no reward while he struggles at this hour to care for his wife, Dr. Julia Hare as she suffers from Alzheimer.
Well, as per myself, I am down with Qur'an: "We feed you for Allah's pleasure only, we desire from you neither reward nor thanks!"
Dear Parents,
I write to you as a father who buried one of my two sons. Darrel/Abdul Jackmon/El Muhajir transitioned at 39 years old from manic depression and took his life by walking into a train.He graduated from University of California, Berkeley in Arabic and Near Eastern Literature. He studied at the American University, Cairo, Egypt, and won a Fulbright fellowship to the University of Damascus, Syria. He was a graduate student in Near Eastern Studies at Harvard University until his disability overwhelmed him. People said he was my twin: he looked like me, talked like me, laughed like me, walked like me. Indeed, he was my friend, my brother, even though they say a parent should not be so close to their child. He often told me he was going to preach my funeral and tell every secret thing he knew about me. But as happens so often these days, I spoke at his funeral.
So I say to all parents who have lost and buried children in America, for whatever reason,I understand your pain like no other pain I ever experienced in my 73 years on this planet. Some parents lost children from police, gang or other forms of violence. It doesn't matter how it happened. Clinical psychologist/sociologist Dr. Nathan Hare says, "Suicide and homicide are two sides of the same coin!" And he adds, "Much of this violence is from a situational disorder caused by oppression." Dr. Frantz Fanon told us the only way the oppressed can regain his mental health is through the process of revolution, of becoming a social activist to heal himself/herself and our oppressed society.
Of course, as a parent, the first thing I had to do was heal from my trauma and unresolved grief. Loving my partner was out of the question. I sunk so deep into the black hole that it took five years of solitude in the mountains for me to regain my mental equilibrium. Aside from nature itself, it was writing five books in those five years that brought healing and closure to my life. Unlike many parents, I was fortunate to have a rich patron who afforded me time in the mountains to experience neural placidity or a reformation and transformation of my brain cells, and after five years I was ready to face life again.
It was then that I returned to the city, Oakland, and resumed teaching at my Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. Even though fellow author and my elder, Ishmael Reed, described me as, "Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland," it was not aphilosophical adventure, rather I was now forced to help heal those who came by my stand with the pain, trauma and unresolved grief that I'd just healed from. I had to simply listen to them, sometimes eyeball to eyeball because they got right up in my face to make sure I was listening to them and hearing their pain, trauma and grief that they could not share with anyone else, for no one else had time being so overwhelmed by the trauma of their own lives. I listened since I knew God had healed me and prepared me to heal others. For sure, I knew my Academy of the Corner wasn't about discussing philosophical issues or selling my books. Often, people, young men and women, fathers and mothers, lined up at my table for advice and understanding. One mother came with her daughter because the mother wanted her daughter to understand that she was too beautiful and intelligent to be a mother who spent the night with men but came home without money for her baby's Pampers! People came who couldn't understand why the police murder of their loved one was not in the paper, why there was no rally or march for them; there wasn't even a police investigation whether it was murder under the color of law or a gang related murder or murder due to sexual improprieties by their partner who was then set up to be whacked!
Sometimes young men come by who want to kill their blood brother so I did my best to talk them out of it. On more than one occasion, brothers came by who wanted to kill me! Often they were jealous and envious of my books, especially when we conversed and I responded with arrogance as I am known to do when pressed. I had to learn to be humble and not escalate the conversation. One brother got upset when he walked by several times and I forgot he'd told me he didn't want my books because he didn't read. He'd told me the first time he passed that his woman read, not him.
In short, America is under great stress at this time. We are in a low intensity war, mainly with ourselves, not any external enemy or domestic foe. Michael Jackson told us about the Man in the Mirror. We have turned one of the most richest and beautiful countries in the world into a hell hole of violence, mayhem and drug addiction. Drugs are necessary not only for the physical pain but mental pain as well. It is no mystery why Americans are addicted to opioids and other pain killers. The root addiction of America’s pain is addiction to white supremacy (Type I and II, Dr. Nathan Hare). Whites suffer Type I addiction, we suffer type II. The oppressor and oppressed suffer different maladies.
Imagine America is a nation of 300 million people who possess 300 million guns, although everyone doesn't possess a gun. Perhaps, if there was a level playing field, much of the mass murder would subside. America has always tried to keep guns from her African slaves. Alas, after the Civil War she hurried to disarm the 200,000 North American Africans whocould have achieved total liberation if not tricked into disarming.
With the recent mass murder of school children, perhaps our children, the victims, shalldemand a solution that may require them to secure themselves. For sure, parents cannot continue this most unnatural ritual of burying our children.
Clearly, as we see in the Florida school shooting, if our children observe we cannot secure them, they shall ultimately find a way to secure themselves. Imagine the utter failure of parents and adults who must allow children to lead the way to this nation's security. How absurd and insane is this when the USA spends nearly a trillion dollars on military hardware but cannot secure our children. Sadly, with the US trillion dollar defense budget and military bases in over 150 countries, there is no peace in the world, nor is there any peace in America. God bless America!
We pray for all parents who are grieving at this hour over the lost of their children. We share their grief but want them to know time heals all wounds. Healing shall not come overnight, but it shall come, so be patient and pray to your Lord.
And if you lose a child but have other children, love them with all your heart and soul, nomatter male or female, because fathers addicted to the patriarchal mythology,your daughters may surprise you to the utmost degree with their talent and intelligence,thus they shall help you heal from the loss of a male child. Further, your grandchildren will shock you with the spirit of your lost child, but just know your grandchildren may possess the physical and spiritual energy of your lost child, yet you must respect them for themselves and let them be themselves rather than the child you lost. Finally, there are many fatherless and motherless children who need your love. God shall present them to you, so recognize and give them your love. Ache. Ache. Ache.
--Marvin X
3/13/18
With the return of “white nationalism” to the international stage and the White House and new
threats of nuclear war, the black revolutionary occupies a crucial position in society today. Yet a
black revolutionary of historic promise can live among us almost unknown on the radar screen,
even when his name is as conspicuous as Marvin X (who may be the last to wear an X in public
view since the assassination of Malcolm X).....
...You tell me why one of the blackest men to walk this earth, in both complexion and consciousness,
is dressed in a white suit and wearing a white hat; but that is as white as it gets, and inside the book
is black to the bone, a rare and readable compendium of Marvin’s unsurpassed struggle for black
freedom and artistic recognition....
--Dr. Nathan Hare, from Introduction to Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X
Comments
A great, tremendous work!
--Dr. Fritz Pointer, Professor Emeritus/ Contra Costa College
A superb slice of history and analysis!--John Woodford, former editor of Muhammad Speaks and Michigan Today, Professor Emeritus University of Michigan
This latest book from Elder/Baba Marvin X is a classical rendition of resistance from captivity, a resound of nommo, kuntu, antebellum sermons, peculiar institutional complexity, trickster tales and the rebuke of playing in the darkness of white supremacy....
--Dr. Maurice Henderson
Fellow, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Nathan Hare noted in his introduction, i.e., "...for all he has done on the merry-go-round of black social change, Marvin is still in the process of becoming." This may be the truest thing ever written about him and what better compliment for the accomplished than to be seen as becoming more than what they are!
--Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, founder, Lower Bottom Playaz Theatre, Inc.
With respect to Marvin X, I wonder why I am just now hearing about him—I read Malcolm when I was 12, I read Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez and others from the BAM in college and graduate school—why is attention not given to his work in the same places I encountered these other authors? Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because recontextualizing it will add another layer of attention to his incredibly rich body of work.
He is sexist as all get out, in the way that is common for men of his generation andhis radicalism, but he is refreshingly aware of that and working on it. It's just that the work isn't done and if that offends you to see a man in process and still using the 'b' word, look out!
--Dr. Mohja Kahf, University of Arkansas
Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare
With the return of “white nationalism” to the international stage and the White House and new
threats of nuclear war, the black revolutionary occupies a crucial position in society today. Yet a
black revolutionary of historic promise can live among us almost unknown on the radar screen,
even when his name is as conspicuous as Marvin X (who may be the last to wear an X in public
view since the assassination of Malcolm X).
This semblance of anonymity is due in part to the fact that the black revolutionary is liable to
live a part of his or her life incognito, and many become adept at moving in and out of both
public and private places sight unseen. For instance, I didn’t know until I read Marvin X’s
“Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter” that when he put on a memorial service for his comrade
and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, 1998, he was unaware that Eldridge’s ex, Kathleen
Cleaver, had traveled from the East Coast and slipped into the auditorium of the church with
her daughter Joju. As one of the invited speakers I had noticed her curiosity when I remarked
that I had been aware of Eldridge before she was (he and I /had had articles in the Negro History
Bulletin in the spring of 1962) and had met her before Eldridge did, when I was introduced to her
while she was working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at Tuskegee institute,
but luckily for Eldridge I was happily married to the woman who years later would escort Kathleen
around San Francisco in what I recall as a failed search for a black lawyer to take his case when he
returned from exile in France.
Like many other persons across this promised land, I also thought I knew Marvin X. I can clearly
recall seeing him walk into the offices of The Black Scholar Magazine, then in Sausalito, with a
manuscript we published in the early 1970s. However, his reputation had preceded him. For one
thing, then California Governor Ronald Reagan had publicly issued a directive to college administrators at UCLA and Fresno State University to get Angela Davis and Marvin X off the campuses and keep them off. The Fresno Bee Newspaper quoted Reagan as he entered the State College Board of Trustees meeting in his capacity as president of the board, "I want Marvin X off campus by any means necessary!"
Over the years I continued to encounter him: when he organized the First National Black Men’s
Conference, 1980, Oakland Auditorium, that drew over a thousand black men (without benefit of
media coverage) to pay their way into a conference aimed at getting black men to rise again. I was
a member of his Board of Directors. I also attended a number of other conferences he organized,
such as the Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, San Francisco State University, 2001, and the
San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair, 2004, as well as productions of his successful play, “One Day
in the Life,” with a scene of his last meeting with his friend, Black Panther Party co-founder, Dr. Huey
P. Newton, in a West Oakland Crack house.
I will never forget the time he recruited me and the seasoned psychiatric social worker, Suzette
Celeste, MSW, MPA, to put on weekly nighttime workshops in black consciousness and strategies
for “overcoming the addiction to white supremacy.” On many a night I marveled to see him and
his aides branch out fearlessly into the gloom of the Tenderloin streets of San Francisco and bring
back unwary street people and the homeless to participate in our sessions, along with a sparse
coterie of the black bourgeoisie who didn’t turn around or break and run on seeing the dim stairway
to the dungeon-like basement of the white Catholic church.
But when I received and read Marvin’s manuscript, I called and told him that he had really paid his
dues to the cause of black freedom but regretfully had not yet received his righteous dues.
As if to anticipate my impression, the designer of the book cover has a silhouetted image of Marvin,
though you wouldn’t recognize him if you weren’t told, in spite of the flood lights beaming down on
him from above like rays directly from high Heaven, as if spotlighting the fact that Marvin ‘s day has
come.
You tell me why one of the blackest men to walk this earth, in both complexion and consciousness, is
dressed in a white suit and wearing a white hat; but that is as white as it gets, and inside the book is
black to the bone, a rare and readable compendium of Marvin’s unsurpassed struggle for black
freedom and artistic recognition.
Black revolutionaries wondering what black people should do now can jump into this book and so
can the Uncle Tom: the functional toms find new roles for the uncle tom who longs for freedom but
prefers to dance to the tune of the piper; the pathological tom, whose malady is epidemic today, as
well as the Aunt Tomasinas, can be enlightened and endarkened according to their taste in this literary and readable smorgasbord.
“Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X” is a diary and a compendium, a textbook for
revolutionary example and experience, a guide for change makers, a textbook for Black Studies
and community action, including city planners who will profit from his proposals and experiences
in his collaboration with the mayor and officials of Oakland to commercialize and energize the inner
city, with a Black Arts Movement Business District (BAMBD) that could be the greatest black cultural
and economic boon since the Harlem Renaissance. No longer just talk and get-tough rhetoric, his
current project is cultural economics, Oakland’s Black Arts Movement Business District, an urban
model evolving in real time in the heart of downtown Oakland, where people like Governor Jerry
Brown once tried their hand before they turned and fled back into the claws of the status quo.
I can’t say everything is in this book, just that it reflects the fact that Marvin, for all he has done on
the merry-go-round of black social change, is still in the process of becoming.
Readers from the dope dealer to the dope addict to the progressive elite, the Pan African
internationalist, the amateur anthropologist, the blacker than thou, the try to be black,
the blacker-than-thous, the try to be white (who go to sleep at night and dream they
will wake up white) and other wannabes; in other words from the Nouveau Black to the
petit bourgeois noir and bourgie coconuts, “Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X”
is a fountainhead of wisdom, with a fistful of freedom nuggets and rare guidance in resisting
oppression or/and work to build a new and better day.
Dr. Nathan Hare
3/8/18
Dr. Nathan Hare, Father Black and Ethnic Studies, with his student, Marvin X
photo Adam Turner
Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X
Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare
Black Bird Press, Oakland, April, 2018
limited edition, signed
paperback
500 pages
$29.95
Pre-publication discount price $19.95
pay by credit card, 510-200-4164
email: mxjackmon@gmail.com
Marvin X is now available for interviews and
readings coast to coast.
mxjackmon@gmail.com
Coming soon to a theatre near you
Marvin X Driving Miss Libby
A tragi-comedy
written, directed and produced by
Marvin X
3/11/18
copyright (c) 2018 Marvin X
Marvin X and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf at Laney College BAM 50th Celebration
photo Jahahara Alkebulan Ma'at
John Davis, thanks for your compliment, but we have no idea how powerful we are. Tommy Fuentes, our classmate at Edison High, told me recently, "Marvin, we didn't wait for the teacher to come to class, we waited for you because we wanted to hear what you were going to say in class that day!"
Look at the black power of the film Black Panther, a billion dollars in a couple of weeks! Black Power! When Black Power stands white power shall fall in an instant, quicker than you can say Jackie Robinson! lol You stand up, they stand down. Marcus Garvey said it best, "Up you mighty people, you can accomplish what you will!"
As per my son, thank you for your condolences, but I enjoyed him for 39 years, probably longer than many parents enjoyed their children in this Valley of the Shadow of Death! Dr. Nathan Hare noted that we had Martin Luther King, Jr. for 39 years and Malcolm for about the same. Dr. Hare said Martin and Malcolm suffered homicide, my son suffered suicide, two sides of the same coin of life in America for North American Africans.
When I interviewed James Baldwin in his New York apartment, December, 1968, he said, "It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad. It's a miracle for a black father to raise a son in this madness. And I applaud all the fathers who have done so. Imagine, it is December and we are celebrating the Prince of Peace while we bomb the hell out of Vietnam."
FYI, that December of 1968, James Baldwin had no heat in his apartment! Ancestor Amiri Baraka said, "Our artists give us visions and prophesy. If we don't take care of them we shall get no visions nor prophesy!"
Amiri Baraka also taught me to get the reward, fuck the award, the reward is the money! I have a house full of awards but an empty bank account. I also have boxes of awards to Drs. Nathan and Julia Hare, along with their archives and mine, but our bank accounts are empty. Supposedly, this is the fate of pioneers that everyone else benefits, but the founders who gave their lives, sweat and blood and tears for the cause, the cause, the cause, just because live in poverty, virtual house arrest, by the white man and the black bourgeoisie, especially the socalled progressive black bourgeoisie. With over 400 Black Studies Departments across America, why could not these tenured niggas give Dr. Nathan Hare, with two PhDs, in Sociology and Clinical Psychology a position, yet they honor him with awards but no reward while he struggles at this hour to care for his wife, Dr. Julia Hare as she suffers from Alzheimer.
Well, as per myself, I am down with Qur'an: "We feed you for Allah's pleasure only, we desire from you neither reward nor thanks!"
Dear Parents,
I write to you as a father who buried one of my two sons. Darrel/Abdul Jackmon/El Muhajir transitioned at 39 years old from manic depression and took his life by walking into a train.He graduated from University of California, Berkeley in Arabic and Near Eastern Literature. He studied at the American University, Cairo, Egypt, and won a Fulbright fellowship to the University of Damascus, Syria. He was a graduate student in Near Eastern Studies at Harvard University until his disability overwhelmed him. People said he was my twin: he looked like me, talked like me, laughed like me, walked like me. Indeed, he was my friend, my brother, even though they say a parent should not be so close to their child. He often told me he was going to preach my funeral and tell every secret thing he knew about me. But as happens so often these days, I spoke at his funeral.
So I say to all parents who have lost and buried children in America, for whatever reason,I understand your pain like no other pain I ever experienced in my 73 years on this planet. Some parents lost children from police, gang or other forms of violence. It doesn't matter how it happened. Clinical psychologist/sociologist Dr. Nathan Hare says, "Suicide and homicide are two sides of the same coin!" And he adds, "Much of this violence is from a situational disorder caused by oppression." Dr. Frantz Fanon told us the only way the oppressed can regain his mental health is through the process of revolution, of becoming a social activist to heal himself/herself and our oppressed society.
Of course, as a parent, the first thing I had to do was heal from my trauma and unresolved grief. Loving my partner was out of the question. I sunk so deep into the black hole that it took five years of solitude in the mountains for me to regain my mental equilibrium. Aside from nature itself, it was writing five books in those five years that brought healing and closure to my life. Unlike many parents, I was fortunate to have a rich patron who afforded me time in the mountains to experience neural placidity or a reformation and transformation of my brain cells, and after five years I was ready to face life again.
It was then that I returned to the city, Oakland, and resumed teaching at my Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. Even though fellow author and my elder, Ishmael Reed, described me as, "Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland," it was not aphilosophical adventure, rather I was now forced to help heal those who came by my stand with the pain, trauma and unresolved grief that I'd just healed from. I had to simply listen to them, sometimes eyeball to eyeball because they got right up in my face to make sure I was listening to them and hearing their pain, trauma and grief that they could not share with anyone else, for no one else had time being so overwhelmed by the trauma of their own lives. I listened since I knew God had healed me and prepared me to heal others. For sure, I knew my Academy of the Corner wasn't about discussing philosophical issues or selling my books. Often, people, young men and women, fathers and mothers, lined up at my table for advice and understanding. One mother came with her daughter because the mother wanted her daughter to understand that she was too beautiful and intelligent to be a mother who spent the night with men but came home without money for her baby's Pampers! People came who couldn't understand why the police murder of their loved one was not in the paper, why there was no rally or march for them; there wasn't even a police investigation whether it was murder under the color of law or a gang related murder or murder due to sexual improprieties by their partner who was then set up to be whacked!
Sometimes young men come by who want to kill their blood brother so I did my best to talk them out of it. On more than one occasion, brothers came by who wanted to kill me! Often they were jealous and envious of my books, especially when we conversed and I responded with arrogance as I am known to do when pressed. I had to learn to be humble and not escalate the conversation. One brother got upset when he walked by several times and I forgot he'd told me he didn't want my books because he didn't read. He'd told me the first time he passed that his woman read, not him.
In short, America is under great stress at this time. We are in a low intensity war, mainly with ourselves, not any external enemy or domestic foe. Michael Jackson told us about the Man in the Mirror. We have turned one of the most richest and beautiful countries in the world into a hell hole of violence, mayhem and drug addiction. Drugs are necessary not only for the physical pain but mental pain as well. It is no mystery why Americans are addicted to opioids and other pain killers. The root addiction of America’s pain is addiction to white supremacy (Type I and II, Dr. Nathan Hare). Whites suffer Type I addiction, we suffer type II. The oppressor and oppressed suffer different maladies.
Imagine America is a nation of 300 million people who possess 300 million guns, although everyone doesn't possess a gun. Perhaps, if there was a level playing field, much of the mass murder would subside. America has always tried to keep guns from her African slaves. Alas, after the Civil War she hurried to disarm the 200,000 North American Africans whocould have achieved total liberation if not tricked into disarming.
With the recent mass murder of school children, perhaps our children, the victims, shalldemand a solution that may require them to secure themselves. For sure, parents cannot continue this most unnatural ritual of burying our children.
Clearly, as we see in the Florida school shooting, if our children observe we cannot secure them, they shall ultimately find a way to secure themselves. Imagine the utter failure of parents and adults who must allow children to lead the way to this nation's security. How absurd and insane is this when the USA spends nearly a trillion dollars on military hardware but cannot secure our children. Sadly, with the US trillion dollar defense budget and military bases in over 150 countries, there is no peace in the world, nor is there any peace in America. God bless America!
We pray for all parents who are grieving at this hour over the lost of their children. We share their grief but want them to know time heals all wounds. Healing shall not come overnight, but it shall come, so be patient and pray to your Lord.
And if you lose a child but have other children, love them with all your heart and soul, nomatter male or female, because fathers addicted to the patriarchal mythology,your daughters may surprise you to the utmost degree with their talent and intelligence,thus they shall help you heal from the loss of a male child. Further, your grandchildren will shock you with the spirit of your lost child, but just know your grandchildren may possess the physical and spiritual energy of your lost child, yet you must respect them for themselves and let them be themselves rather than the child you lost. Finally, there are many fatherless and motherless children who need your love. God shall present them to you, so recognize and give them your love. Ache. Ache. Ache.
--Marvin X
3/13/18
With the return of “white nationalism” to the international stage and the White House and new
threats of nuclear war, the black revolutionary occupies a crucial position in society today. Yet a
black revolutionary of historic promise can live among us almost unknown on the radar screen,
even when his name is as conspicuous as Marvin X (who may be the last to wear an X in public
view since the assassination of Malcolm X)........You tell me why one of the blackest men to walk this earth, in both complexion and consciousness,
is dressed in a white suit and wearing a white hat; but that is as white as it gets, and inside the book
is black to the bone, a rare and readable compendium of Marvin’s unsurpassed struggle for black
freedom and artistic recognition....
--Dr. Nathan Hare, from Introduction to Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X
Comments
A great, tremendous work!
--Dr. Fritz Pointer, Professor Emeritus/ Contra Costa College
A superb slice of history and analysis!--John Woodford, former editor of Muhammad Speaks and Michigan Today, Professor Emeritus University of Michigan
This latest book from Elder/Baba Marvin X is a classical rendition of resistance from captivity, a resound of nommo, kuntu, antebellum sermons, peculiar institutional complexity, trickster tales and the rebuke of playing in the darkness of white supremacy....
--Dr. Maurice Henderson
Fellow, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Nathan Hare noted in his introduction, i.e., "...for all he has done on the merry-go-round of black social change, Marvin is still in the process of becoming." This may be the truest thing ever written about him and what better compliment for the accomplished than to be seen as becoming more than what they are!
--Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, founder, Lower Bottom Playaz Theatre, Inc.
With respect to Marvin X, I wonder why I am just now hearing about him—I read Malcolm when I was 12, I read Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez and others from the BAM in college and graduate school—why is attention not given to his work in the same places I encountered these other authors? Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because recontextualizing it will add another layer of attention to his incredibly rich body of work.
He is sexist as all get out, in the way that is common for men of his generation andhis radicalism, but he is refreshingly aware of that and working on it. It's just that the work isn't done and if that offends you to see a man in process and still using the 'b' word, look out!
--Dr. Mohja Kahf, University of Arkansas
Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare
With the return of “white nationalism” to the international stage and the White House and new
threats of nuclear war, the black revolutionary occupies a crucial position in society today. Yet a
black revolutionary of historic promise can live among us almost unknown on the radar screen,
even when his name is as conspicuous as Marvin X (who may be the last to wear an X in public
view since the assassination of Malcolm X).
This semblance of anonymity is due in part to the fact that the black revolutionary is liable to
live a part of his or her life incognito, and many become adept at moving in and out of both
public and private places sight unseen. For instance, I didn’t know until I read Marvin X’s
“Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter” that when he put on a memorial service for his comrade
and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, 1998, he was unaware that Eldridge’s ex, Kathleen
Cleaver, had traveled from the East Coast and slipped into the auditorium of the church with
her daughter Joju. As one of the invited speakers I had noticed her curiosity when I remarked
that I had been aware of Eldridge before she was (he and I /had had articles in the Negro History
Bulletin in the spring of 1962) and had met her before Eldridge did, when I was introduced to her
while she was working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at Tuskegee institute,
but luckily for Eldridge I was happily married to the woman who years later would escort Kathleen
around San Francisco in what I recall as a failed search for a black lawyer to take his case when he
returned from exile in France.
Like many other persons across this promised land, I also thought I knew Marvin X. I can clearly
recall seeing him walk into the offices of The Black Scholar Magazine, then in Sausalito, with a
manuscript we published in the early 1970s. However, his reputation had preceded him. For one
thing, then California Governor Ronald Reagan had publicly issued a directive to college administrators at UCLA and Fresno State University to get Angela Davis and Marvin X off the campuses and keep them off. The Fresno Bee Newspaper quoted Reagan as he entered the State College Board of Trustees meeting in his capacity as president of the board, "I want Marvin X off campus by any means necessary!"
Over the years I continued to encounter him: when he organized the First National Black Men’s
Conference, 1980, Oakland Auditorium, that drew over a thousand black men (without benefit of
media coverage) to pay their way into a conference aimed at getting black men to rise again. I was
a member of his Board of Directors. I also attended a number of other conferences he organized,
such as the Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, San Francisco State University, 2001, and the
San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair, 2004, as well as productions of his successful play, “One Day
in the Life,” with a scene of his last meeting with his friend, Black Panther Party co-founder, Dr. Huey
P. Newton, in a West Oakland Crack house.
I will never forget the time he recruited me and the seasoned psychiatric social worker, Suzette
Celeste, MSW, MPA, to put on weekly nighttime workshops in black consciousness and strategies
for “overcoming the addiction to white supremacy.” On many a night I marveled to see him and
his aides branch out fearlessly into the gloom of the Tenderloin streets of San Francisco and bring
back unwary street people and the homeless to participate in our sessions, along with a sparse
coterie of the black bourgeoisie who didn’t turn around or break and run on seeing the dim stairway
to the dungeon-like basement of the white Catholic church.
But when I received and read Marvin’s manuscript, I called and told him that he had really paid his
dues to the cause of black freedom but regretfully had not yet received his righteous dues.
As if to anticipate my impression, the designer of the book cover has a silhouetted image of Marvin,
though you wouldn’t recognize him if you weren’t told, in spite of the flood lights beaming down on
him from above like rays directly from high Heaven, as if spotlighting the fact that Marvin ‘s day has
come.
You tell me why one of the blackest men to walk this earth, in both complexion and consciousness, is
dressed in a white suit and wearing a white hat; but that is as white as it gets, and inside the book is
black to the bone, a rare and readable compendium of Marvin’s unsurpassed struggle for black
freedom and artistic recognition.
Black revolutionaries wondering what black people should do now can jump into this book and so
can the Uncle Tom: the functional toms find new roles for the uncle tom who longs for freedom but
prefers to dance to the tune of the piper; the pathological tom, whose malady is epidemic today, as
well as the Aunt Tomasinas, can be enlightened and endarkened according to their taste in this literary and readable smorgasbord.
“Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X” is a diary and a compendium, a textbook for
revolutionary example and experience, a guide for change makers, a textbook for Black Studies
and community action, including city planners who will profit from his proposals and experiences
in his collaboration with the mayor and officials of Oakland to commercialize and energize the inner
city, with a Black Arts Movement Business District (BAMBD) that could be the greatest black cultural
and economic boon since the Harlem Renaissance. No longer just talk and get-tough rhetoric, his
current project is cultural economics, Oakland’s Black Arts Movement Business District, an urban
model evolving in real time in the heart of downtown Oakland, where people like Governor Jerry
Brown once tried their hand before they turned and fled back into the claws of the status quo.
I can’t say everything is in this book, just that it reflects the fact that Marvin, for all he has done on
the merry-go-round of black social change, is still in the process of becoming.
Readers from the dope dealer to the dope addict to the progressive elite, the Pan African
internationalist, the amateur anthropologist, the blacker than thou, the try to be black,
the blacker-than-thous, the try to be white (who go to sleep at night and dream they
will wake up white) and other wannabes; in other words from the Nouveau Black to the
petit bourgeois noir and bourgie coconuts, “Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X”
is a fountainhead of wisdom, with a fistful of freedom nuggets and rare guidance in resisting
oppression or/and work to build a new and better day.
Dr. Nathan Hare
3/8/18
Dr. Nathan Hare, Father Black and Ethnic Studies, with his student, Marvin X
photo Adam Turner
Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X
Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare
Black Bird Press, Oakland, April, 2018
limited edition, signed
paperback
500 pages
$29.95
Pre-publication discount price $19.95
pay by credit card, 510-200-4164
email: mxjackmon@gmail.com
Marvin X is now available for interviews and
readings coast to coast.
mxjackmon@gmail.com
Coming soon to a theatre near you
copyright (c) 2018 Marvin X
photo Ken Johnson
Dialogue from trailer
Scene opens with Marvin X and Miss Libby at car. He opens back door.
MX
Get in Miss Libby.
Libby
You’re taking me to City Hall, right?
MX
Yes, ma’am, but we going the long way. Need to talk with you.
Libby
Marv, I need to get to work. I have appointments!
MX
I’ll get you there soon enough. Let’s ride through the hills, check out the view.
Libby
(Inside the car. Leaning on the front seat, pleading.) I don’t have time, Marv.
MX
Ain’t you the mayor? They can wait!
(He drives off toward a view of Oakland flatlands and bay, pulls up.)
Libby
Ok, be quick. What’s up?
MX
What’s up? What’s up? White gul, you done fucked up!
Libby
(Acting innocent) What do you mean, Marv?
MX
White gul, you know damn well what I mean! Don’t act dumb. You done put all eyes on Oakland
playing a goddamn spotter for the Mexican Mafia. What the fuck is wrong with you, white gul. I
thought I taught you better than doing some stupid shit like that. Thought I told you to stop taking
advice from Gov. Moonbeam, but you can’t help it, huh?
Libby
Oh, Marv, don’t be so hard on me. You sound like my husband. I’m just doing what I think is right,
that’s all.
MX
You a goddamn lie.
Libby
Honest, Marv. You know I’m a very sound thinker.
MX
You don’t sound too sound to me. Got that cracker AG Sessions bout to indict yo ass. How sound
is that, white gul.
Libby
Would you please stop calling me white gul?
MX
What you want me to call you, Miss Ann?
Libby
Mayor Libby would be fine. Or just Libby.
MX
Forget all this formal shit, white woman. Don’t bring heat on my town. This is my town, bitch. We
shed blood for this motherfucker. You got amnesia?
Libby
No, Marv, you’re right, I’m just standing in as we agreed.
MX
Thank you.
Libby
But I’m just standing up for our citizens and other human beings in Oakland.
MX
But you tipped criminals ICE was coming. That some crazy shit, Miss Libby.
(He gets out and let’s her out. They view the flatlands. Camera pans Bay.)
Libby
I tipped innocent people who have the human right to sanctuary in our city.
MX
Bullshit, don’t play politricks with the immigrants.
Libby
I wouldn’t do that.
MX
The hell you wouldn’t. Take a deep breath. (They inhale, exhale)
Nice day in the Bay, huh?
Libby
Yeah, but seriously, you gotta get me to City Hall.
MX
To meet with them motherfuckin’ developers?
Libby
Well….
MX
Well my ass.
Libby
Let’s go, Marv.
MX
I ain’t finished with you, yet! (Takes her hand.) Look, you doing some dangerous shit just to get
reelected.
Libby (Drops his hand) I’m serious, Marv., I’m standing up for what’s right.
MX
The hell you are! You working on the Latino vote and you know it.
Libby
Don’t insult me Marv. I consider you a dear friend.
MX
Well, as your friend, I advise you to stop trying to be a black panther, white gul! (They laugh, but
he is serious). You bring heat on the city and that ain’t cool. Not for the Latinos and it sure ain’t
helping us blacks. Did I hear you tell the media you willing to go to jail for the immigrants?
Libby
Yes and I meant it!
MX
Well, I want you to take yo little thin white ass to Santa Rita County Jail for us, get these
motherfuckin racist pigs off our asses, get my people outta them goddamn tents. We didn’t shed
blood on these streets to end up in tents. I ain’t got nothing against the Dreamers but you know
black history. What happened on New Year’s Day every year Africans suffered in the American
slavery system? What happened, Miss Ann, excuse me, Miss Libby?
Libby
I know black history, Marv?
MX
Well what happened?
Libby
New Year’s was the auction day, right?
MX
Right, the day when children, men and women were bought and sold down the river, never to
see each other again. You think America really gives a fuck about these dreamers.
Libby
Well, I do.
MX
Get in the car. I’m dropping you at Santa Rita Jail, let’s see if you Martin Luther King, Jr. in drag?
Let’s see if they got some bologna samishes ready fa yo ass.
Libby
(Opens door for her, then changes his mind)
MX
Get in the front, bitch!
(He slams her door shut, hits rubber and speeds off, mumbles to himself)
Libby
What’d you say?
MX
Don’t say nothing to me, I’m through wit yo ass.
Libby
Please, Marv, I’m sorry.
MX
Naw you ain’t, you ain’t sorry, you pitiful! Miss Pitiful. Yo nuclear scientist husband need to
dispose of yo ass.
Libby
Don’t say that, Marv, I love my husband.
MX
Don’t no politician love nobody and you know it better’n anyone. You faking the funk.
The car descends the hills into the flatland.
Libby
Hurry, Marv, I’m late for an important appointment.
MX
Chill, bitch. I’m taking you to City Hall so you can do yo thang!
Libby
Thank you.
MX
I know what to do with yo ass.
Libby
What?
MX
I’m gonna support Cat for Mayor. I’m telling you right now so it won’t be news to you.
Libby
Really, you would support Cat against me?
MX
Yes, she’s a true trooper and you know she after yo ass, don’t you?
Libby
Of course. She’s a powerful woman and I respect her, I really do.
MX
Well, we know you got Moonbeam backing you. But Cat got the people.
Libby
Well, it’ll just be a little cat fight, won’t it?
MX
Yeah, two pussycats!
Libby
You know I need your support, Marv.
MX
Naw, baby, you blew it.
Libby
Wasn’t I the first to support your Black Arts Movement Celebration in Oakland?
thought I taught you better than doing some stupid shit like that. Thought I told you to stop taking
advice from Gov. Moonbeam, but you can’t help it, huh?
that’s all.
is that, white gul.
shed blood for this motherfucker. You got amnesia?
reelected.
he is serious). You bring heat on the city and that ain’t cool. Not for the Latinos and it sure ain’t
helping us blacks. Did I hear you tell the media you willing to go to jail for the immigrants?
motherfuckin racist pigs off our asses, get my people outta them goddamn tents. We didn’t shed
blood on these streets to end up in tents. I ain’t got nothing against the Dreamers but you know
black history. What happened on New Year’s Day every year Africans suffered in the American
slavery system? What happened, Miss Ann, excuse me, Miss Libby?
see each other again. You think America really gives a fuck about these dreamers.
dispose of yo ass.
MX
Yes.
Libby
Didn’t I support your Black Arts Movement Business District?
MX
Yes, but you haven’t done anything since it was proclaimed.
Libby
You haven’t asked me to do anything.
MX
You’re right. I gave up on City Hall after your Council President faked on us. She scared to fly
the Red, Black and Green. I hate a weak bitch! She in bed with developers too. I swear, you
politicians are a motherfucker. (They arrive at City Hall, Jokes) Get out of my car! (He opens the door
for her. They embrace)
Libby
Kujichagulia, Marv!
MX
Yeah, Miss Libby, Kujichagulia (She departs into City Hall, he drives off)
The End
This gave me all of the feels (and giggles) .... and I AM coming for her.
So much respect Baba Marvin
xo
Cat
Cat Brooks
Executive Director, Justice Teams Network
Co-Founder, Anti Police-Terror Project
Co-Host, UpFront on KPFA Radio
the Red, Black and Green. I hate a weak bitch! She in bed with developers too. I swear, you
politicians are a motherfucker. (They arrive at City Hall, Jokes) Get out of my car! (He opens the door
for her. They embrace)
The End
This gave me all of the feels (and giggles) .... and I AM coming for her.
So much respect Baba Marvin
xo
Cat
Cat Brooks
Executive Director, Justice Teams Network
Co-Founder, Anti Police-Terror Project
Co-Host, UpFront on KPFA Radio
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