Notes: Revolution, Youth, Old Age, Sickness and Death at San Francisco State University
Black Students at San Francisco State University ignited the longest and most violent student rebellion in American Academic History, 1968, in their struggle to establish Black and Ethnic Studies, joined by Third World peoples. Howard University Sociology Professor Dr. Nathan Hare was recruited for Chair of Black Studies at SF State College/now University, but he was rejected by the administration that had no desire to establish Black and Ethnic Studies at SFSC/U. Another critical issue was BSU/Black Panther Minister of Education, George Murray. "They" wanted him removed as lecturer in the English Department.
In 1968 I was underground in Harlem, NY, after I refused to fight in Vietnam. I dropped out of SFSC/U a short time the SFC/U Drama Department produced my first play, Flowers for the Trashman, at the suggestion of my English Professor, Medievalist, John Gardner. After the Drama Department’s production, an honor for an undergraduate, I dropped out of college to establish my own theatre in the Fillmore, across from Tree’s Pool Hall as described in Bernard’s narrative. Bernard mentions Leonard’s Bar B Que, Sun Reporter Newspaper, Half Note Club on Divisadero, Bunny Simon’s Play Pen and the jazz venue The Both/And.
Bunny Simon gave Black Dialogue Magazine his venue for a writer’s conference. If my memory is correct, cerca 1966, we performed my second play Come Next Summer, starring Bobby Seale as a young revolutionary trying to find himself. A white Communist, Saul Einstein, was trying to recruit the young black revolutionary. Soon after Bancobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party.
This is why I say the Black Arts Movement was not the sister but the mother of the Black Arts Movement.
When LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka came to SFC/U with his Communications Project that included plays, poetry and a film Black Spring, now lost, it advanced the radical consciousness of BSU students and others. After George Murray performed the Preacher in Ben Caldwell’s The First Militant Preacher, he was never the same, he thereafter donned the persona of the revolutionary and was soon appointed Black Panther Party Minister of Education, as well as a member of the BSU Central Committee.
George Murray
and I were undergrads at SFSC/U. He was a conservative poet from the Church of God in Christ, a church in East Oakland founded by his father. Knowing George as an undergrad, I would have never suspected he would become Minister of Education of the Black Panther Party. Yet my deepest suspicions told me George was revolutionized when he performed in LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka's SFSU Communications Project, 1967.
Contrary to Larry Neal's classic essay on the Black Arts Movement, in which vhe asserted, "The Black Arts Movement is the sister of the Black Power Movement
8/4/18 Marvin X Notes on the Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at SFSU, 1968
How ironic to sit reading the life stories of my comrades in the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University, then stopping to call one of the student warriors, Judge George Colbert, in his hospital bed, with another warrior at his side, Terry Collins.
Last night I was in San Francisco at the home of Drs. Julia and Nathan Hare. Julia was asleep. Dr. Hare was editing my next book Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X, Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare.
I am relieved he agreed to edit the manuscript, he has allowed me to get into my top priority project: The Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University.
As I perused the life stories of BSU and Strike leaders, given to me by BSU strike leader Bernard Stringer , I thought about the fact that their narratives fit perfectly into the central theme of North American African Literature and liberation struggle: How I Got Ova', i.e., how I survived the American genocide of North American Africans.
The early life of fellow students Bernard Stringer and Sharon Treskanoff (just for starters in my perusal) was depressing enough in the delineation of their comic-tragedy ( see Diop, Cultural Unity of Africa) of North American African students, not to think of my own narrative Somethin' Proper, Autobiography of a North American African Poet, Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare), Black Bird Press, 1998. Sharon Treskanoff's story is a plethora of what North American Africans endure in these hells of North America. An old North American African is reported to have said, "Being Black ain't so bad, it's just inconvenient!" To escape this pervasive inconvenience, my daughter, Muhammida El Muhajir, has returned to our Motherland, Africa, now residing in Accra, Ghana, along with 5,000 North American Africans in Accra, Ghana. My daughter told Al Jazeera, "...Ghana may not have electricity 24/7, but they don't have white supremacy 24/7.... When I visit expensive stores, restaurants and hotels, nobody follows me around. Police do not kill people for no reason!...."
Muhammida as child of conscious parents (her mother Nisa Ra, was part of the Third World Student Revolution at UC Berkeley when she met Marvin X, Lecturer in Black Studies, 1972. When Muhammida produced her inter-generational discussions in Brooklyn, NY and Philadelphia entitled Black Power Babies, and after reading the narratives of Bernard Stringer and Sharon Truskenoff, we must not submit to the reactionary narrative our liberation struggle was a failure, although the Black Liberation Army, coast to coast, suffered a military defeat by the overwhelming forces of the USA oppressor. But we have brainwashed our conscious children to continue the revolution until victory.
Sharon's narrative was full of joy and pain, Texas, San Francisco Hunters Point paid. As per Bernard Stringer's childhood joy and pain, I know well because his father operated a grocery store in Fresno at Dunn and Thorne Streets. My grandmother lived on Dunn, across the street in the projects so I grew up in Mr. Stringer's store, a tall black man who spoke with authority. I don't think anyone ever robbed Mr. Stringer's store. I think Bernard concurred.
Sharon came from conscious parents in an interracial family, they were progressive and aggressive social activists.
What we see here is the story of generations of freedom fighters. The BSU students did not jump out of the box. First came the Negro Students Association. So we evolve, struggle and pass the baton to our children. Don't think they don't know what to do, alas, freedom is in their DNA!
Shortly before he joined the ancestors, Amiri Baraka was asked after his reading at UC Berkeley, "Mr. Baraka, what was your greatest achievement?"
He said, "I survived!"
So as I continue reading the SFSU BSU student narratives, I am honored to be in the number! Dr.y Nathan said we were the very best of our generation, who did all we could for our community, and I must add sometimes to the neglect our our families. But in Muhammida's Black Power Babies, our children said they appreciated us as conscious parents, even though we forced them to wear African garb and did not allow them to celebrate Xmas, Easter, 4th of July and other white supremacy myths and rituals.
We appreciate so much the griot Phavia Kujichagulia when she spoke on the inter-generational discussion at Laney College at the 50th Anniversary of the Black Arts Movement, "Yes, I brainwashed my daughter, washed all the white supremacy out of her brain. There is a pic of Kujichagulia in awe of her daughter speaking.
In summary as we imagine a conclusion to this Untold Story, the beat goes on and on and on. We were students who once thought we knew everything but found out we didn't know shit except white supremacy mythology and rituals. But in the Sixties, we know North American African students, at San Francisco State University, but also coast to coast, Columbia University, Cornell U., Howard U., South Carolina State, Orangeburg, SA. The Freedom Riders, students who sat-in, who worked in SNCC for voter registration in the murderous dirty south. Students who called for Black Power! Students who challenged the very ideology of Civil Rights. Malcolm X helped clarified our struggle was about Human Rights.
At San Francisco State College/University, we, North American African students, were slow to realize we were entitled to parity as per Associated Student funds. This sparked a revolution in our human rights consciousness.er
If I may speak on behalf of my comrades in the NSA and BSU, we give praise to our ancestors, elders and all those who assisted our liberation for human rights, especially at SFSU. As Bernard Stringer stressed in his narrative, we thank the white and black community who sometimes gave us scholarship money, yes, mothers in the hood who were inspired we was seeking a college education, white people who saw we were sincere and helped us with employment, housing and food. We thank them as we proceed with The Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University, a work in progress.
Sincerely,
Marvin X
8/4/18I
P.S. Pray for Judge George Colbert, pray for warrior woman Dr. Julia Hare and her devoted mate of 60 years, Dr.Nathan Hare. Liberty or Death!
MX
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