Marvin X's Brief Career in Academia: UC Berkeley, A Case Study by Dr. J. Vern Cromartie of the Contra Costa College Sociology Department

Marvin X and his mentor and colleague in the BAM, Sun Ra, circa 1972, San Francisco, outside Marvin X's Black Educational Theatre on O'farrel between Fillmore and Webster.

Teaching Black Studies
at the
University Of California, Berkeley: A Case Study Of Marvin X and the Afro-American Studies Program

by Dr. J. Vern Cromartie, Contra Costa College, Richmond CA

Abstract
This paper presents a case study of Marvin X and his experiences teaching Black studies at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1970s. Using in-depth interviews and archival research, this paper focuses on the status and role of Marvin X as a member of the faculty in the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

This paper also details some of the successes and problems encountered by Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, this paper addresses some implications of Marvin X’s lecturer status at the University of California, Berkeley.

Introduction
During the 1960s, many programs and departments in Black Studies emerged within academia. Unlike the programs and departments in African Area Studies, the programs and departments , and White corporations. On the other hand, Black Studies entered the curricula primarily through the efforts of Black students, Black faculty, and concerned members of various Black communities (Cromartie, 1993).

The first Black Studies Program to emerge during the 1960s developed at Merritt College with Fritz Pointer as the first chairman. Among the students who led the struggle to establish the program at Merritt College were Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and their friend Marvin X.

The first Black Studies Department to emerge during the 1960s at a four-year college or university took place at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) with Nathan Hare as the first chairman. Marvin X also played a role in the struggle for Black Studies at San Francisco State although he was out of the state ( underground in Harlem, Chicago, Toronto as a protest against the war in Vietnam) during the landmark 1968 strike (X, 1998; Brown, 2004; Cromartie, 1993).

Marvin's role was as a visionary in the transition from the Negro Students Association to the Black Students Union, thus he helped lay the groundwork for the Black Studies Program. Alas, it was BSU President Mar-yam Wadai (Marianna Waddy who submitted an outline for the first Black Studies Curriculum. Fore more on Marianna, see Eldridge Cleaver's Post Prison Writings and Marvin X's autobiography Somethin' Proper. Revisionist historians have largely written out the critical role of Mar-yam Wadai, aka Marianna Waddy from the history of San Francisco State University. She was critical in forcing the name change from the Negro Student Association to the Black Students Union.

Eventually, Marvin X taught at a number of institutions with fledging programs or departments in Black Studies. Between 1969 and 1982, which was a crucial period in the institutionalization of Black Studies: he taught Black Studies and other courses (English, drama, journalism, technical writing, creative writing, radio and television writing) at Fresno State College (now Fresno State University); University of California, Berkeley, University of California, San Diego; San Francisco State; Mills College; University of Nevada, Reno; Merritt and Laney Colleges; and Kings River Community College (X, 1998).

Although he received a 97% student retention evaluation from Kings River College, he never sought another college position. Although he loved his multi-racial students, he knew his calling was to black students and/or the black community.

He still lectures and reads his poetry in academy from time to time,especially on his coast to coast book tours at such universities as Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, University of Arkansas,
University of Oklahoma, University of Virginia, University of Penn, Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, et al, he mainly teaches at his Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. Ishmael Reed calls him "Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland." Ishmael says, "If you want to learn about motivation and inspiration, don't spend all that money going to workshops and seminars, just go stand at 14th and Broadway and watch Marvin X at work."
His chief clientele are the down and out, the depressed, the mentally ill, dope fiends, the homeless and brokenhearted. Sometimes they line up at his classroom so he can listen to their trauma, unresolved grief and suffering. Some days the poor and oppressed bring him donations for his patience and love for the people.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of Marvin X and his experiences with teaching Black studies at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1970s. Making use of in-depth interviews and archival research, this paper will focus on the status and role of Marvin X as a member of the faculty in the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. This paper will also detail some of the successes and problems encountered by Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, this paper will address some implications of Marvin X‘s lecturer status at the University of California, Berkeley.

Status and Role of Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley

During the early 1970s, Marvin X was contracted as a lecturer in the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. At the time, the Afro-American Studies Program was one of several programs in the Ethnic Studies Department. The other programs in the Ethnic Studies Department included Asian American Studies, Chicano Studies, and Native American Studies (Wang, 1997).1

Marvin X was hired to teach a course titled Afro-American Studies 168 Black Theatre. The Supplementary Announcements to the Schedule and Directory and the General Catalogue Fall Quarter, 1971 (University of California, Berkeley, 1971) announced ―Afro-American Studies 168 Black Theatre‖ as a new course and described it as follows: Three hours lecture and two hours laboratory per week. Prerequisites–knowledge of black history, culture, and philosophy. Designed to give students practical and theoretical knowledge of black plays and rituals.

Students will study and perform the works of black playwrights, and other black drama groups to do a comparative analysis. Black playwrights, actors, and directors will be invited to class for a discussion of their work. Students with original writings will be able to have their works read and discussed in class. (p. 1)

The Supplementary Announcements to the Schedule and Directory and the General Catalogue Fall Quarter, 1971 indicated that the course would be taught by ―Mr. Muhajir, which was a non de plume of Marvin X.

As a lecturer in the Afro-American Studies Department, the role of Marvin X was to teach students who enrolled in the course. In an interview conducted with him on March 8, 2009, Marvin X informed the present writer that he taught the course partially on the campus and partially in San Francisco at a place he founded called Black Educational Theatre. Marvin X also reported to the present writer that he could not recall when he taught his first course at the University of California, Berkeley.

He expressed that his first course may have been offered in the fall 1971 quarter, winter 1972 quarter, or the spring 1972 quarter. However, on May 28, 2009, Nisa Ra, one of his former students in the course, told the present writer that she took Marvin X‘s class in the fall 1971 quarter. In addition, during the March 8, 2009 interview, Marvin X stated to the present writer that he was given a contract in the summer 1972 quarter to teach another course in the Afro-American Studies Program. According to Marvin X, he was hired to teach a philosophy course in place of Ken Moshesh. Marvin X stated that he received the contract that summer because Moshesh was not available and needed a substitute.

In his books In the Crazy House Called America and Wish I Could Tell You the Truth, Marvin X (2002, 2005) has listed 1972 as the year he taught at the University of California, Berkeley. David Hansen, a reference librarian at the Bancroft Library, informed the present writer on March 16, 2009 that the official records for the 1971 and 1972 schedules and directories for University of California, Berkeley in its Bancroft Library are incomplete.

Close examination of the University of California, Berkeley‘s (1971b, 1971c) schedules and directories for the winter 1972 quarter and the spring 1972 quarter indicates that Marvin X and his typical non de plume were not listed in either. It very well may be that the University of California, Berkeley listed his name and course on a supplementary list that could not be located by the present writer or the reference librarian. As mentioned above, the non de plume of Marvin X is mentioned in the Supplementary Announcements to the Schedule and Directory and the General Catalogue Fall Quarter, 1971.

Nevertheless, if Marvin X is correct, the summer appointment proved to be his final one at the University of California, Berkeley. Marvin X has maintained that he was let go at the University of California, Berkeley in an effort by the administrators to purge radicals from the Afro-American Studies Program and replace them with academicians deemed safer.

Successes of Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley

As mentioned above, Marvin X (1998, 2002, & 2005) has written that he taught at the University of California, Berkeley in 1972. Although his stint at the University of California, Berkeley proved to be short-lived, Marvin X touched the lives of many students on that campus, including the aforementioned Nisa Ra. Eventually, Nisa Ra changed her name from Greta Pope and married Marvin X, they produced a daughter well known in the international hip hop community, Muhammida El Muhajir, a filmmaker (Hip Hop, the New World Order) and global event planner.

While teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X also produced and staged his play titled Resurrection of the Dead. The play was actually written when he was active with the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, New York, 1968. Marvin X has described the play as a myth/ritual dance drama. But before Resurrection, Marvin had collaborated with Sun Ra to produce a musical version of Flowers for the Trashman, retitled Take Care of Business or TCB, including a non-stop five hour production at San Francisco's Harding Theatre with a cast of fifty, including the dancers of choreographer Raymond Sawyer and Ellendar Barnes, along with Marvin's actors and Sun Ra's Arkestra, cerca 1972.
Nisa Ra, former wife of Marvin X, mother of his daughter Muhammida El Muhajir. He and his former wife are close friends and supporters, especially when he is in the Philadelphia area where she lives.

Daughter Muhammida El Muhajir with hip hop diva Mary J. Blige


A youth on an east coast tour with Marvin X, asked his daughter Muhammida, how did it feel to see her mother and father talking together in peace, since he had never seen his mother and father doing such. Marvin X says, "Even if you are not with your wife or baby mama, we should demonstrate to the children that we can be civil, that we can forgive and forget the past mistakes so the children understand that love is unconditional. And for the sake of the children, we must come together in the spirit of love and unity.

In addition to Nisa Ra as a dancer, Resurrection of the Dead featured Victor Willis as lead singer. Willis later became the lead singer and writer of the Village People. Victor credits Marvin X for giving him the inspiration to hit New York City and pen such songs as I'm in the Navy, YMCA and Macho Man. The cast members in the play also included Amina Grant and Jamila Hunter. Jamilah or Charlene Hunter later danced with Shirley McClain and the Alvin Ailey Dancers.

At a ceremony during the production of Resurrection of the Dead, Nisa Ra and other cast members received Arabic names that some continue to use to this day. Thus, this was a name-changing/life changing ritual in the Eastern sense rather than a drama in the Western dramatic tradition.

After leaving the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X continued to be productive in 1972. He traveled to Mexico, Trinidad, and Guyana. Marvin X also interviewed Guyana‘s Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham, and published the interview in the Black Scholar.2 In addition, Marvin X (1972) published a book of poems, proverbs, lyrics, and parables titled Woman—Man’s Best Friend.

Problems of Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley

In 1964, Malcolm X, on the lecture circuit, gave a presentation at the University of California, Berkeley. Among the 7,000 people in Sproul Plaza that day to hear Malcolm X, there stood Marvin X. Malcolm X deeply impressed Marvin X with his articulate analysis of social conditions in the USA. Marvin X was also impressed by Malcolm X‘s advocacy of Black nationalism.

By the time he heard Malcolm X, Marvin X had already been introduced to Black nationalism as an ideology by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, and others. Marvin X (2005) has related that it was at Merritt College where ―I had the fortune or misfortune of being educated on the steps of the college by Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen and others on the merits of Black Nationalism (p. 17).

With regard to Malcolm X, Marvin X (2002) has written that, ―When Malcolm X spoke before seven thousand students at U. C. Berkeley‘s Sproul Plaza (1964), I was in the audience. When he was assassinated, we wore black armbands to express our grief San Francisco State University, actor Danny Glover among us (pp. 93-94).

Marvin X (2002) has also stated that, ―Malcolm‘s oratory influenced me to consider Elijah‘s Islamic Black Nationalism while I was a student at Oakland‘s Merritt College, along with Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen and others who became the new black intelligentsia, the direct product of Malcolm, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah and Elijah‖ (p. 93)

That same year, in 1964, Marvin X earned an AA degree in sociology at the Merritt College. Marvin X also enrolled as an undergraduate at San Francisco State. However, in 1966, he left the institution without earning a degree.

Marvin X (2005) has informed us that, ―After dropping out of San Francisco State in 1966, I was drafted. I fled to Canada (p. 17). By that time, Marvin X had worked briefly as a research assistant at the University of California, Berkeley writing life histories of Black people under the supervision of the legendary Chicago sociologist Dean Lohman.

Marvin X had also written and staged his first play, Flowers for the Trashman, produced by the drama department at San Francisco State.

In addition, Marvin X‘s essays and poems had begun to appear in such periodicals as Soulbook, Black Dialogue, and the Journal of Black Poetry. He would later publish in Black Theatre, Muhammad Speaks, Negro Digest (later Black World), and Black Scholar (X, 1998). Some eight years later, Marvin X would also be addressing students at the University of California, Berkeley. Whereas Malcolm X had addressed the students as a circuit lecturer, Marvin X addressed them as a classroom lecturer.

However, at that time, Marvin X only possessed an AA degree in sociology from Merritt College. Marvin X (1998) has recalled, ―In 1972, before I obtained additional degrees, and after being kicked out of Fresno State, I lectured in Black Studies at U C Berkeley‖ (pp. 203-204). Doubtlessly, it was the publication record and playwright experience that landed Marvin X a post as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

However, it can also be surmised that his lack of graduate degree created a problem for him. Please note there were many lecturers who possessed no degrees in the state college system.
Another problem for Marvin X was the political stances he took. Prior to becoming employed as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X had worked as a lecturer at Fresno State. Although he was relatively popular with the students, the political activities of Marvin X alienated him from the Fresno State administrators and their superiors, including Gov. Ronald Reagan who urged the State College Board of Trustees to get him off campus by any means necessary.

With regard to Ronald Reagan, Marvin X (2005) has said: ―Gov. Ronald Reagan banned me from teaching at Fresno State College, 1969, after he learned I had refused to fight in Vietnam‖ (p. 17). Marvin X added: ―Gov. Reagan had told the State College Board of Trustees to get Marvin X off campus by any means necessary‘‖ (p. 19).

Whereas Reagan launched a vigorous move to oust Eldridge Cleaver as a lecturer in 1968 at the University of California, Berkeley and Angela Davis as an acting assistant professor in 1969 at the University of California, Los Angeles, he also launched a similar move against Marvin X in 1969 at Fresno State.

The October 31, 1969 issue of the Fresno Bee quoted Reagan as beginning a meeting of the California State University System Board of Trustees with the following statement about Marvin X: ―If there is any way to get him off campus—that‘s the question I‘m going to ask today. I‘d like to find out (Quoted in ―Reagan, 1969, p. 6-A).

By the time he began to teach at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X had served five months in prison related to military draft resistance and subsequent flights to Canada, Mexico, and Belize (X, 1998, 2005).

Marvin X has explicitly stated that his radical ways caused a problem for him at the University of California, Berkeley and elsewhere. Looking back on his particular experience at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X (2005) has said that his ―lectureship was short-lived because the entire black studies faculty was purged by the administration for being too radical‖ (p. 19).

He further stated: Acceptable negro scholars were hired and UC Berkeley joined the nationwide trend of removing black radicals from black studies programs. Black studies returned to the old mission of a handful of handkerchief head negroes containing the field negroes, making sure they don‘t revolt.

This happened at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, San Jose State University and elsewhere across the country. Yes, I was angry that reactionary negro intellectuals were hired to teach black studies, negroes who cared nothing about black studies or black people—all they wanted was a job for life, tenured negroes we call them. (pp. 19-20)

He has argued that his experiences in academia reflect the plight of many Black people who sought to teach in higher education. Following Cecil Brown (2004), Marvin X has identified foreign-born Black professoriate as those who were selected to replace native-born Black professoriate.

Cecil noted that after that initial radical thrust to establish black studies in the 1960s, they were immediately removed from the student body and the faculty of colleges and universities coast to coast. I taught at UC Berkeley during the first and last radical black studies regime that was soon replaced with ―tenured negroes.‖

The system realized who and what we were and knew we had to go, after all, the system could not contain us. This happened at UCB, San Francisco State University, Fresno State University and elsewhere, coast to coast. We were immediately replaced with acceptable Negroes, the more pliant variety of military types, intelligence agents, and yes, in many cases, immigrant negroes more acceptable to the colonial college administrators.

Thus Africans and Caribbean Negroes were in many cases less radical, even though much of the African American radical tradition comes from immigrants, such as Marcus Garvey, CLR James, Dr. Walter Rodney, George Padmore, Kwame Toure, Malcolm X and Farakhan. (p. 83)

He continued: And we must ask ourselves would we rather have a radical immigrant African in black studies or a reactionary Negro only because he is a Negro. But Cecil‘s point is that the American academic system feels the immigrant Negroes/Africans are easier to control than the violent black American male.

So the truth is immigrants have replaced Negroes coast to coast, but even black American males who remain are of the passive variety, and those with a Pan African ideology or Afrocentric approach to black studies are often at odds with the original mission of black studies to focus on the plight of the so-called negro in the ghettoes of America, how to uplift him out of his morass and degradation.

The focus on Africa and Pan Africanism was secondary to this central focus, but such a focus by definition requires a radical intellectualism that the University industrial complex of necessity must avoid.

By the time he was hired as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X had developed a stance on the direction he believed the Black Studies Movement should take. Reflecting back on the Black Studies Movement, Marvin X has written: The purpose of Black Studies as we envisioned it and went to war for at San Francisco State University and elsewhere was to relate to the community, to establish institutions in the community that would educate the coming generations in community service, including politics, economics, culture and art.

But Black Studies reverted to Eurocentric patterns of ivory tower academic nonsense and pseudo research, with graduates hating the hood and happy they escaped to somewhere in the den of iniquity called Corporate America. (p. 41)

For Marvin X, the mission of the department or program in Black Studies was to serve the Black community with the provision of what Pierre Bourdieu has termed cultural capital.

He has taken the position that the Black Studies Movement has been taken over by faculty with little loyalty to Black people. Instead of community service, Marvin X has charged that many contemporary Black professors ignore their obligations to help the Black community and instead choose to engage in relatively esoteric research which will collect dust on shelves and few people will ever read. Much of their writings is in a language the people cannot understand.

In the view of Marvin X (2005), White people have too much power in Black Studies ―because we know, in truth, black studies is more or less white studies, rather than turning out activist-scholars, it recycles negroes, giving birth to new generations of colonial servants (p. 88).

He has complained: The activist scholars were long ago removed from academia as a threat to Western scholarship and community liberation. Safe, qualified negroes were brought in who would control the natives and have them chasing rocks in Egypt rather than stopping gunshots in the hood by providing alternative consciousness. . . . Rather than searching for bones in Egypt, the community would be better served giving consciousness to dry bones in the hood. (X, 2005, pp. 88-89)

Marvin X (2005) has further exclaimed that, ―The mission of black studies awaits redemption and African Americans must again crash the gates of academia or construct their own radical academic institutions (p. 85). He added: ―Black studies should institute a recruitment drive to get black males and females back on campus but only if the mission is self and community development, not esoteric journeys to the Motherland‖ (p. 85).

Marvin X has argued that if contemporary professors of Black Studies want to be acceptable to the ancestors in Africa it will be important for them to ―make peace with the trees and swamps and bayous of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana (p. 85).

Likewise, Marvin X has argued that contemporary professors of Black Studies need to connect with Black people in the ghetto. In his view, it is necessary for contemporary professors of Black Studies to ―make peace with them and ―teach them to make peace with themselves (p. 85).

During the early 1970s, Marvin X, nevertheless, saw the handwriting on the wall, as the saying goes. He realized that departments and programs in Black Studies were moving towards requiring lecturers to have graduate degrees. Within one year of his departure from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1973, Marvin X returned to San Francisco State. Consequently, he completed a BA degree in English in 1974. The following year, in 1975, Marvin X proceeded to earn a MA in English from San Francisco State.

In 1974, Marvin X began to teach at San Francisco State as a lecturer. His courses included Black literature, journalism, radio and television writing. In 1975 he was a visiting professor at the University of California, San Diego. Eventually, he left San Francisco State to become a lecturer at Mills College. He later worked at University of Nevada, Reno, Laney College, and Kings River Community College before retiring from teaching (X, 1998).7

Implications of the Lecturer Status for Marvin X in the University

Shamos (2002) has examined the use of titles within higher education institutions in the USA, including the University of California, Berkeley. He has made it clear that there are socially defined positions identified as academic rank in higher education institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley.

In terms of the professoriate at research institutions like the University of California, Berkeley, the highest to low positions include professor, associate professor, assistant professor, lecturer, and instructor. On the one hand, the tenured professor is generally the highest academic rank in the university among the professoriate. On the other hand, the instructor is generally the lowest academic rank in the university among the professoriate (Shamos, 2002). Typically, the lecturer position in a university is a non-tenured academic rank. Lecturers are often employed in a university on a year to year or semester to semester basis. In some cases, there is a written or non-written agreement to bring the lecturer back to teach year after year (Shamos, 2002).

In the case of Marvin X, he was hired on a semester to semester basis. Thus, he had to (1) face the significant consequence of not having a tenure-track position; and (2) face the significant consequence of being able to get terminated at the end of a given semester without having a tenure review board as a safety net.

Summary and Conclusion

This paper has presented a case study of Marvin X and his experiences teaching Black studies in 1972 at the University of California, Berkeley. Making use of in-depth interviews and archival research, this paper has focused on the status and role of Marvin X as a member of the faculty in the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. This paper has also detailed some of the successes and problems encountered by Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley. Additionally, this paper has addressed some implications of Marvin X‘s lecturer status at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 2001, Cornel West, on the lecture circuit, gave a presentation at the University of California, Berkeley. During his talk, West acknowledged his mother, brother, nephew, and cousin. West also acknowledged Marvin X as a friend. As a result of writing, teaching, and political activism, Marvin X has proven to be a well known figure among Black academicians and Black political activists.
Marvin X's daughters Nefertiti and Amira with Dr. Cornel West at the Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness Concert, produced by Marvin X at San Francisco State University, April 1, 2001.
Over the years, the poems, essays, plays, and autobiography of Marvin X have painted pictures of a man committed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In 1967, he was drafted into the military of the USA. Marvin X (2002) has written that he refused induction and fled to Canada ―to preserve my life and liberty, and to pursue happiness‖ (p. 93).8 During the years he taught in higher education, Marvin X inspired his students to commit themselves to the pursuit of life, liberty, and justice. Marvin X is a testament to the teaching and learning that have taken place within the Black Studies Movement at the University of California, Berkeley and elsewhere.

Notes1.

As Wang (1997) pointed out, Afro-American Studies made the transition from program status to department status in 1974.
2. For the interview with Forbes Burnham, see Marvin X (1973). It was conducted in September 1972.
3. Marvin X (1998) has expressed that the White administrators at Fresno State raised the issue of his lack of a graduate degree. According to Marvin X, ―In my case, the college said I had minimal qualifications because I only possessed an A.A. degree at the time, although no degree is necessary to lecture at a California college or university. There were numerous lecturers at Fresno State College and other schools who possessed no degree (p. 203).
4. Ronald Reagan, the governor of California, stated, ―If Eldridge Cleaver is allowed to teach our children, they may come home one night and slit our throats (Quoted in Author, 1998). For information on his experience at Fresno State, see Marvin X (1998, 2005, 2008) and Patterson (1969a, 1969b).
5. For a photo copy of that article, see Marvin X (1998, p. 209).
6. See Bourdieu (2007) for a discussion of cultural capital as a theorem ―to explain the unequal scholastic achievement of children originating from the different social classes and class factions (p. 84).
7. In the spring 1981 semester at Laney College, the present writer was a student of Marvin X. He took a class with Marvin X titled ―Theatre Arts. As partial credit for the class, the present writer wrote a play titled ―A Day in the Life of Hughes, Langston. The play was later staged at the College of Alameda in Alameda, CA and the Egypt Theater in Oakland, CA. The present writer also wrote a review of Marvin X‘s play titled ―In the Name of Love‖ for partial credit for the class. The play featured Zahieb Mwongozi (Craig Erving) in the lead role and was directed by Ayodele Nzinga. The review was published in the Grassroots, a community newspaper based in Berkeley, CA. See Cromartie (1982).

Prior to his teaching stint at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X was tried and convicted of draft resistance in 1971. For his summation (Black Scholar magazine) at his trial wherein he made his relatively famous statement concerning life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, see Marvin X (1971).

References

Auther, Jennifer. (1998, May 1). ―He was a symbol: Eldridge Cleaver dies at 62. CNN. Retrieved March 16, 2009, from http://www.cnn.com/us/9805/01/cleaver.late.obit/ Bourdieu, Pierre. (2007).
The Forms of Capital. In Alan R. Sadovnik (Ed.), Sociology of Education: A Critical Reader (pp. 83-95). New York: Routledge.
Cromartie, J. Vern Cromartie. (1982, January 27-February 9). New Play by Marvin X. Grassroots: Berkeley’s Community Newspaper, 10, 10. Cromartie, J. Vern. (nee Jimmie Levern Cromartie). (1993).
Attitudes of University of California and California State University tenured Sociologists towards an Ethnic Studies General Education Requirement. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI. Patterson, William K. (1969a, October 29).
Ness: ―I Told Keyes Marvin X Not Hired.‖ Fresno Bee, 1-D, 9-D. Patterson, William K. (1969b, October 30).
Judge Ponders Marvin X Ruling. Fresno Bee, 1-A, 6-A.
Reagan Has His Say On Concern Over Marvin X. (1969, October 30). Fresno Bee, 6-A.
Shamos, Michael I. (2002). Handbook of Academic Titles. Retrieved March 14, 2009, from http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/titles/titlebook.htm University of California, Berkeley. (1971). Supplementary Announcements to the Schedule and Directory and the General Catalogue Fall Quarter, 1971. Berkeley: Author. University of California, Berkeley. (1972a).
Schedule and Directory Winter Quarter, 1972. Berkeley: Author. University of California, Berkeley. (1972b).
Schedule and Directory Spring Quarter, 1972. Berkeley: Author.
Wang, Ling-chi. (1997, Spring). Chronology of Ethnic Studies at U. C. Berkeley.
Rap Sheet: A Newsletter of the Department of Ethnic Studies at U. C. Berkeley, 2, 1, 12-16. X, Marvin. (1971, April-May).
Black Justice Must Be Done. Black Scholar, 2, 8-11. X, Marvin. (1972).
Woman—Man’s Best Friend. San Francisco: Black Bird Press. X, Marvin. (1973, February).
A Conversation with Forbes Burnham: Interview by Marvin X. Black Scholar, 4, 24-31. X, Marvin. (1998).
Somethin’ Proper. Castro Valley, CA: Black Bird Press. X, Marvin. (2002).
In the Crazy House Called America. Castro Valley, CA: Black Bird Press. X, Marvin. (2005). Wish I Could Tell You the Truth. Cherokee, CA: Black Bird Press

Marvin X and Muslim American Literature

Teaching Diaspora Literature: Muslim American Literature as an Emerging Field
by Dr. Mohja Kahf

Is there such a thing as Muslim American literature (MAL)? I argue that there is: It begins with the Muslims of the Black Arts Movement (1965-75). The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of its iconic texts; it includes American Sufi writing, secular ethnic novels, writing by immigrant and second-generation Muslims, and religious American Muslim literature. Many of the works I would put into this category can and do also get read in other categories, such as African
American, Arab American, and South Asian literature, "Third World" women's writing, diasporic Muslim literature in English, and so forth. While the place of these works in other categories cannot be denied, something is gained in reading them together as part of an American Muslim cultural landscape. Like Jewish American literature by the 1930s, Muslim American literature is in a formative stage. It will be interesting to see how it develops (and who will be its Philip Roth!)

I suggest the following typology of MAL only as a foothold, a means of bringing a tentative order to the many texts, one that should be challenged, and maybe ultimately dropped altogether. My first grouping, the "Prophets of Dissent," suggests that Muslim works in the Black Arts Movement (BAM) are the first set of writings in American literature to voice a cultural position identifiable as Muslim. Contemporary Muslim writing that takes the achievements of the BAM as an important literary influence also belongs here, and is characterized similarly by its "outsider" status, moral critique of mainstream American values, and often prophetic, visionary tone. In contrast, the writers of what I call "the Multi-Ethnic Multitudes" tend to enjoy "insider" status in American letters, often entering through MFA programs and the literary establishment, getting
published through trade and university book industries, garnering reviews in the mainstream press. They do not share an overall aesthetic but are individual writers of various ethnicities and a wide range of secularisms and spiritualities, and indeed I question my placing them all in one group, and do so temporarily only for the sake of convenience.

On the other hand, my third group, the "New American Transcendentalists," appears to cohere, in aesthetic terms, as writers who share a broad Sufi cultural foundation undergirding their literary work. Their writings often show familiarity with the Sufi poets of several classical Muslim literatures (e.g., in Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu), as well as with American Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century, and that which tends toward the spiritual and the ecstatic in modern
American poetry. Finally, the "New Pilgrims" is my term for a loose grouping of writers for whom Islam is not merely a mode of dissent, cultural background, or spiritual foundation for their writing, but its aim and explicit topic. Of the four groups, the New Pilgrims are the ones who write in an overtly religious mode and motivation, like Ann Bradstreet, Cotton Mather, and the Puritans of early American history. This does not prevent them from being capable of producing
great literature, any more than it prevented the great Puritan writers. Here is an example of just a few writers in each category, by no means a comprehensive list:
Prophets of Dissent
From the Black Arts Movement:
• Marvin X, whose Fly to Allah (1969) is possibly the first book of poems published in English by a Muslim American author.
• Sonia Sanchez, whose A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1974) is the work of her Muslim period.
• Amiri Baraka, whose A Black Mass (2002) renders the Nation of Islam's Yacoub genesis theology into drama. As with Sanchez, the author was Muslim only briefly but the influence of the Islamic period stretches over a significant part of his overall production.
Later Prophets of Dissent include:
• Calligraphy of Thought, the Bay area poetry venue for young "Generation M" Muslim American spoken word artists who today continue in the visionary and dissenting mode of the BAM.
• Suheir Hammad, Palestinian New Yorker, diva of Def Poetry Jam (on Broadway and HBO), whose tribute to June Jordan in her first book of poetry, Born Palestinian, Born Black (1996), establishes her line of descent from the BAM, at least as one (major) influence on her work.
• El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) is an iconic figure for this mode of Muslim American writing and, indeed, for many writers in all four categories.

Multi-Ethnic Multitudes
• Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali, an influential figure in the mainstream American poetry scene, with a literary prize named after him at the University of Utah, brought the ghazal into fashion in English so that it is now taught among other forms in MFA programs.
• Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian American, likewise a "crossover" poet whose work enjoys
prominence in American letters, takes on Muslim content in a significant amount of her
work.
• Sam Hamod, an Arab midwesterner who was publishing poetry in journals at the same time as Marvin X.
• Nahid Rachlin's fiction has been published since well before the recent wave of literature by
others who, like her, are Iranian immigrants.
• Mustafa Mutabaruka, an African American Muslim, debut novel Seed (2002).
• Samina Ali, midwesterner of Indian parentage, debut novel Madras on Rainy Days (2004),
was featured on the June 2004 cover of Poets & Writers.
• Khaled Hosseini, debut novel The Kite Runner (2003).
• Michael Muhammad Knight, a Muslim of New York Irish Catholic background, whose punk rock novel The Taqwacores (2004) delves deeply into Muslim identity issues.
• There are a number of journals where Muslim American literature of various ethnicities can
be found today, among them Chowrangi, a Pakistani American magazine out of New
Jersey, and Mizna, an Arab American poetry magazine out of Minneapolis.

New American Transcendentalists

• Daniel (Abd al-Hayy) Moore is an excellent example of this mode of Muslim American writing. California-born, he published as a Beat poet in the early sixties, became a Sufi Muslim, renounced poetry for a decade, then renounced his renouncement and began publishing again, prolifically and with a rare talent. His Ramadan Sonnets (City Lights, 1986) is a marriage of content and form that exemplifies the "Muslim/American" simultaneity of Muslim American art.
• The Rumi phenomenon: apparently the most read poet in America is a Muslim. He merits mention for that, although technically I am not including literature in translation. Then again, why not? As with so many other of my limits, this is arbitrary and only awaits someone to make a case against it.
• Journals publishing poetry in this mode include The American Muslim, Sufi, Qalbi, and others.

New American Pilgrims

• Pamela Taylor writes Muslim American science fiction. Iman Yusuf writes "Islamic
romance." This group of writers is not limited to genre writers, however.
Dasham Brookins writes and performs poetry and maintains a website, MuslimPoet.com, where poets such as Samantha Sanchez post. Umm Zakiyya (pseud.) has written a novel, If I Should Speak (2001), about a young Muslim American and her roommates in college. Writers in this group also come from many ethnicities but, unlike those in my second category, come together around a more or less coherent, more or less conservative Muslim identity.

Websites tend to ban erotica and blasphemy, for example. The Islamic Writers Alliance, a group formed by Muslim American women, has just put out its first anthology. Major published authors have yet to emerge in this grouping, but there is no reason to think they will not eventually do so. My criteria for Muslim American literature are a flexible combination of three factors: Muslim authorship. Including this factor, however vague or tenuous, prevents widening the scope to the point of meaninglessness, rather than simply including any work about Muslims by an author with no biographical connection to the slightest sliver of Muslim identity (such as Robert Ferrigno with his recent dystopian novel about a fanatical Muslim takeover of America). It is a cultural, not religious, notion of Muslim that is relevant. A "lapsed Muslim" author, as one poet on my roster called himself, is still a Muslim author for my purposes. I am not interested in levels of commitment or practice, but in literary Muslimness.

Language and aesthetic of the writing.

In a few cases, there is a deliberate espousal of an aesthetic that has Islamic roots, such as the Afrocentric Islamic aesthetic of the Muslim authors
in the Black Arts Movement.

Relevance of themes or content.

If the Muslim identity of the author is vague or not explicitly professed, which is often the case with authors in the "Multi-Ethnic Multitudes," but the content itself is relevant to Muslim American experience, I take that as a signal that the text is choosing to enter the conversation of Muslim American literature and ought to be included.In defining boundaries for research that could become impossibly diffuse, I choose to look mainly at fiction and poetry, with autobiography and memoir writings selectively included. I have not included writings in languages other than English, although there are Muslims in America who write in Arabic, Urdu, and other languages. I have looked at the twentieth century onward,
and there is archival digging to be done in earlier periods: the Spanish colonial era may yield Muslim writing, and we already know that some enslaved Muslims in the nineteenth century have left narratives. More research is needed. If one expands the field from "literature" to "Muslim American culture," one can also include Motown, rap, and hip-hop lyrics by Muslim artists, screenplays such as the Muslim American classic The Message by the late Syrian American producer Mustapha Aqqad, books written for children, sermons, essays, and other genres.There are pleasures and patterns that emerge from reading this profusion of disparate texts under the rubric of Muslim American cultural narrative. It is time! I hope, as this field emerges, that others will do work in areas I have left aside in this brief initial exploration.


Love And War
poems
by Marvin X
preface byLorenzo Thomas
1995

Review
by Mohja Kahf

Have spent the last few days (when not mourning with friends and family the passing of my family friend and mentor in Muslim feminism and Islamic work, Sharifa AlKhateeb, (may she dwell in Rahma), immersed in the work of Marvin X and amazed at his brilliance.

This poet has been prolific since his first book of poems, Fly to Allah, (1969), right up to his most recent Love and War Poems (1995) and Land of My Daughters, 2005, not to mention his plays, which were produced (without royalties) in Black community theatres from the 1960s to the present, and essay collections such as In the Crazy House Called America, 2002, and Wish I Could Tell You The Truth, 2005.

Marvin X was a prime shaper of the Black Arts Movement (1964-1970s) which is, among other things, the birthplace of modern Muslim American literature, and it begins with him.

Well, Malik Shabazz and him. But while the Autobiography of Malcolm X is a touchstone of Muslim American culture, Marvin X and other Muslims in BAM were the emergence of a cultural expression of Black Power and Muslim thought inspired by Malcolm, who was, of course, ignited by the teachings and writings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

And that, taken all together, is what I see as the starting point of Muslim American literature. Then there are others, immigrant Muslims and white American Muslims and so forth, that follow.There are also antecedents, such as the letters of Africans enslaved in America. Maybe there is writing by Muslims in the Spanish and Portuguese era or earlier, but that requires archival research of a sort I am not going to be able to do.

My interest is contemporary literature, and by literature I am more interested in poetry and fiction than memoir and non-fiction, although that is a flexible thing.I argue that it is time to call Muslim American literature a field, even though many of these writings can be and have been classified in other ways-studied under African American literature or to take the writings of immigrant Muslims, studied under South Asian ethnic literature or Arab American literature.

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 deserves to be WAY better known than he is among Muslim Americans and generally, in the world of writing and the world at large.

By we who are younger Muslim American poets, in particular, Marvin should be honored as our elder, one who is still kickin, still true to the word!

Love and War Poems is wrenching and powerful, combining a powerful critique of America ("America downsizes like a cripple whore/won't retire/too greedy to sleep/too fat to rest") but also a critique of deadbeat dads and drug addicts (not sparing himself) and men who hate.

"For the Men" is so Quranic poem it gave me chills with verses such as:
for the men who honor wives
and the men who abuse them
for the men who win
and the men who sin
for the men who love God
and the men who hate
for the men who are brothers
and the men who are beasts
"O Men, listen to the wise," the poet pleads:
there is no escapefor the men of this world
or the men of the next

He is sexist as all get out, in the way that is common for men of his generation and his 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. Speaking of the easily offended, he warns in his introduction that "life is often profane and obscene, such as the present condition of African American people."

If you want pure and holy, he says, read the Quran and the Bible, because Marvin is talking about "the low down dirty truth." For all that, the poetry of Marvin X is like prayer, beauty-full of reverence and honor for Truth. "It is. it is. it is."

A poem to his daughter Muhammida is a sweet mix of parental love and pride and fatherly freak-out at her sexuality and independence, ending humbly with:

peace Mu
it's on you
yo world
sister-girl

Other people don't get off so easy, including a certain "black joint chief of staff ass nigguh (kill 200,000 Muslims in Iraq)" in the sharply aimed poem "Free Me from My Freedom." (Mmm hmm, the 'n' word is all over the place in Marvin too.)

Nature poem, wedding poem, depression poem, wake-up call poems, it's all here. Haiti, Rwanda, the Million Man March, Betsy Ross's maid, OJ, Rabin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and other topics make it into this prophetically voiced collection of dissent poetry, so Islamic and so African American in its language and its themes, a book that will stand in its beauty long after the people mentioned in it pass. READ MARVIN X for RAMADAN!--

Mohja Kahf Associate Professor / Dept. of English, Middle East & Islamic Studies, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Marvin_X_the_Father_of_Muslim_American_Literature#ixzz1Tyw34nV1

Somethin' Proper, the Autobiography of Marvin X, from the introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare

Marvin X
photo Kamau Amen Ra





Somethin' Proper, the Autobiography of Marvin X, Black Bird Press, 1998

from the Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare, the Black Think Tank

In SOMETHIN' PROPER, we quickly see that we are inside the pages not only of Marvin's private political papers, comprising a lyrical diary shaped to be read and enjoyed like a novel by the masterful hands of an internationally noted black poet, but we are being escorted to the cutting edge of a fascinating postmodern black literary genre in the making, the notes of an undying black warrior who refuses to give up, give out or give in!

Although easy to read by almost anybody wishing to do so, SOMETHIN' PROPER (apparently a phrase from the drug subculture, i.e., BREAK ME OFF SOMETHIN' PROPER), presents us at once with an opportunity for a deeper understanding of a panorama of participants in the often poignant but sometimes hilarious inner workings of the black male psyche, from the middle class bourgeois pretenders such as "tenured Negroes" on the academic plantation and their "negrocity," to "coconuts" in the corporations, and across the spectrum to brothers in the hood, particularly the way in which utility and haughty demeanor conceal and mask the panoramic and pervasive depression of the black male.

Before his death at the early age of 36, Frantz Fanon, the black psychiatrist who lived and wrote about the relations between the oppressor and oppressed in the battle of Algiers (Wretched of the Earth; Black Skin, White Masks, and A Dying Colonialism), presented us with clear psychiatric paradigms for the struggles Marvin deftly captures for us.

Marvin is able to give us insights into himself and his affiliates (Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Little Bobby Hutton, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis, et.al., that are original but reminiscent of Fanon, because Marvin is bearing the covers on his life and the life of others.

Of all the many disorders and distortions that plague the black male, each and every day, perhaps the ones that take the heaviest tool on his ravished brain are those that—if not contained by armed resistance—revolve around the painful difficulty of gaining control over his individual and collective destiny, around what is known in mental health circles as "the locus of control," the dilemma of resistance to the enemy from without and the enemy from within (including the self, if we consider that there can be no master without those who, for whatever reason, are willing to be a slave). Might makes right but not for long.

If we honor the likes of Patrick Henry for saying "give me liberty or give me death," it is no matter that when the Negro says give him liberty or death the white man tries to give him death! The so-called Negro is confronted with a choice Patrick Henry had not reckoned with, something Fanon called "reactional disorders" or "psychosomatic pathology" that is the direct product of oppression.

But out of a last ditch desperation in self-medication and the management of his pulverized and thwarted emotions, in a mindless effort to soothe his psychological and social wounds, the black male is introduced unwarily if discreetly to the vicious cycle of self-mutilation and induced addiction, which takes hold and spreads like an epidemic virus as part of the psycho-technology, historically, of the white man's oppression of the North American African and others around the world.

In his powerlessness and victimization, with nothing left to lean on, the black man is likely to mount the seesaw, if not the roller coaster of racial psycho-social dependency and messianic religiosity (becoming the mad-dog religious fanatic, believing in a savior other than himself) on the one hand and the individual chemical dependent on the other, i.e. the dope fiend.

Marvin decontructs both. In the bottomless caverns of addiction in any form, there seems no amount of religiosity, coke, crack, alcohol or sex sufficient to sedate the social angst and shattered cultural strivings.

The more the black man tempts to medicate his anxiety and to mask his depression and self doubts with pretense and hostility, the more he finds himself in trouble with the persons he must love and be loved by than with the alien representatives of the society that would control and castrate his manhood.

Novelist Richard Wright, addressing these paradoxes and dilemmas in his own autobiography BLACK BOY, explained that, "Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning."

The catch is in the way these things turn out after the boy has been taken through the meat grinder of growing up within the machinery of white social control. In response, the strategy or road most taken by both Marvin X and Richard Wright, to put it simply, is FLIGHT (what Wright as a matter of fact names the middle passage of his novel, Native Son, book 2 of 3).

As surely as the individual who accepts oppression is constantly in flight from his racial identity, the black man who rejects it is constantly on the run from the agency of white supremacy that must control him and wishes to annihilate him outright. And here is where Marvin's story is most valuable to us , helping us to grasp the meaning of the tradition of escape within our race, literature and history, stretching back to the slave trade and slave ships of the middle passage, down to the demanding requirements of escape from coercion, incarceration and surveillance in the modern era: he takes us through a childhood of continual efforts to avoid juvenile hall, to the flights of his father (despite punishing ambiguities, Marvin X dedicates his book to both his parents in memorial), calling upon pure personal honesty and the deepest levels of understanding to appreciate the parental struggles of his own and the resulting psycho-sexual and social conflicts.

Without professing to do so, Marvin X speaks here most effectively of all black men, exposing their triumphs and follies, telling all he knows about everybody, including himself, always seeming to exact the hardest toll of all on himself, inviting us openly and unashamedly into the intricacies of his youthful endeavors to love too many women, including more than one try at the practice of polygamy (at one point he had four wives, in the Islamic tradition), until he realizes that if monogamy is the love and marriage of one woman, polygamy is the love or marriage of one woman too many!

I predict that SOMETHIN' PROPER (the life and times of a North American African Poet) will readily emerge as an underground classic as well as a classic of the black consciousness movement and the world of the troubled inner city, a manual of value to any brother who has lost his way and the sister who would help him to understand or know how to find it, to find it within himself, in the intriguing story of Marvin X, who has been there and the women and political fellow-travelers in the black movement who were there with him in his often daring escapades, his secret flights and open confrontations with white supremacy.

In the end, is he bitter? Or is he happy as a negro eating watermelon on massa's plantation? Well, in the beginning white people are devils—but by the end, all people are devils—in Marvin's world. After all, this is his story. Nevertheless, by the end we are convinced Marvin has regained faith in himself, his God and his people.

And it is gratifying in an era of the sellout, the faint hearted and the fallen, to see that Marvin X was one black man who met the white man in the center of the ring and walked with him to the corners of psycho-social inequity, grappling with him through the bowels of the earth, yet remained one black man the white man couldn't get.

I'm glad I stopped that day on Market Street and bought a pair of Marvin's sunglasses, but I wish I knew where to find those sunglasses now, because I could feel so proud to wear them, or, better yet, I could lend them to some other brother who was trying to find his way to SOMETHIN' PROPER while moving in the direction of the sun.
--Dr. Nathan Hare

Millions March in Harlem, Saturday, August 13, 2011

by Amadi Ajamu

The Millions March in Harlem buzz is in the streets around the country. Posters and flyers are everywhere and people are excitedly talking about the need for unified action and change. The Millions March in Harlem will be held on Saturday, August 13, assembling on Malcolm X Blvd at 110th Street at 10 AM. It will focus on the attack on African people on the Continent and in the United States.

The heinous bombing of Libya by the US and NATO, illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe by the West, and the Bloomberg administration’s destruction of housing, jobs, education, health care and police abuse, are all a systematic assault on African communities.

Special guest speakers include: Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam; Father Miguel d'Escoto, former President of the UN General Assembly and former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua; Dr. Molefi Asante of Afrocentricity International; Viola Plummer of the December 12th Movement; NOI Minister Akbar Muhammad, and many others.

In a press conference at the United Nations Plaza Hotel on June 15, Minister Farrakhan stated, “NATO and America are trying to recolonize Africa through AFRICOM (African Command). My question to African leaders is, will you allow it? Out of fear of the so-called power of the West. Will you bow down and act against the interest of African people world wide?” Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been a principal advocate and organizer for a United States of Africa which threatens the international power structure.

The organizers of the Millions March in Harlem held a press conference on June 22nd and Minister Akbar Muhammad reported, “Minister Farrakhan will definitely be speaking at the march on August 13. The Nation of Islam is fully behind this march, it is extremely important, and we will do all that we can to make this happen.”

Viola Plummer of the December 12th Movement International Secretariat stated, “There comes a time when people have no alternative but resistance. This march will revitalize the Pan African movement. It will broaden our peoples' world view and demonstrate the need for Africans to unite in our own political and economic interests internationally. We must expose the United Nations Security Council machinations, western imperialism, the attack on Black people in the US, and all collaborators at every turn.”

The march has garnered international attention with the participation of Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockman, who flew in from Nicaragua and attended the Harlem press conference. Father d'Escoto spoke against the “war of aggression on Libya.” Further stating “There is no people in the whole planet who know less about what the United States does abroad than Americans. They are systematically deceived. This is the very foundation of what they call democracy in this country.” Father d'Escoto went on to outline the need for reform in the United Nations, emphasizing the domination of the voting members of the UN Security Council over all other countries.

On the ground, “Millions March In Harlem” organizing teams, which are saturating the streets with bright green posters, report on the grassroots response. “We never underestimate our people's ability to analyze a situation. The vast majority of folk are clear about the attack on African people and want to do something to fight back. Mainstream media propaganda about strong African leaders like Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and President Robert Mugabe is just like what they say about Black people here who do not bow down to the status quo,” said Gregory Perry of Queens.

Bronx Coordinator Kamau Brown stated, “Colonel Gaddafi and the people of Libya have built their country from the poorest to the richest country in Africa. He is the key person in the organizing effort to build a United States of Africa. President Mugabe has dared to take back the land stolen by European settlers and give it back to the people of Zimbabwe.”

“The attack on us here is insidious. Police brutality and harassment, gentrification of our communities, housing foreclosures, destruction of public education, closing hospitals, the prison industry, the list goes on and on. They all destroy lives. The NATO bombs in Libya and the illegal sanctions in Zimbabwe kill people. Black people understand that it's time for Pan African Unity.” Brown concluded.

For more information on the upcoming Millions March in Harlem call (347) 737-3272 or Email: info@MillionsMarchHarlem.com

Message to the black man from Stan the white man or how to do for self

Fred Hampton, Jr. on JR, Minister of Mis-information

Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. of POCC

Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. on
JR, Former POCC Minister of Mis-information

In a conversation with this writer, Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. of POCC, i.e. Prisoners of Conscience Committee, stated that JR defected from the organization last August, although he has yet claimed affiliation with the group, using the title POCC Minister of Information.

The Chairman stated that he bought a one way ticket from Chicago to the Bay Area to clarify his relationship with JR and to point out the many contradictions in the personal and political behavior of the former Minister of Information, i.e., Minister of Mis-information.




photo Kamau Amen Ra


Chairman Fred noted how JR helped destroy rapper Askari X by allowing him to be exploited by rap producers who produced the rapper's albums but paid him with marijuana, after pimping him all day in the studio. Askari, one of the Bay Area's greatest rappers, has long suffered with mental problems and is presently doing time in prison.

The son of slain Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, Fred Jr. recounted several occasions when the POCC organization had to put JR in check for reactionary behavior in various cities across America and abroad, including Libya when JR reportedly had Nation of Islam representative Akhbar Muhammad bumped from a panel with Malcolm Shabazz and Cynthia McKinney.

In the Chairman's mind, JR is possibly connected with the CIA and/or FBI, a connection we have suspected since we were with JR in New York and Newark on 9/11. JR has never provided us with a copy of interviews this writer conducted and JR videoed. For ten years, he as refused to provide us a copy of the interviews with people in Newark, including Amina Baraka, wife of poet Amiri Baraka, and in Philadelphia with poet Sonia Sanchez. Why is he hiding this information, if he is indeed the minister of information?

Chairman Fred says JR has pimped Malcolm Shabazz as he tried to pimp Fred. He says he and JR were never friends but simply members in the POCC organization. After the organization had to put JR in check on several occasions, he defected a year ago this August but has duped the radical community by still using the title of POCC Minister of Information, aka, Mis-information.

Fred, Jr. was scheduled to speak at Oakland's Eastside Arts Center this week but the space was suddenly unavailable. He suspects JR conspired with the Eastside Arts organizers to cancel his appearance which would have given him the opportunity to relay his position on JR to the Bay Area radical community that has attempted to shield and defend JR from allegations of police connections, including phone records that have him in three conversations with the killers of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey while they were parked in front of his house hours before his assassination. He maintains he was Chauncey's friend, yet why would he not inform Chauncey that killers were parked outside his apartment? He was never interrogated or subpoenaed to court.

According to Chairman Fred, JR gave him misinformation to events to delay his appearance in New York, Detroit and other cities. The Chairman of POCC claims JR has provided Malcolm Shabazz, his latest prey, with women to secure his loyalty, although these women were of dubious character since they were sleeping with JR in the morning and with Shabazz at night.

Chairman Fred says he had to put JR in check after his interview with Shabazz in which he attempted to provoke the grandson of Malcolm X into saying what he would do to the recently released killer of his grandfather. We have long maintained we have an agent provocateur in our midst. Chairman Fred agreed with this opinion one hundred percent.

The young man who was in his mother's womb as she lay in bed beside his father while police bullets rained into their bedroom, says Bay Area radicals have been in denial about the San Francisco Bayview editor and KPFA radio broadcaster, JR. They have held him up as a model of a radical youth, yet he is an opportunist of the first order. He made Oscar Grant a minor character in his film on the slain BART rider, JR was the major character. During the Oscar Grant riot, JR was charged with setting a garbage can on fire. Is this a revolutionary act?

After Eastside Arts exhibited reactionary behavior by denying him a space to speak, Chairman Fred was able to hold a session at a club in West Oakland. JR was present but had nothing to say.

It could be that we are dealing with a mental patient rather than an agent provocateur, although often they can be both. We have been informed that officials in one Bay Area city has had enough of JR's antics and are making plans to put him in check. We advise JR to take a long needed vacation for his own safety, something he failed to advise his "friend" Chauncey Bailey to do.
--Marvin X
7/30/11

Toward Pan African Unity

Toward Unity of North American Africans
10. Pan African Unity

Colonialism was/is so devastating it has made Pan African unity a most intractable project. Maybe before the end of the world, which is not far off since Mother Earth appears ready to recycle much human garbage from the global stockpile, yes, maybe just before the bell tolls, Pan Africans will decide to enter a program of detoxification and recovery from the ravages of imperialism and neo-colonialism. In America we call it domestic colonialism, the urban centers are basically colonies for dumping white supremacy goods and services upon America's wretched of the earth.

Pan Africanism has been promoted at least since the 19th Century, and of course in tune with world events, helped bring an end to raw colonialism and the beginning of modern African nation states. But hardly before the independence celebration was over, neo-colonialism stuck her butcher knives in the heart of Pan Africanism, After all, Nkrumah taught us neo-colonialism was colonialism playing possum. The colonial elite advanced to the neo-colonial elite. There was no therapy for the new African leaders, no detoxification and recovery from the addiction to global white supremacy, from greed and drunkeness of all things European.

The Pan African world thus continued to suffer from lacking the mental equilibrium to advance into true independence. Of course the colonial masters never actually intended to give up the reins of power, only pretend to do so. This happened throughout Pan Africa, from the continent to the Americas, including the Caribbean.

North American Africans would find themselves subjected to black elected politicians who ruled like their counterparts in Africa. In the Caribbean, black power literature was banned, even diplomats could not return from abroad with such incendiary literature. In the USA the black arts movement spread consciousness but it was diluted and polluted by a reactionary black studies that retreated from the cultural revolution in favor of tenured negro revisionist culture. As my associate, the young Pan African scholar from San Francisco State University, Ptah Allah El (Tracy Mitchell) says, "Black studies went to college and never came home."

Before his murder by the imperialists, Patrice Lumumba had told us it would be fifty years before the Congo would be free. We can apply his remarks to Pan Africa, just add another hundred years or two. We see Africa slowly creeping toward Nkrumah's dream of a United States of Africa, yet the African Union seems about to get aborted to become the agent of the new imperialism called Globalism.

America has established military bases in Africa and is using African troops to do her dirty work of reconquering the continent, as if she ever left. And what the Europeans don't retake, apparently the Chinese will grab, giving African leaders a few kibbles and bits in the form of infrastructure, which is sorely needed, but taking precious metals in return. The only positive African state appears to be Ghana. Is the ghost of Nkrumah at work?

The South African revolutionary leaders appear to have joined the billionaires club, private jets, European women, the whole cha cha. No real land reform, no water, no electricity, no housing, no jobs. Rape is pervasive, homicide, AIDS, bleaching cream.

And so the Pan African dream continues, sometimes approaching a nightmare. New York City is a microcosm of the Pan African reality, with Africans from throughout the Diaspora in the house, from the Continent, the Caribbean, the South, but no Pan African economic unity, or political, but a host of Pan African psychological issues stemming from the trauma and unresolved grief of colonialism and neo-colonialism.

North American Africans need to have dinner with their Diaspora brothers and sisters so we can reason together, but it ain't gonna happen until we recover from our tribalism and provincialism. Meanwhile I'm a "black American", said with utter contempt, hatred, jealousy and envy. Yes, I'm that black American, now do you want to unite with me or fight with me? Yes, this is my turf, you don't like my presence, go back to Nigeria, Senegal, Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Trinidad.

Yes, we have some Pan African family issues we need to resolve long before there shall be any Pan African political unity, there must be psychological unity. Don't tell me Mr. Haitian taxi driver that I must pay in advance because you know how we people are. Who in the hell is you people? You ain't "you people" too?

Pan Africans, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Let us have a healing ritual to resolve our Negrocities, as Amiri Baraka calls our bad habits. Otherwise, we shall continue as black men with white hearts!

The Pan African Union of the Diaspora is the right direction, if and when such an idea reaches the grass roots and escapes the stranglehold of Pan African intellectuals who love pontificating but won't take their message to the streets where the need for Pan African love and unity is sorely needed, especially in the New York area.
--Marvin X
12/10/10

Unity with the Indigenous Peoples in the Americas

Toward the Unity of North American Africans
With the Indigenous Peoples in the Americas

There is clear evidence North American Africans were here before Columbus. We know Africans traveled here during the time (circa 900 AD) of the Ghana, Mali and Shonghay empires. Thus we have an integral relationship with the indigenous people throughout the Americas. Certainly we have a blood relationship with the kidnapped Africans who are scattered throughout the Americas, the millions in Brazil who speak Portuguese, the Spanish speaking millions in Columbia, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, Mexico and throughout the Caribbean.

Our oppressed condition is more in harmony with the indigenous and Africans throughout the Americas than with the oppressor Euro-Americans. Yet we are mostly ignorant of our historic relationship with our brothers and sisters. It brought tears to my eyes to discover Afro-Mexicans, Afro-Cubans, Afro Columbians, Afro-Hondurans, Afro-Brazilians, et al. Part of the tears was because I could not communicate with them in Spanish and Portuguese. In spite of language, there was an undeniable spiritual unity and brotherhood. There was instant love between us. The tragedy was than we didn't know each other existed.

Today, the moment has arrived for Pan American unity of us with our indigenous and African American brothers and sisters. At this hour we have much to learn from them. Yes, we have a black president for the first time in 400 years. But in Bolivia we have an indigenous man as president for the first time in 500 years and he, unlike Obama, is a revolutionary! The winds of revolutionary change are blowing throughout the Americas and we need to be in harmony with the winds blowing in Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador , Brazil, Venezuela and elsewhere.

They are striving to destroy the raw capitalist economic model imposed on them by Yankee imperialism, that has kept them in poverty, ignorance and disease for centuries. We have been in the identical situation but out leaders would have us continue in this state of economic wretchedness. We must unite and work with our brothers and sisters throughout the Americas to create a common future for ourselves that transcends the European white supremacy culture.
Our ignorance of the need for Pan American unity is quite similar to our attitude toward Pan African unity (but we will deal with Pan African unity is another essay).

We harbor racist attitudes toward our Pan American brothers and sisters just as the white man hates them, though he loves to exploit their labor and natural resources. Yes, he loves everything about them but them, to quote a poem by Paradise. But they have declared death on capitalism. They have declared that economics is not totally about profit but there is a social element, economics is for cultural development, not simply growth.

We must detox from our addiction to raw capitalism. And we need our Pan American brothers and sisters to help us detox and recover. You may need to unite and learn from the people who survive on rice and beans, who live on dirt floors without electricity and running water. You must rid yourselves of your white supremacy mentality of arrogance and superiority. Do not hate the indigenous people for wanting to come across the border to reclaim their land, yes, their land! How can you talk about Mexicans, at least they make their own soap, their own toilet paper, their own beer and tequila , their own clothes. You don't, so yes, we must unite to defeat this horrible monster called capitalism that has enslaved us and seeks to devour us, that has kept us divided and full of hatred, jealousy and envy of each other.
--Marvin X

Parable of Pimpin'

Parable of Pimpin

By Marvin X


I am not a pimp. I am a hustler, sometimes a trick. A hustler waits for no one to bring his money, he gets his own. It is beneath his dignity to wait or depend on a woman or anyone to get his hustle going. All he needs is product, almost anything will do, even a roll of toilet paper he can hustle. But the pimp's thing is women, he considers himself their manager and they consider him the same, usually by mutual agreement, often by torture, kidnapping and exploitation, including mind control, deprivation of sleep, food and isolation.

Having never been a pimp, I cannot speak with total authority, although I have been around pimps off and on my entire life, from growing up on 7th Street in Oakland to hanging with pimps in New York. My brother's claim to fame is pimping. He never desired anything else in life but pimping, as a result his life has been pimping and prison, nothing else. I have been deprived of his brotherly love because of his pimping and prison life.

Many of my friends were pimps, including some of my Muslim brothers who said they made their ho's make salat or prayer before they went out on the stroll. I was around Muslim pimps on the east coast who had their women selling bean pies and whoring to buy Crack.

More recently I had the pleasure of meeting several pimps-in-recovery at my theatre in San Francisco's Tenderloin district when we produced the Black Radical Book Fair in 2004. The pimps included Fillmore Slim, Gansta Brown, Jimmy Starr and Rosebud Bitterdose. They claim to have given up pimpin and have indeed written books and films on the gospel of the game.

In the case of Fillmore Slim, he is still greatly respected as the godfather of pimpin, especially on the West coast. He hooked up with me to see if I could help him get the message to young people that pimpin ain't easy and there's a price to be in the game. If you willing to pay the price, then go for it, but just know you are going to pay. Fillmore paid with several prison terms.

He says these young brothers call themselves pimpin but ain't hardly pimpin, ain't doing nothing but messin up the game. Don't have no style, no class. If you saw the BET awards last night, Prince was the only artist with class, the others looked like bums and derelicts, especially the hip hop brothers.

As Fillmore said about young pimps, they don't know how to dress. And he said they most certainly don't know how to treat a lady. They want to beat women. He said they don't understand if they don't beat her, she might come back. They want to kill another nigguh if she runs off with him. This ain't part of the game. Don't be killing people, he said, like you own the woman. You don't own nobody. When she choose you, she with you, when she choose somebody else, let her go. Fillmore said these young nigguhs act like they in love. And keep a night job, he says, because pimpin ain't easy.

Young brothers so close up on the ho a trick can't get to her. And the nigguh look more like a woman than the woman. You don't know who to turn a date with, the pimp or the ho. He got earrings in both ears, blond hair and pants hangin off his behind, living at his mama's house, pimpin on a bicycle. Nigguh please.

Pimp like Bush. Get you a real ho like Condi Rice that can ho all over the world, that can serve presidents, prime ministers, generals. Dr. Bey used to say, "If you going to do something, do it in a big way." Some would say Dr. Bey did right and wrong in a big way (may he rest in peace). And my daddy said, "If you gonna be something, be the best."

The white man is the world's greatest pimp: he pimpin you and yo woman, but you don't have a clue. On BET last night he pimped some of our greatest artists, had them parading as nothing but naked whores.

Nigguh pimps got babies on the street, eleven, twelve and thirteen. What they know about ho'in? They don't know how to put a rubber on a nigguh, let alone give head. They need to be in school. Get their GED. And the pimp needs to go with them to get his. Imagine the social consequences of over a million children dropping out of school each year, over 50% of them. Society, including the school, the religious community and the politicians are responsible for children choosing the pimp life, especially when our nation needs scientists and engineers if we are to have a future beyond pimpin and whoring.

posted 29 June 2006

Neo Feudalism or Wage Slavery

Neo Feudalism or Wage Slavery

Ideally, capitalism desires cheap labor and resources in order to increase profits or capital to the maximum. The primary motive is profit, regarding labor as expendable or replaceable since there is an infinite supply of slaves or workers. And it assumed there will be a infinite amount of natural resources to exploit, ultimately at the point of the gun, i.e., obtainable by warfare.

We can use the African slave trade as a recent example of how capitalists kidnapped Africans and through behavior modification or brainwashing enforced by terror, the whip and gun, made them labor from can't see to can't see til eternity without paying them one dime. African land was in turn raped of all natural resources available, gold, diamonds, ivory, and other precious minerals and metals.

The industrial revolution made a minor change from chattel slavery to wage slavery that has persisted to today, of course for some workers wage slavery existed simultaneously with chattel slavery. The end of Reconstruction returned freed Africans to virtual chattel slavery when they became sharecroppers for racist white landowners, after the Africans were tricked out of their promised 40 acres and a mule. Landless yet forced to work the land without little compensation for their labor ultimately drove them Up South in the great migration of the latter 19th century.
Once there, the status of Africans was upgraded only slightly to the status of wage slaves, but never on par with the white workers, and this wage disparity has persisted to today. White labor is more important than black labor, and of course male labor more precious than female labor.

The unions gave workers a degree of improvement in their wages although the capitalist bosses fought tooth and nail to keep wages low, ultimately conspiring with union bosses to trick workers of their new found gains in job security, health insurance and retirement benefits.

The present economic melt down is the grand opportunity for capitalists to again approach chattel slavery in their wage war with workers. Outsourcing enabled the capitalists to destroy American workers, black and white, male and female. If American workers are prepared to enjoy the wage slavery of workers in outsourced countries, then there may be a few jobs for them. We recently heard that India is prepared to outsource jobs to America, at Indian wage slave levels, of course. An American MBA would therefore receive the same salary of his Indian counterpart, $14,000.00 per year rather than the American salary of $140,000.00.

American corporations desire the same wages from American workers if they can get it, if not, they simply out source. Capitalism does not discriminate when it comes to exploitation of labor, i.e., it cares no more about the white worker than the black worker, except in the dumb white worker's racist mind the black has always been in competition with him, this was the great fear of emancipation among white workers.

Today outsourcing is the cause of shrinking jobs in America, but again dumb white workers are blaming immigrant labor, blacks or even China. In the case of China, white workers do not understand American capitalists are in partnerships with Chinese corporations to rip off American jobs.

We have thus reached a point in time wherein the stage is being set for a workers revolution, if only the workers will get it clear in their minds what's really going on, how they are being hoodwinked and bamboozled by the greedy capitalists who have been rewarded for robbery by use of the global financial system through the perennial pyramid scheme banking network guided by the banker's bank The Federal Reserve, in cahoots with Wall Street and the military/corporate/university/prison complex.

Also understand the vital role of the petrochemical and pharmaceutical bandits who poison us with devitalized foods leading us from the dinner table to the hospital to the graveyard wherein we are laid to rest in poverty after a life of wage slavery in the hostile environment of job, home and the general society wherein we were overcome by consumerism or the world of make believe.

The corporations and banks are again flowing with cash after getting reimbursed from their losses in the global sub prime loan scheme/scam. The bosses are receiving mega salaries with mega bonuses, meanwhile the American workers suffer salary decreases, pervasive job insecurity, loss of benefits such as health insurance and retirement.

When will they protest, when will they demand economic justice? Never as long as the media magicians perpetuate the world of make believe and lull them to sleep watching video games, sport and play, i.e., pussy and dick stories and music videos on giant televisions. Let us not leave out fairy tale religiosity at the Ten Per Cent Club called church, the ultimate opiate of the people although they are being drugged from cradle to grave.

The era of jobs for life is over. Corporations desire contract workers at every level to escape the cost of permanent wage slaves. The largely unqualified black worker pool is expendable and eligible for incarceration if it attempts to rebel against its social-economic insecurity through criminality and/or revolution.

Once in the criminal justice system, the unemployed and unemployable black workers suddenly become a commodity, a valuable product of the prison/corporate complex. Rather than provide the blacks with skills to obtain jobs with living wages, they are made wards of the state at the cost of fifty to sixty thousand dollars per inmate per year, providing necessary jobs for white workers, even though many blacks are also employed at the department of corrections.

The capitalists could provide jobs with a living wage to the two million plus inmates, more than it costs to send them to Harvard, Yale and Stanford, but they rather employ slave catchers called police to round them up, often after they have dropped out or pushed out of public schools that Dr. Julia Hare calls holding cells for the departments of correction. Why should Johnny and Johnny Mae be inspired by a curriculum based on white supremacy mythology?

With a great percentage of black men on probation, parole or incarcerated, the destabilization of community is complete, thus neighborhoods ripe for gentrification. And even upon release from incarceration, they are only presented with mostly minimum wage jobs. In the South, many blacks must hold down three minimum wage jobs to make it. The fear of economic insecurity makes them submissive to racist bosses who will fire them at the first instance of organizing for improvements in salary and working conditions, and especially for spreading any semblance of radical consciousness on the job, or in the community for that matter. Even Up South in the north, the blacks work in fear, afraid to purchase literature during their lunch break for fear the boss will discover they have black consciousness.

As the economy continues in meltdown, we see few opportunities for the national advancement of North American Africans. With wages shrinking, jobs disappearing, incarceration increasing, the social-psychology of the hood is reaching the breaking point. Black mental health is deteriorating rapidly. People are trying to figure a way out of the morass.

I recently offered a woman my book How to Jump Out of the Box. She saw the title and said that's what she needs, and her friend too who was with her. Then she saw a quote by Buddha and hesitated to get the book but caught herself, "Oh, I guess it don't matter who said what, if I can get out the box." I nodded.

But how shall we get out of the box? Where do we go from here? What shall we tell our youth searching for a job when there are none? What shall we tell those smart enough to attend college, yet their future is bleak as well, unless they configure a solution in face of the continued desire for virtual slavery by the greater society.


Economic independence is the only solution, not sitting around waiting for the rustication of capitalism that shall not occur without radical structural change in a system that perpetuates greed rather than social concern. Trillions are lost in the foreign wars that benefit none but the military related corporations headed by former generals. And the supreme irony is that America can promise terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere education, jobs and housing if they will only lay down their guns and pledge allegiance to the puppet regimes the US is backing in her so-called war against terrorism, while who can be a greater world terrorist than the USA itself. She is the number one arms merchant of the world, thus she is the greatest purveyor of global violence. According to Nelson Mandela America is the reason there is no peace in the world.

Meanwhile cities are going broke, states as well, not to mention the looming national deficit, including the outstanding loan due China that is growing weary of the American dollar and is trading in her own currency and switching to Euros, for the Chinese are wise enough to know the American king is no more, half naked and soon to be butt naked in the sun.

Imagine Capitalists owing Communists trillions of dollars. How could this be? We've been taught the Communists were imbeciles and Capitalists were the smart guys. But we know the capitalists practice socialism among themselves and push their rotten capitalism on the deaf, dumb and blind masses, the wage slaves who shall never inherit the earth until they bury the capitalists in their own vomit. We doubt they will suddenly decide to share the wealth, so it must be seized from them by mass unity and ultimately this may include violence. Liberty or death! If you seek a better life for yourselves and your children, you must join the revolution. Fanon said revolution is not only the solution to your economic health but your mental health as well. Mao told us the reactionaries shall never put down their butcher knives, they shall never turn into Buddha heads! Sonia Sanchez says resist, resist, resist!
--Marvin X
1/5/11