Marvin X's Grand Vision for the Bay Area Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Black Arts Movement, 2015

Graphics by Kalamu Chache'

Many of the Black Arts Movement’s leading artists, including Ed Bullins, Nikki Giovanni, Woodie King, Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Touré, Marvin X and Val Gray Ward, remain artistically productive today. Its influence can also be seen in the work of later artists, from the writers Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman, and August Wilson to actors Avery Brooks, Danny Glover, and Samuel L. Jackson, to hip-hop artists Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Chuck D.

 

Marvin X, Producer

Dear Friends,

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Peralta College District, I invite you to join me in the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Black Arts Movement, known as the Sister of the Black Power Movement. The Black Arts Movement (BAM) is without a doubt the most radical artistic and literary movement in American history. Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) is recognized as the chief architect of BAM (RIP), but here on the west coast, BAM has roots at Merritt College with students Bobby Seale
(yes, before co-founding the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale performed in Marvin X's second play Come Next Summer), Ernie Allen, Ken and Carol Freeman, and Marvin X, who won first prize for a short story  in Merritt's literary magazine. Of course we were inspired by the Afro American Association, led by Attorney Donald Warden. Bobby Seale calls us the "neo-Black intellectuals."

After graduating from Merritt, many of us transferred to San Francisco State College/now University, where we transformed the Negro Students Association into the Black Students Union that eventually led to the first Black Studies Department on a major college campus--Merritt had already established a Black Studies Department.

My first play Flowers for the Trashman was produced at SFSU by the Drama department but after the production I decided to drop out of college to establish Black Arts Theatre on Fillmore Street, co-founded by playwright Ed Bullins, Carl Bossiere, Duncan Barber, Ethna Wyatt and Hillery Broadous, 1966. BAW actors included Danny Glover and Vonetta McGee, along with musicians Rafael Donald Garrett, Oliver Jackson, Monte Waters, Dewey Redman, Earl Davis, et al.

I should mention that students from SFSU published the key critical literary magazines of the National Black Arts Movement, Black Dialogue and the Journal of Black Poetry. Students included Aubrey and Gerald LaBrie, Duke Williams, Jose Goncalves, Sadaat Ahmad, et al. Contributors included Amiri Baraka, Askia Toure, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Eldridge Cleaver, Don L. Lee,
Al Young, Art Sheridan, et al.

The staff of Black Dialogue made a historic visit to Soledad Prison's Black Culture Club, under the leadership of Eldridge Cleaver and Alprintice Bunchy Carter. This club was the beginning of the American Prison Movement, 1966.

In 1967, along with recently released from prison essayist Eldridge Cleaver, playwright Ed Bullins, Ethna Wyatt and myself, we established the political/cultural center in San Francisco known as Black House which became the center of non-establishment Black culture in the Bay Area. Black House participants included Amiri and Amina Baraka, Askia Toure, Sarah Webster Fabio, Adam David Miller, the Chicago Art Ensemble, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Little Bobby Hutton, Advotjha, Reginald Lockett, et al.

In summary, the Bay Area played a critical role in the national Black Arts Movement. Many BAM players, movers and shakers were bi-coastal. In 1968, we found ourselves in Harlem, invited by playwright Ed Bullins who was now at the New Lafayette Theatre. We become associate editor of Black Theatre Magazine, a publication of the New Lafayette. We joined BAM founders Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Askia Toure, Sun Ra, Barbara Ann Teer, Milford Graves, Yusef Iman, Larry Neal et al.

We invite you to help plan and produce the Bay Area celebration of the Black Arts Movement. We call upon academic and cultural institutions to make this event a reality, especially in honor of ancestor Amiri Baraka who often talked of a 27 city BAM tour. We initiated the first leg of the 27 city tour in late February/March, 2014, at the University of California, Merced, produced by Kim McMillan and myself. We are so very thankful that UC Merced made this BAM conference a great success, especially with generous funding. We know the Bay Area will help us expand on what we did in the Central Valley.

At this point, we are in partnership with the Eastside Arts Organization and the Post News Group. Please let us know if you are willing to be a funder and/or partner, participant or volunteer. Tentative date, June/July, 2015.

Sincerely,

Marvin X, A.A., Merritt College, 1964,
B.A., M.A., San Francisco State University, 1974-75
510-200-4164
jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Board of Advisors
Kim McMillon
Amina Baraka
Ras Baraka
Sonia Sanchez
Askia Toure
Paul Cobb
Greg Morozumi
Elena Serano
Castle Redmond
Denise Pate
LaNiece Jones
Walter Riley
Nathan Hare
Jerry Vernado
Terry Collins
Dr. Ayodele Nzinga
Geoffery Grier
Muhammida El Muhajir
Amira Jackmon
Nefertiti Jackmon
Aries Jordan
Davey D
Odell Johnson
Carolyn Mixon
Leon and Carolyn Teasley
Ovis and Nina Collins
Joyce Gordon
Conway Jones, Jr.

 The Grand Vision

In our grand vision for the Bay Area Celebration of the Black Arts Movement, we imagine a festival/conference over several days with  venues in various locations depending on the funding, including the following:

Oakland
Merritt College, Laney Colleg, Eastside Arts, Malonga Center, Joyce Gordon Gallery, African American Museum/Library, Geoffery's Inner Circle

Berkeley
UC Berkeley
Black Repertory Group

Richmond
Contra Costa College
Richmond Arts Center

San Francisco
San Francisco State University
African American Cultural Center
Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center

Palo Alto/East Palo Alto
Stanford University

San Jose
San Jose State University

Invited Black Arts Movement Elders
Danny Glover
Askia Toure
The Last Poets
Sonia Sanchez
Nikki Giovanni
Haki Madhubuti
Marvin X
Avotcja
Emory Douglas
Earl Davis
Jose Goncalves
Amina Baraka
Judy Juanita
Kalamu Ya Salaam
Abdul Sabry
Aubrey LaBrie
Duke Williams
Woody King

Performing groups
Poets Choir and Arkestra, Marvin X, Director
Lower Bottom Playaz, Dr. Ayodele Nzinga
SF Recovery Theatre, Geoffery Grier
Linda Johnson Dancers
Debra Vaughn Dimensions Dance Co
Traci Bartlow, Eastside Arts Dancers
Sun Ra Arkestra under Marshall Allen
David Murray
Afro Horn directed by Francisco Mora Catlett

BAM Dramas to be performed
Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, Drama Coordinator 

The First Militant Preacher by Ben Caldwell
The Dutchman by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
The Toilet by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
Flowers for the Trashman by Marvin X
Salaam, Huey Salaam by Marvin X and Ed Bullins
A Son Come Home by Ed Bullins
Sister Son/Ji by Sonia Sanchez
Papa’s Daughter by Dorothy Ahmad

BAM Babies 2.0
Marc Bamuthi, Project Coordinator
Ras Baraka
Amiri Baraka, Jr.
Muhammida El Muhajir
Nefertiti Jackmon
Oba Olatunji
Tony Medina
Francisco Catlett Mora
Joshua Redman
Greg Bridges
Refa One
Malik Seneferu
conscious rappers
spoken word artists
dramatists

Exhibits 
(Curated by Greg Morozumi, Billy Jennings, Joyce Gordon, UC Bancroft)
The Art of Elizabeth Catlett Mora
The Art of Emory Douglas
The archives of Marvin X, Dr. Nathan Hare, Amiri Baraka
The Black Arts Movement

Major Texts

The Black Arts Movement by James Smethurst
SOS—Calling all Black People: Black Arts Movement Reader
Somethin Proper, autobiography of Marvin X
Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
Post Prison Writings by Eldridge Cleaver
Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil, a memoir by Marvin X
The Black Arts Movement by Kalamu Ya Salaam
The Black Arts by Kamozi Woodard

Planning committee
Elena Serrano
Greg Morozumi
Paul Cobb
Geoffery Grier
Ayodele Nzinga
Kim McMillon
Kalamu Chache’
Dr. Mona Scott
LaNiece Jones
Joyce Gordon
Carolyn Mixon
Ben Tapscott
Michael Bennett
Marvin X

Possible funders
UC Berkeley
California Endowment
California Arts Commission
San Francisco Foundation
Peralta Community College Foundation
San Francisco State University
Laney College
Stanford University
Merritt College
SF Hotel Tax Fund
Zellerbach Family Fund
City of Oakland Arts Commission

Call for Papers on BAM Critical issues
(Send two page abstract to jmarvinx@yahoo.com)
Role of Women
Multi-Culturalism/Ethnic literature/Studies
Need for Black Arts Movement Union
BAM and Holistic Healing (East/West methods)
BAM and the Psycholinguistic Crisis of North American Africans
Toward Senior Housing and Care for BAM Workers, including the Life Estate
From Black Art to Hip Hop and Beyond
BAM Esthetics
BAM Mythology and Ritutualism
Religious influence in BAM: Christian, Yoruba, Islam
BAM and Muslim American literature
BAM and the revolution in American literature and academia
Black Arts West
Black Arts West Theatre
The Black House Political/Cultural Center
Amiri Baraka’s Communications Project, especially the dramatic productions
Black Arts/Black Liberation
Black Arts/Black Studies
Black Arts and Ethnic Studies
West Coast publications of BAM: Soulbook, Black Dialogue, Journal of Black Poetry
Black Panthers and Cultural Nationalism
Sun Ra and Marvin X’s Black Educational Theatre
BAM and the Prison Movement

Invited artists/scholars/activists
Dr. Angela Davis
Dr. Cornel West
Dr. Tony Montiero
Dr. Maxwell Stanford
Dr. Oba T’shaka
Dr. Nathan Hare
Dr. John Bracey
Dr. James Smethurst
Woody King
Ishmael Reed
Al Young
Janice Merikitani
Ginny Lim

Media Team
Wanda Sabir
Davey D
Greg Bridges
Terry Collins
Paul Cobb

Documentation (videographers, photographers, post production editors)
Adam Turner
Kamau Amen Ra
Ken Johnson
Khalid Waajid

Budget: $100,000 est.
Tentative Date: June/July 2015

Project Director:
Marvin X. Jackmon
jmarvinx@yahoo.com
510-200-4164
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

339 Lester Ave. Suite #10
Oakland CA 94606

Photo Essay: The Black Arts Movement

SOS—Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader

University of Massachusetts Press, paper $34.95 

A major new anthology of readings, this volume brings together a broad range of key writings from the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, among the most significant cultural movements in American history. The aesthetic counterpart of the Black Power movement, it burst onto the scene in the form of artists’ circles, writers’ workshops, drama groups, dance troupes, new publishing ventures, bookstores, and cultural centers and had a presence in practically every community and college campus with an appreciable African American population. Black Arts activists extended its reach even further through magazines such as Ebony and Jet, on television shows such as Soul! and Like It Is, and on radio programs. Many of the movement’s leading artists, including Ed Bullins, Nikki Giovanni, Woodie King, Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Touré, Marvin X and Val Gray Ward, remain artistically productive today. Its influence can also be seen in the work of later artists, from the writers Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman, and August Wilson to actors Avery Brooks, Danny Glover, and Samuel L. Jackson, to hip-hop artists Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Chuck D. SOS—Calling All Black People includes works of fiction, poetry, and drama in addition to critical writings on issues of politics, aesthetics, and gender. It covers topics ranging from the legacy of Malcolm X and the impact of John Coltrane’s jazz to the tenets of the Black Panther Party and the music of Motown. The editors have provided a substantial introduction outlining the nature, history, and legacy of the Black Arts Movement as well as the principles by which the anthology was assembled.

Now Available for booking: 

Marvin X 

with the Black Arts Movement Poets Choir & Arkestra

 

For Booking: 510-2004164

Please send letter of invitation to 

Marvin X

jmarvinx@yahoo.com 

Two/thirds of Americans don't bother to vote in US politricks myth-ritual

Republicans just won the election. President Obama doesn’t much care.

By Chris Cillizza  

November 5 

 

 

President Obama gestures as he speaks during a news conference in the East Room of the White House on Nov. 5. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

 

President Obama had a clear message for congressional Republicans in the wake of the GOP's sweeping victories in the Senate and House on Tuesday: Big whoop.
"There's no doubt that Republicans had a good night," Obama said in his opening remarks, the rhetorical equivalent of a slow clap for Republicans. He wouldn't go any further — even when pressed  to put a single word to the defeat as he did when he called the 2010 election a "shellacking."  He emphasized the number of people — "two thirds" — who didn't vote Tuesday. Despite saying repeatedly that his policies were on the ballot Tuesday, Obama insisted Wednesday that the message of the election wasn't a rejection of those policies but rather a sign that the American public wanted politicians to work together to get things done. Asked whether he had made a mistake by not reaching out to Republicans more in the past few years, Obama let out an audible sigh before answering. He said it was too soon to talk about any personnel changes.
"The principles ... are not going to change," Obama insisted.

Parable of Watch Out Blackie, Whitey comin' fa dat ass

There was a land where Pharaoh ruled over many slaves, using his monkey mind media and other magicians, including the Amen priests, the chief magicians whose tricknology hoodwinked and bamboozled the 85% deaf, dumb and blind. The 1% blood suckers of the poor controlled the policies of Pharaoh who was only a puppet on a string who danced to the tune of the bankers, investors and military elite. The blood suckers of the poor allowed a slave to rule as Pharaoh, but he was only a front man, a bootlicker who told the Amen priests to sing Silent Night and Peace be Still. He gave great speeches to keep the 85% calm and medicated on a diet of drugs, sex, violence and poison food, genetically altered to control their mental processes and physical being as well, keeping them under the control of the mad scientist Yacub's chief workers: the doctor, nurse and undertaker.

The 5% poor righteous teachers had a most difficult time getting their message to the deaf dumb and blind. The poor righteous teachers were usually banned from teaching in the Pharaonic schools, colleges and universities. Pharaonic intellectuals were instructed to keep the blind, deaf and dumb in their wretched condition by not allowing any self knowledge to reach them; also, they were not to teach do-for-self as that would upset the slavery teachings of the 1%.

When the half-white Pharaoh attempted to reach out to his slave brothers and sisters, he was blocked at every turn and told to follow the script given to him by the blood suckers of the poor. He tried to get uppity by following his own agenda but the No people blocked him and his policies and urged Pharoah's army to get their whips and guns ready to lash the behinds of any who tried to break out of the kingdom. People were caught at the borders and returned to the slave mill in Pharaoh's house. Those victims of the slave system were imprisoned or shot on sight, even though many resisted until they were outgunned, being no match for Pharaoh's army, navy, air force, national guard, local police and snitches.

Then suddenly their appeared strange objects in the sky over the land. There were earthquakes, famine, drought, disease and pestilence. The more Pharaoh's army beat down the people caught in the slave system, the more his economy failed until he cried out, "Let them go, let them go." And the people walked to a new land of their own.
--Marvin X
11/5/14

Petition for Medal of Freedom for Arturo Schomburg, father of Black History

SIGN PETITION: Medal of Freedom for Arturo Schomburg

Petition by carmen santana

Ridgewood, NY

Please read my letter to Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez.

My letter explains why Arturo Alfonso Schomburg's contributions to the USA and the world makes him worthy of the Medal of Freedom.

Nydia Velasquez, Member
United States Congress
7th Congressional District
266 Broadway, Suite 201
Brooklyn, New York 11211

March 24, 2014

Dear Congresswoman Velasquez:
I am writing to you regarding Arturo Alfonso Schomburg to respectfully
request that he be honored posthumously with the Medal of Freedom for

his many immeasurable contributions. The world of scholarship is indebted to

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg- black bibliophile, curator and self taught historian
whose private collection formed the nucleus of what is now one of the
outstanding collections concerning the history and culture of people of African
descent. At his death he bequeathed to posterity an organic monument whose
place in history has been assured.

                           “The Negro Digs Up His Past”

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, also known as Arthur Schomburg was born
in Santurce Puerto Rico (January 24, 1874 to June 8, 1938) As a Puerto
Rican historian, writer, and activist in the United States who researched
and raised awareness of the great contributions that Afro-Latin
Americans and Afro Americans have made to society. In 1891,
Schomburg came to New York City where he became an activist with
the Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico, playing an integral role in
fighting for Puerto Rico and Cuba's independence from Spain. Living in
Harlem, Schomburg coined the term "afroborinqueno" to celebrate his
heritage as a Latino of African descent.
In 1918 the Schomburg family moved from Harlem to Brooklyn. Their
final residence was on Kosciusko Street. Although he lived in Brooklyn
for 20 years, Arturo Schomburg’s ties to the Harlem community
continued. Schomburg was especially involved in the budding literary
and social movement that started in Harlem and spread through black
communities across the country- “The Harlem Renaissance”.
In 1926, the New York Public Library purchased Schomburg's collection
of literature, art and other artifacts for $10,000. Schomburg was
appointed as the curator of the Schomburg Collection of Negro
Literature and Art at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public
Library. Schomburg used the money from the sale of his collection to
add more artifacts of African history to the collection and traveled to
Spain, France, Germany, England and Cuba.
In addition to his contributions with the New York Public Library,
Schomburg was appointed curator of the Negro Collection at Fisk
University's library.
To support his family, Schomburg worked a variety of jobs--teaching
Spanish, working as a messenger and clerk in a law firm. However, his
passion was identifying artifacts that disproved the notion that people of
African descent had no history or achievements. Schomburg's first
article, "Is Hayti Decadent?" appeared in a 1904 issue of The Unique
Advertiser.In 1909, Schomburg wrote a profile on the poet and

independence fighter, Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdez entitled Placido

a Cuban Martyr.
The Harlem community, scholars of Black History and Culture and the
NYC Public Library so honored and respected Schomburg’s magnificent
contributions to Black History and Culture that they named the 135th
Street Branch after him. It is now- in his legacy of scholarship and
excellence- one of the leading public research libraries in the world.
Clearly, if there was just one Puerto Rican scholar deserving of the
Medal of Freedom, it would be Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.
-----------------------------------

To:
President of the United States
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, New York
Rep. Nydia Velazquez, New York-07

 

I am asking President Obama to honor posthumously Arturo Alfonso Schomburg with the Medal of Freedom.

Sincerely,
Carmen Santana

Sincerely,
[Your name]

SIGN PETITION: https://www.change.org/p/rep-nydia-velazquez-i-am-asking-president-obama-to-honor-posthumously-arturo-alfonso-schomburg-with-the-medal-of-freedom

 

 

 

Somethin' Proper: Marvin X's autobiography of a North American African Poet, an original Black Arts Movement narrative by one of the movers and shakers, the human earthquake

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

Parable of a Happy Dope Fiend

 

 

 

 

 

 

In memory of Rick

Rick was a happy dope fiend. He loved shooting dope in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, though he used to shoot dope in the Fillmore, but that was in the old days when the Fillmore was jumping, bumper to bumper cars, Negroes with big hats and long coats, ladies strutting like peacocks. Jazz clubs everywhere. That was before Negro removal came to town. When Negro removal came, Rick started hanging out in the TL, that funky multi-ethnic ghetto a block from downtown.

He was happy in the TL, along with all the other dope fiends, sex workers, derelicts , mentally ill, homeless and working poor.

Whenever Rick was on the streets of the TL, he had a big smile and laughed so hard you had to laugh with him, even if what he was laughing about wasn't funny.

He dressed clean like a real dope fiend from the old days when dope was good, not like that punk dope they have today.

Sometimes Rick would be in the middle of the street loaded to the gills, laughing out loud with one of his dope fiend friends.

Then something happened to Rick. He disappeared for awhile. We heard he was in a drug recovery program. We were happy for him.

He came out of recovery a changed man. He got a job driving yellow cab. He moved out the TL to Oakland. He'd found a house, bought two cars, one a Cadillac Seville.

But when we ran into Rick he was somber, quiet, mellowed out, didn't laugh anymore. He wasn't the Rick we knew. But he was clean and sober, had money in his pocket. But he didn't have that old smile, the laughter was gone.

Time passed.

We saw Rick one day down in the BART or subway station. He was with a girl. She was telling him to hurry up, come on. Rick did as he was told. He had a smile and was laughing.

It was the last time we saw Rick. We know he died happy, doing his thing.
--Marivn X
4/12/10

 

from The Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables, fables, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, 2012, $19.95. Order from Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702.