Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Cointelpro is alive and well! Big Man Howard and Marvin X on Black Panther Party Minister of Distribution, Sam Napier


Marvin X on Samuel Napier

I remember the day Samuel Napier walked into the Black House, the political/cultural center founded by Eldridge Cleaver and myself in San Francisco, 1967. Sam was working at a co-op supermarket in Hunters Point but wanted more than a job in his life. He was sincere and just wanted to get involved. His attitude was the same as another brother who came to the Black House looking to get involved: Emory Douglas,  who became Black Party Minister of Culture. Emory came into the Black House reciting an original poem Revolutionary Things. 

Cover art by Emory

Amiri Baraka by Emory

As per Sam, we were totally devastated when we learned how he was murdered in the COintellpro inspired battle between the two BPP armies. And the bitterness has continued to this day. When I produced my play One Day in the Life in Brooklyn at Sista's Place, 1996, featuring the scene of my last meeting with Huey P. Newton, the December 12 people sat me down and said, "Marvin X, we love you but we don't give a damn about Huey Newton, this is Eldridge's turf, this is where his army was and is."(See the panel discussion entitled Drugs, Art and Revolution, Sista's Place, 1996, featuring Sam Anderson, Sonia Sanchez, Elombe Brath, Mrs Amina Baraka, Mr. Amiri Baraka (RIP), and Marvin X, hosted by December 12 member Omawale Clay, Youtube.)

As you may know, I introduced Eldridge to Huey and Bobby and it was sad to see how Cointellpro helped divide brother against brother to the point of murder, brutal murder in the case of Sam Napier who was killed and set on fire. As Mao said, "The reactionaries will never put down their butcher knives, they will never turn into Buddha heads!" So the struggle continues.

We must simply practice eternal vigilance until victory. And we must pass the baton to our children, especially the Black Arts/Black Power/Black Panther Babies. Newark, New Jersey's Mayor Ras Baraka is a model of a child who understands his mission is to continue the tradition of Black Liberation, which simply means seizing power for the people.
--Marvin X, Black Arts Movement
5/17/16



https://s.yimg.com/fz/api/res/1.2/ztJaGg_Rjuh42W3VyiTu1g--/YXBwaWQ9c3JjaGRkO2g9Mzg5O3E9OTU7dz00MDA-/http://i2.wp.com/sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/BPP-50th-0415-web.jpg?resize=400%2C389  
October, 20-23 Black Panther Party 50th Anniversary at Oakland Museum of California.

Writers: Join the National Writers Union

National Writers Unions
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Black Arts Movement Theatre, West: Dewey Redman - Dewey Time, Happy Birth Day, Dewey!




Saxophonist Walter Dewey Redman
was born on May 17, 1931 in Fort
Worth, Texas.

He received his initial band
training at I.M. Terrell High
School where he performed
with fellow students Ornette
Coleman, Prince Lasha and Charles
Moffett.

Redman played in Ornette Coleman's
groups and with Keith Jarrett
and then formed his own band "Old
and New Dreams" with fellow Ornette
alumni Don Cherry, Charlie Haden,
and Ed Blackwell.

Here's a clip from the 2001 documentary
"Dewey Time" about his life and music
PLUS a performance with friends and
collaborators Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell
and Charlie Haden.


Marvin X on Dewey Redman and Black Arts Movement Theatre, West


When we established Black Arts West Theatre, 1966, in San Francisco's Fillmore District, across the street from Tree's Pool Hall and around the corner from the Sun Reporter Newspaper, Turk and Fillmore, we, actors, playwrights, Ed Bullins, Duncan Barber, Carl Bossiere, Hillary Broadus, Ethna Wyatt, Sandra Williams, Danny Glover and myself, were soon joined by musicians. Among them were Dewey Redman, Rafael Donald Garrett, Earle Davis, BJ, Oliver Jackson, et al. They held concerts but most importantly they accompanied our plays in the style of what we now call "ritual theatre", i.e., they were free to play on stage, or move about in the audience or go out on the street to the accompaniment of car horns and all the sounds on Fillmore Street that was often bumper to bumper cars and sidewalks full of people, Harlem of the West, like 125th Street and Lenox Ave. As we know redevelopment (gentrification) destroyed the cultural and economic vitality of the Fillmore. Former San Francisco Mayor Joe Alioto apologized for destroying the Fillmore. And this is why the land trust must be employed in the coming Black Arts Movement Business District in Oakland.

Dewey and his fellow musicians inspired us with their freedom and we began to do improvisation with our scripts, especially while under the influence of marijuana, i.e., we would transcend the script and free-style for a moment of two, then return to the script, call it jazz-drama. 

While we loved the musicians, we had ideological differences with many if not most of them because we considered ourselves Black Nationalists and they had white women, which we found embarrassing, especially in the box office during the jazz concerts, e.g., the Monte Waters Big Band. But we survived our differences and I would sometimes visit them at their homes, in particular Donald Rafael Garrett, Oliver Johnson and Dewey Redman. Surely, today we are happy Dewey's woman gave birth to Joshua Redman. Happy birthday, Dewey!
--Marvin X
5/17/16

Monday, May 16, 2016

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20 Black Poets







20 Black Poets You Should Know (and Love)

Poetry lovers and novices alike can connect with verses by this list of extraordinary wordsmiths.

By: Hope Wabuke
Posted: April 16 2015
The Root



Gwendolyn Brooks

Brooks, who was the poet laureate of Illinois, became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her second collection, Annie Allen. Her keen insight and musical language make her writing required reading for students of poetry today. “We Real Cool” is a good place to begin.
Wikimedia Commons

Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?” asked Hughes in one of his best-known lines. His name became synonymous with the Harlem Renaissance, and his work has inspired subsequent generations of black poets.
Wikimedia Commons

Audre Lorde

The unapologetic Lorde is equally known for her poetry and essays. In every medium, she transcended form and used words to dismantle systems of oppression.
Audre Lorde with writer Meridel Le Sueur (Wikimedia Commons)

Rita Dove

A Pulitzer Prize winner and the country’s first black poet laureate, Dove deftly weaves together subject matter that is both personal and political. She continues to shape the conversation on modern poetry as an editor and professor.
Wikimedia Commons

The Dark Room Collective

This community of writers gave voice to the next generation of black American poets. It was founded nearly 30 years ago in Boston by Thomas Sayers Ellis, Sharan Strange and Janice Lowe, who were dedicated to nurturing and supporting black poetics. It grew to include Major Jackson, Carl Phillips, Tisa Bryant and Kevin Young, along with Pulitzer Prize winners Tracy K. Smith and Natasha Tretheway, who was also honored as the poet laureate of the United States.
Wikimedia Commons

Lucille Clifton

Clifton won the National Book Award, was once the poet laureate of Maryland and earned two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work, legendary for its extremely modern minimalism, revolved around spirituality, womanhood and African-American identity.
Wikimedia Commons

June Jordan

As with Audre Lorde, Jordan’s political acts of speaking truth to power through creative expression were shaped in essays, poems and stories. Lorde, the founder of Poetry for the People, has continued to inspire students through her teaching since her death in 2002.
Wikimedia Commons

Cave Canem

Cornelius Eady and Toi Derricotte are the founding visionaries behind this Brooklyn, N.Y.-based organization that showcases the brilliance of black poets. Together with founding faculty members Elizabeth Alexander, Afaa Michael Weaver, Michele Elliot, Terrance Hayes and Sarah Micklem, Cave Canem hosted its first retreat in 1996. During the past two decades, Eady and Derricotte have created a safe space for black poets, often marginalized in traditional literary spaces, to nurture one another.
Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady (Facebook)

Derek Walcott

Walcott’s first poem, “1944,” consisting of 44 lines of free verse, was published when he was just 14 years old. For a lifetime of poetic expression, he received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992. The committee called his work “a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment.”
Wikimedia Commons

Claudia Rankine

A razor-sharp intellect reinventing the lyric poem and the use of documentary style in poetry, Rankine often turns a close eye to the intricacies of macro- and microaggressions in the United States. Her latest book, Citizen: An American Lyric, was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Wikimedia Commons

Nikky Finney

Finney, winner of the National Book Award for her fifth book of poems, Head Off & Split, is also a formidable educator and mentor to young poets.

Alice Walker

Walker wrote the first of many books of poetry when she was a senior at Sarah Lawrence College. Active in the civil rights movement, a former columnist at Ms. magazine and co-founder of a feminist publishing company, she has long been a staunch advocate for social justice.
Peter Kramer/Getty Images

Kwame Dawes

The author of 12 books of poetry, Dawes is Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and editor-in-chief of famed literary journal Prairie Schooner. He empowers the next generation of black poets through his work with the Calabash International Literary Festival, Cave Canem and the African Poetry Book Fund.
Wikimedia Commons

Nikki Giovanni

A star of the Black Arts Movement, Giovanni is one of America’s best-selling poets. She paid it forward by founding the publishing company NikTom Ltd. to promote African-American female writers and inspires young poets through teaching and accessible, dynamic verse.
Wikimedia Commons

Ntozake Shange

Shange’s choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf revolutionized both literature and theater. Nearly 40 years after its first performance, it continues to incite and inspire audiences.
Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

Maya Angelou

Considered to be more inspirational than literary, Angelou’s work popularized African-American poetry like none before it.
Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images

Sonia Sanchez

The author of 18 books of poetry, Sanchez has had an illustrious writing career. In the 1970s she was also instrumental in introducing black-studies courses into university curricula, something we take for granted today.

Angelina Weld Grimké

Grimké’s poems, essays, stories and plays made her a pivotal figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her work often highlighted the desperate conditions of black women and children. Born in 1880, Grimké is credited with being the first African-American woman to write a publicly performed play.
Wikimedia Commons

Saeed Jones

Last year Jones published his first full-length poetry book, the critically acclaimed Prelude to Bruise. The BuzzFeed editor has also funneled his talent into the creation of a literary journal and a $12,000 fellowship for emerging writers.
Twitter

Jean Toomer

His masterwork, Cane, is a meditation on the black American experience, inspired by his return to the South after his family’s migration north. There, Toomer witnessed lynchings and other racial violence and vividly expressed their horrors in his poetry.
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Wikimedia Commons
In 1996 the Academy of American Poets dubbed April National Poetry Month to celebrate the richness of American poetry. In its honor, here are 20 black American poets who have shown brilliance in their art and service to the community.
Nikky Finney reading at the Annikki Poetry Festival in Tampere, Finland, June 9, 2012. (Wikimedia Commons)

Black Bird Press News & Review: Why not invite Marvin X for Black History Month--He's Living Black History!

Black Bird Press News & Review: Why not invite Marvin X for Black History Month--He's Living Black History!