From the archives: Marvin X speaks on South Carolina aka Gullahland

 

On the occasion of Hillary Clinton winning the South Carolina primary, 2016, Marvin X presents his notes on visits to Gullahland, South Carolina. During the 60s, Marvin X spoke at Vorhees College, Denmark, South Carolina. During this time the Orangeburg Massacre of Black college students occurred, although most Americans only know of the Kent State massacre of White college students.

Shorty after Marvin's speech at Vorhees College, (a speech that was interrupted by the white College president who couldn't take any more of Marvin X. As we recall, the mike was snatched while he read Fable of the Black Bird, the number one story by Marvin X that is most loved throughout the South, even today!). 

A few days after Marvin X departed Vorhees,  the students revolted and the National Guard tanks rolled unto the campus. If our memory is correct, Vorhees students revolted shortly after the Orangeburg Massacre.

FYI, The Orangeburg massacre refers to the shooting of protesters by South Carolina Highway Patrol officers in Orangeburg, South Carolina, on the South Carolina State University campus on the evening of February 8, 1968.^[1] The approximately 150 protesters had previously demonstrated against racial segregation at a local bowling alley. Three of the protestors, African American males, were killed and twenty-eight other protesters were injured.^[2]

The event pre-dated the 1970 Kent State shootings and Jackson State killings, in which the National Guard at Kent State, and police and state highway patrol at Jackson State, killed student protesters demonstrating against the United States invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

Orangeburg Massacre Remembered On This Day In Black History

Feb 08, 2013

• Jermaine Spradley 
• Director, Content Strategy & Programming, The Huffington Post

On this day, 45 years ago, three men were killed and 27 were wounded on the campus of South Carolina State College in a violent series of events that would become known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

According to The New York Times, on February 6, 1968, a group of students sought to integrate a local bowling alley that, at the time, only served whites. The alley's owner turned them away and called the police, leading to an encounter with officers which left some students bloodied and others needing to be sent to the infirmary at South Carolina State's campus nearby.

Two days later dozens of students gathered at the school, setting a bonfire in protest of the students' treatment by the bowling alley and brutalization by police. The fire department arrived, as did many officers, but what happened next remains unclear.

According to USA Today, one of the officers was hit with a banister thrown from one of the buildings. According to the News and Courier, it was reported that the students invited the officers fire "upon themselves by sniper fire directed at state patrolmen."

The officers then fired into the crowd, killing Delano Middleton, a high school student visiting the campus; Sam Hammond, who played football for the college; and Henry Smith, an ROTC student who was hit five times. 27 others were wounded.

In the subsequent trials and hearings related to the incident, no evidence of the protestors being armed was ever presented and none of the nine officers charged with crimes related to the shootings were ever convicted of any wrongdoing.

According to the Associated Press, the Orangeburg Massacre is being remembered on the campus of South Carolina State University today, through a panel discussion and a ceremony honoring the victims.

Scholars and men who survived the massacre have since expressed disappointment that what happened that night was never given the same kind of attention as other similar incidents on college campuses -- namely, The Kent State Shootings.

On this day, as we continue our Black History Month celebrations, we remember Delano Middleton, Sam Hammond, and Henry Smith. Their sacrifice lives on as an important reminder of how long and winding the road toward freedom and equality is in the United States of America.

 

 The poet has gone to Beaufort, SC on several occasions over the years to write, hosted by his long time friend, Hurriyah Asar (Ethna X. Wyatt), his partner from Black Arts West Theatre and the Black House, political/cultural center, San Francisco, CA, 1966-67. We give you his impression of South Carolina. 

 

Hurriyah Asar

 

From the Archives: Marvin X Speaks to the Gullah Nation, Beaufort, South Carolina, 2002

Marvin X Speaks to the Gullah Nation, 2002

Last evening, poet Marvin X arrived late for Brother Jabari's radio show in Gullah country, Beaufort, South Carolina. When he finally arrived at the station, he told Gullahland listeners he was late as a result of being caught up in "negrocities," borrowing a term from Amiri Baraka who is writing a book about NEGROCITIES. During the course of the interview Marvin defined the term as an ailment caused by an inflamation of the Negroid gland at the base of the brain due to bad habits. In his play A Black Mass, Amiri Baraka wrote, "Where the soul's print should be there is only a cellulous pouch of disgusting habits."

Brother Jabari, publisher of the Gullah Sentinel, questioned Marvin X page by page about his book IN THE CRAZY HOUSE CALLED AMERICA, starting with the suicide of his son on March 18 of this year. The poet said his pain was cushioned by the fact that so many of his friends have lost sons and daughters to homicide. Dr. Nathan Hare has written that homicide and suicide are two sides of the same coin. Marvin's son suffered mani-depression which the late revolutionary Dr. Franz Fanon called a "situational disorder" caused by oppression." Of course, Dr. Fanon, author of the classic WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, said  revolution was the solution to the mental health problems of the oppressed.

When Jabari turned to Marvin's essay THE INSANITY OF SEX, the poet read the first paragraph of the essay but refused to go further on the Christian owned radio station, although he noted that while sitting in the shade of a tree during the Gullah Nation's Heritage Festival on St. Helena island, he was soon joined by a group of church women who--after X showed them his book, immediately turned to THE INSANITY OF SEX and agreed with his opening paragraph one hundred per cent. Jabari, one of the sole lights in the Gullahland house of darkness, asked X about the culture of the crack house.

The poet said "The crack house is like a third world country: there is no electricity, no running water, no bathroom, no toilet paper, no food, no love. It is the worse thing since slavery." He then had the engineer play track ten of his CD version of ONE DAY IN THE LIFE, the drama of his addiction and recovery. In this "Preacher Scene" the minister describes the horrors of crack culture, ending with the lines, "Crack is worse than slavery. Didn't the slave love his Moma? His God? His Woman? His Children? Not the crack slave, the crack slave is a dirty, nasty, funky slave...."

X then said, "I want to say this to the Christian community: see, I lived in Reno, Nevada while teaching at the University of Nevada and the preachers in Reno never said anything against gambling and prostitution--which are legal. Now, members of the audience who have watched my play wanted to know why the pastors in the community never preach a sermon like the preacher in my play. On more than one occasion, a member of the audience stood to testify that many preachers cannot give a similar sermon because the church is compromised due to the fact that mothers in the church have sons and daughters who are contributing money from the drug trade to the church and if the preacher said anything he wouldn't have a congregation in many urban centers. And maybe in rural centers as well."

Marvin X was asked about education. He said Johnny and Johnnymae can sell dope, weigh dope, package dope, count dope money, but the teachers tell us Johnny and Johnnymae can't do math, can't read, can't do chemistry. This is a lie and the fact that youth remember hours of rap songs word for word is a testament to their intelligence. 

Ethna X. Wyatt, aka Hurriyah Asar, co-founder of Black Arts West
Theatre and Black House,  political/cultural center, along with
Eldridge Clever and playwright Ed Bullins, 1966-67, San Francisco
This pic is from Black Dialogue Magazine, one of the critical
journals published in the Bay Area Black Arts Movement, along
with SoulBook, Journal of Black Poetry and Black Scholar.
Marvin X contributed to all the above journals, as well as
Negro Digest/Black World, Muhammad Speaks Newspaper
and Black Theatre Magazine, a publication of the New Lafayette
Theatre, Harlem, NY.  
 
 

Hurriyah Asar on her land. She followed
her dream. Didn't let no man mess up
her dream of owning land. She has hosted Marvin X on several
occasion, providing him a writing retreat in beautiful
Gullahland, SC.

 
Marvin X spent his final day in Gullah land swimming in the Atlantic ocean off the coast of St. Helena Island. He listened to the pain of a mentally disabled Gullah woman who was camping near the ocean and was a friend of his host, Sister Hurriyah Asar, a landowner in Gullah country who is one of the Queens of the Black Arts Movement, having been a key player at Black Arts West Theatre in San Francisco and at the Black House/Political/Cultural Center, visited by the likes of Amiri and Amina Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Bunchy Carter, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Lil Bobby Hutton, Eldridge Cleaver, Askia Muhammad Toure, Sarah Webster Fabio, Chicago Art Ensemble and others.

When black clouds appeared, Marvin X knew the hour had arrived for him to depart Gullah country. After all, he had enjoyed the people, the land, the sea, the creeks, the chickens, geese, goats, calves, and dogs. Being a country boy from Central Calif, he talked to the animals and they to him. But he leaves Gullahland with a heavy heart, for if the ancestors have given the descendents of slavery any part of America, it is this beautiful land, these islands in the sun.

He has vowed to return to this heaven on earth. Sister Hurriyah was the glue of the West coast black arts movement. And in the new epoch, she is showing the way to heaven on earth. If ever a man shall follow a woman, it is now, for she has created heaven on earth.
--Marvin X, November 12, 2002, Beaufort, South Carolina.

FYI, the last time Marvin X visited Gullahland, his friends told him not to say anything while there. "Just chill, don't say shit. We're not going to give you a book party or help promote your book. Go swim in the ocean." Since his hosts exhibited such  fear of the white supremacy powers, he followed their request. He visited the Yoruba African Village in Sheldon and interviewed the new king or Oba.

Alase Oba Adefunmi Adejuyige speaking at Black Power Babies Discussion in Brooklyn, New York. Marvin X on right. Marvin invited the Oba/King to Black Power Babies, produced by his daughter Muhammida El Muhajir. Parents and children held dialogue on their role in Black Arts/Black Power movement of the 60s. The Oba's father, Serjiman Olatunji, was the main personality who spread Yoruba culture in America. He officiated the wedding of Amina and Amiri Baraka. Many BAM poets were influenced by Islam and Yoruba culture and religion. See Amiri Baraka's play A Black Mass which utilized Islamic and Yoruba mythology is his interpretation of the Nation of Islam's myth of Yakub.

The poet was saddened his hosts feared the Blacks as well as the white. Jabari had told him the Gullah Africans were afraid to come inside his newspaper office, afraid their boss would see them. Also, his hosts told him they were tired of Cali Blacks or Blacks from the North coming down there inciting the Africans then departing, leaving them to suffer the wrath of the white man, since he knows which family the Africans visited and would retaliate on that family. He might have one of the family members fired from their three minimum wage jobs. 

One one occasion after completing the draft of his manual How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy in Beaufort, he went to Staples to make copies. The clerk, a sister, asked where he was from? He said here. She replied, "No, you're not from here." 
"Why you say I'm not from here?"
"Cause we don't say white ssupremacy down here. We know it, but we don't say it."  

NIKE gives Stanford University $400 million for Scholarships

Philip Knight of Nike to Give $400 Million to Stanford Scholars

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

 FEB. 24, 2016

Philip H. Knight, the co-founder and chairman of Nike Inc., said on Monday that he had pledged to give Stanford University $400 million to recruit graduate students around the globe to address society’s most intractable problems, including poverty and climate change.

The gift to the new Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, which is modeled on the Rhodes scholarships, matches one of the largest individual donations ever to a university, the $400 million that John A. Paulson, the hedge fund tycoon, gave to Harvard last year to improve its engineering school. The Stanford project is meant to improve the world.

“This is using education to benefit mankind and I think it really could be transformative,” Mr. Knight said in a phone interview. “I jumped on it right away.”

Its ambitious mandate is the brainchild of Stanford’s president, John L. Hennessy, a computer scientist and tech entrepreneur, who plans to step down this summer. During his 16-year tenure, Mr. Hennessy nurtured the school’s symbiotic relationship with Silicon Valley and increased Stanford’s endowment to more than $22 billion from about $9 billion in 2000.

Philip Knight, chairman of Nike.  

Credit Rick Bowmer/Associated Press

The program, which will be announced on Wednesday at Stanford, has raised $750 million, making it one of the largest fully funded scholarship endowments in the world.

These kinds of megagifts to elite universities have their critics, who argue they are more about prestige and ego than academic excellence. “This is just part of the crazy arms race between the top schools with no connection to reality,” said Malcolm Gladwell, a writer for The New Yorker and the author of “The Tipping Point” who posted scathing Twitter messages last year about Mr. Paulson’s gift to Harvard. “If Stanford cut its endowment in half and gave it to other worthy institutions,” he said, “then the world really would be a better place.”

According to the Council for Aid to Education, less than 1 percent of the nation’s colleges received 28.7 percent of all gifts in 2015.

The former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is now a professor at Stanford, called it “an exciting place at the heart of Silicon Valley.”

She added, “It’s a place where people are innovating all the time and it can attract the best people from all over the world.”

Mr. Knight, a graduate of Stanford’s business school, gave that institution $105 million in 2006. Over the past 20 years, he has donated hundreds of millions to the University of Oregon, where he received his undergraduate degree.

Stanford’s president, John L. Hennessy. 

Steve Jennings/Getty Images

Not every gift pledged by Mr. Knight has gone smoothly. In 2000, he withdrew a $30 million pledge to expand the University of Oregon’s football stadium after the school allied itself with a labor group that was critical of Nike factories overseas. The university president later reversed the decision and Mr. Knight restored the gift.

Mr. Knight is not the first billionaire to sponsor an international scholarship program. In 2000, Bill Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft, established the Gates Cambridge Scholarship for students of all nationalities to study at Cambridge University. In January, Stephen A. Schwarzman, the co-founder and chairman of the Blackstone Group, announced the first class of recipients of the Schwarzman scholarship, another Rhodes-like master’s program, at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The Knight-Hennessy scholarship is not unique, but Mr. Knight may well be the rare billionaire benefactor who is willing to share top billing. “I think locking my name in with his for decades to come is an honor,” Mr. Knight said.

Mr. Hennessy described the fellowships as his legacy. “A few years ago I started to think about the one thing I could do at Stanford that could make a difference for the world in a bigger setting,” he said in a phone interview. “We could bring the best students from around the world to Stanford and produce a string of leaders educated in making positive change.”

Starting in 2018, the program will annually offer full tuition and board to 100 students — a third of them from the United States and two-thirds from abroad — who will gain admittance to one of Stanford’s seven graduate schools and commit to working on important issues in small, multidisciplinary teams.

One problem Mr. Hennessy said he might assign to a team is to analyze the $100 million donation that Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, made to Newark public schools in 2010, and that has not been widely seen as a success. “Nobody understood the real difficulty in making significant change in the public education system,” Mr. Hennessy said. His scholars would be asked, he added, “ ‘How do you build a structure that will successfully deploy those funds for the benefit of all?’ ”

A representative for Mr. Zuckerberg pointed out in response that, among other things, graduation rates in Newark had gone up 13 points in the last few years.

Mr. Hennessy said he was confident that this money would be well spent. “To say we can solve all the world’s problems is naïve,” he said. “To say we can educate people to make a significant difference in trying to solve those problems — that’s an achievable goal.”

Google Gives $1,000,000 for Racial Justice Project

Google Gives $1,000,000 to Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative

The company said it wanted to respond to clear and present racial injustice in America. 

By: Angela Bronner Helm

Feb. 27 2016 11:11 AM

Bryan Stevenson speaks onstage at ‘An Evening With John Legend’ hosted by Politico to kick-off White House Correspondents’ weekend at Longview Gallery on April 24, 2015, in Washington, D.C.

Brad Barket/Getty Images for POLITICO

Tech giant Google announced on Friday that its philanthropic arm would be donating $1 million to Bryan Stevenson’s Alabama-based non-profit, Equal Justice Initiative.

The Harvard-educated Stevenson is a lawyer who has for decades fought the good fight—winning major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent prisoners on death row, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill and aiding children prosecuted as adults in a deeply flawed American criminal justice system.

EJI has also created the nation’s first lynching memorial and fastidiously marked lynching sites throughout the South.

Justin Steele, a principal with Google.org and the Bay Area and racial justice giving lead told USA Today, “I think what’s exciting about what EJI is doing is that at a national level it is really trying to tell the untold history around race in this country and help people develop a deeper understanding for the narrative around race and how we have gotten to where we are.”

Google.org made the announcement during a Black History Month celebration at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters where Stevenson gave a speech on how the Google grant will help further his work.

USA Today reports that the racial justice grants were born out of a growing consensus inside Google that it must respond to the police slayings of African Americans and the fatal shooting of nine black citizens inside a Charleston, S.C., church last summer.

In November, Google.org made its first racial justice grants, giving $2.35 million to community organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. This week, Google.org made four more grants, totaling $3 million.

Keeping in line with the activist mantra of organizing locally and thinking globally, the Equal Justice Initiative grant was the only grant gifted to a national non-profit—all other money was given to local organizations in the Bay Area working to eliminate racial disparities in education.

See Stevenson’s February 2012 TED Talk below:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror

Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror documents EJI’s multi-year investigation into lynching in twelve Southern states during the period between Reconstruction and World War II. EJI researchers documented 3959 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950 – at least 700 more lynchings of black people in these states than previously reported in the most comprehensive work done on lynching to date.

Lynching in America makes the case that lynching of African Americans was terrorism, a widely supported phenomenon used to enforce racial subordination and segregation. Lynchings were violent and public events that traumatized black people throughout the country and were largely tolerated by state and federal officials. This was not “frontier justice” carried out by a few marginalized vigilantes or extremists. Instead, many African Americans who were never accused of any crime were tortured and murdered in front of picnicking spectators (including elected officials and prominent citizens) for bumping into a white person, or wearing their military uniforms after World War I, or not using the appropriate title when addressing a white person. People who participated in lynchings were celebrated and acted with impunity.

The report explores the ways in which lynching profoundly impacted race relations in this country and shaped the contemporary geographic, political, social, and economic conditions of African Americans. Most importantly, lynching reinforced a narrative of racial difference and a legacy of racial inequality that is readily apparent in our criminal justice system today. Mass incarceration, racially biased capital punishment, excessive sentencing, disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities, and police abuse of people of color reveal problems in American society that were shaped by the terror era. 

No prominent public memorial or monument commemorates the thousands of African Americans who were lynched in America. Lynching in America argues that is a powerful statement about our failure to value the black lives lost in this brutal campaign of racial violence. Research on mass violence, trauma, and transitional justice underscores the urgent need to engage in public conversations about racial history that begin a process of truth and reconciliation in this country. 

“We cannot heal the deep wounds inflicted during the era of racial terrorism until we tell the truth about it,” said EJI Director Bryan Stevenson. “The geographic, political, economic, and social consequences of decades of terror lynchings can still be seen in many communities today and the damage created by lynching needs to be confronted and discussed. Only then can we meaningfully address the contemporary problems that are lynching’s legacy.”

• Lynching in America: Report Summary

For a copy of the full-length report, send us an email at contact_us@eji.org or call EJI at 334.269.1803.
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Google gives $1M to Bryan Stevenson's racial justice effort

Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY 1:26 p.m. EST February 26, 2016

(Photo: 510Media)

SAN FRANCISCO — Google.org is teaming with Bryan Stevenson and his non-profit Equal Justice Initiative to push America to confront its violent racial history.

The philanthropic arm of the Internet giant says it will help bring online the public education programs on racial justice developed by this Harvard-educated lawyer and author of the bestseller Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption so that millions of people can be exposed to them. And Google.org is giving $1 million to the Equal Justice Initiative to support Stevenson's broader efforts to create civil rights landmarks such as the nation's first lynching memorial and memorial markers at lynching sites.

"Our mission statement is universal access to information and knowledge for everyone. I think what's exciting about what EJI is doing is that at a national level it is really trying to tell the untold history around race in this country and help people develop a deeper understanding for the narrative around race and how we have gotten to where we are," said Justin Steele, a principal with Google.org and the Bay Area and racial justice giving lead.

Google.org made the announcement at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters during an event with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and hosted by Alphabet executive David Drummond to celebrate Black History Month and the company's African-American employees known as the Black Googler Network. Stevenson gave a 20-minute talk on how the Google grant will help further his work.

Alphabet executive David Drummond with Google founders Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin, right, celebrate Black History Month at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters on Thursday night. (Photo: 510Media)

The great-grandson of slaves who was raised in a racially segregated area of rural Delaware has for decades challenged racial bias and economic inequities in the nation's criminal justice system, coming to the aid of condemned prisoners and exonerating innocent ones and fighting to end life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders.

Last year, Stevenson spoke of that work at Google Zeitgeist, the company's annual conference for customers and other guests. Afterward, he spoke privately with top executives. Soon Steele says his phone lit up with messages: "Are we funding him?"

"We realized we are not going to make progress on race, racial equality and justice until we change the temperature outside the courtroom, until we create a different kind of conversation and we are really committed to that," Stevenson said in an interview.

"What Google allows us to do is not only to have resources that can really advance our work in this area but Google is also going to be a really important partner. They have the skills and the knowledge and the innovative techniques to allow us to do this work in a way that engages a broad cross section of our nation."

"We have been looking for ways to amplify that information, that work, that voice, that narrative. I can't think of an entity in the world that is better at amplification than Google. For us, this is a dream come true. We imagine that we can innovate together in this area of racial justice and that's incredibly exciting."

USA TODAY

Bryan Stevenson to Silicon Valley: Go into communities

The grant is another bold step from Google which has begun taking a rare public stand on racial justice for a major technology company.

In November, Google.org made a first wave of racial justice grants, giving $2.35 million to community organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area that are taking on systemic racism in America's criminal justice, prison and educational systems.

USA TODAY

Google.org gives $2.35 million to groups fighting for racial justice

This week, Google.org made four more grants, totaling $3 million. The Equal Justice Initiative was the only national non-profit, the others are all organizations in the Bay Area working to eliminate racial disparities in education.

Google.org gave a second wave of racial justice grants at a Black History Month celebration at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters on Thursday night. Pictured left to right: David Drummond, Alphabet's senior vice president, corporate development, with Google.org grantees: Bryan Stevenson, founder and CEO of Equal Justice Initiative, Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade, founder of Roses in Concrete Community School, Oakland, Landon Dickey, special assistant for African American Achievement & Leadership, San Francisco Unified School District, Alexandra Bernadotte, founder and CEO of Beyond 12, Richard Carranza, superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District, and Justin Steele, principal of Google.org, (Photo: 510Media)Roses in Concrete, a school in East Oakland whose name was inspired by the book of poetry based on the writings of Tupac Shakur, will receive $750,000 for its work in "community responsive" teaching. 

My Brother's and Sister's Keeper initiative, a local version of President Obama's call for action to help increase opportunities for African-American youth, will receive $1 million for its work to give high school seniors the resources they need to pursue a college education.

Beyond12 will receive $250,000 to increase the number of low-income and first-generation students from underrepresented backgrounds who graduate from college through a personalized coaching and tracking service that gives them the academic, social and emotional support they need.

The racial justice grants were born out of a growing consensus inside Google that it must respond to the police slayings of African Americans and the fatal shooting of nine African Americans by a white supremacist in a Charleston, S.C., church.

Alphabet executive David Drummond (Photo: 510Media)

"Incidences of racial violence have again dominated our headlines, with the killing of young men like Tamir Rice and Jordan Davis, the deaths of Michael Brown and Sandra Bland, and countless other acts of injustice," Steele wrote in a blog post announcing the grants. "And it isn’t just heartbreaking individual stories.The data is troubling: African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. An estimated 40 percent of all students expelled from U.S. schools are black, and 30 percent are Latino. Of course, Google and our own industry need to do more to promote equality and opportunities for all."

"Social innovators can help us move closer to our ideals of equality and justice," he wrote. "That’s why last year Google.org launched a new, dedicated effort to support leaders who are doing critical work to end mass incarceration and combat endemic educational inequality for black and brown students."

Follow USA TODAY senior technology writer Jessica Guynn@jguynn

BEST Black radical socialist speech ever! - Paul Robeson

Power of the People Holy Ghost Hits Oakland City Hall Black History Celebration

Ol' Man River (Show Boat, 1936), Paul Robeson

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child-Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson Speaks! 1958 KPFA Radio Interview

Marvin X calls for United Front of all citizens at Oakland City Hall Black History Celebration

 

 Marvin X at Berkeley Juneteenth Festival, 2015

photo Harrison Chastang

Oakland City Hall held  its first Black History celebration tonight with an African style event with dancers and djembe drummers bringing the Holy Ghost to City Hall chambers. President of the Oakland City Council, Lynette McElhaney, dressed like an African Queen, presided over the celebration  that began with her libations to the ancestors.

 Marvin X and African Queen, Oakland City Council President, Lynette McElhaney
at Oakland City Council Black History Celebration.
photo Adam Turner, BAMBD Media Team/Post News Group



The audience stood to sing the Black National Anthem by James Weldon Johnson:

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and
Heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of
Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as
The list'ning skies, let it resound loud as the
Rolling sea
Sing a song full of faith that the
Dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of
The hope that the present has brought
Us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day
Begun,
Let us march on till victory is
Won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the
Chast'ning rod,
Felt in the day that hope
Unborn had died;
Yet with a steady
Beat,
Have not our weary feet,
Come to the
Place on which our fathers sighed?
We have
Come over a way that with tears has been
Watered,
We have come, treading our path
Through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from
The gloomy past, till now we stand at
Last
Where the white gleam of our star is
Cast.

God of our weary years,
God of
Our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus
Far on the way;
Thou who has by thy
Might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us
Forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet
Stray from the places, our God, where we met
Thee,
Least our hearts, drunk with the wine of
The world, we forget thee,
Shadowed beneath the
Hand,
May we forever stand,
Tru to our
God,
Tru to our native land

When she called Marvin X to the mike, he called for a United Front of all Oakland citizens. Marvin X recently moved to the ideological position long held by his dear friend of 47 years, Black Arts Movement chief architect Amiri Baraka. Baraka repeatedly called for the United Front against imperialism and globalism.

Amiri Baraka (RIP) and Marvin X. They enjoyed a 47 year friendship as Black Arts Movement movers and shakers.

Marvin praised President McElhaney and the entire city council for passing legislation proclaiming the Black Arts Movement Business District along the 14th Street corridor downtown. He asked the crowd were they ready to see the Red, Black and Green flag flying along the BAMBD corridor. They shouted yes!

  Graphic design by Adam Turner, BAMBD Media Group

Marvin X and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. 

The Mayor asked President McElhaney to expedite banners along the BAMBD corridor no matter the cost! The President replied to Madam Mayor she is working on putting up the BAMBD flag along the 14th Street corridor. 

 photo Troy Williams, BAMBD Media Team/Post News Group

Earlier in the day the poet/planner had a conversation with his adviser and childhood friend, Paul Cobb, Publisher of the Oakland Post News Group. Paul chided him for his leadership style that apparently came from his work in the Black Arts Theatre. Paul said, "You can't treat people like they're actors in one of your plays. You must share leadership in a communal manner. And you can't be paranoid like your friends Bobby Seale and Huey Newton were in the Black Panther Party. You must trust people to some extent. Everybody is not your enemy and didn't somebody tell you there are more people who love you than hate you?"

Paul Cobb, Oakland Post Newspaper Publisher, and Marvin X at his Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland

photo Walter Riley, Esq.

 
Paul Cobb's Editor, Chauncey Bailey
assassinated at 14th and Alice,downtown
in the now declared Black Arts Movement Business District.
The BAMBD shall honor Chauncey Bailey.


Bay Area Artists and Activists honor the memory of Chauncey Bailey at
the Joyce Gordon Gallery in the BAMBD, 14th and Franklin.
photo Adam Turner and Gene Hazzard, Post News Group


After listening to Paul, Marvin X went home for a power nap before the event at City Hall. But after a few minutes he got a call from Newark, New Jersey. It was Mrs. Amina Baraka, widow of Black Arts Movement chief architect Amiri Baraka.

Professor Molefe Asante, Mrs. Amina Baraka, Marvin X, Amiri Baraka, Jr. and Kenny Gamble, Producer of the Philly Sound. They participated in the Black Power Babies conversation produced by Muhammida El Muhajir and Black Talk Radio station WURD, Philadelphia.

Mrs. Baraka told him she'd just talked with art workers in Oakland that she had told him to avoid but was now calling to let him know she'd changed her mind and he must call for a United Front of the entire radical and progressive community; not just  Blacks, but Asians, Latinos, Whites, Native Americans and gender groups.

"The time is too critical for disunity. You must call for the United Front of the entire community or we're doomed. If you call for the United Front, I will put all my resources behind your Black Arts Movement Business District. If my son, Ras Baraka, Mayor of Newark, cannot come the the West Coast to assist you, I will send one of my other sons. You know I have four sons: Amiri Baraka, Jr., is the Mayor's chief of staff. My other sons are Obalaji and Ahi. I will send you whatever books of my husband you need, and give you rights to produce any of his dramatic works. just do the United Front!"

In his remarks, Marvin X did indeed call for a United Front to fight the oppressive conditions of all Oakland citizens, no matter what ethnic or gender group. Before his time was up, he called up his adviser and childhood friend, Paul Cobb, who thanked the City Council President for pushing through the legislation establishing the Black Arts Movement District. He also thanked Council member Roberta Kaplan. Paul explained why he wanted "Movement" in the district name. "This must be a movement because Oakland is Oakland because of its radical tradition. We need the Movement right now to fight joblessness, homelessness, gentrification and the residue of white supremacy. There must be a movement not only of artists but workers, youth and other marginalized people."

The event was produced by Cathy Adams with great music by Paul Tilman Smith, Derick Hughes, Kev Choice, the dynamic Diamano Coura West African Dance Group, Aliya Hall, and YGB, Young Gifted and Black, spoken word artists who stole the show. Their T shirts read: The Black Woman is God!

Young Gifted and Black, under the direction of Hobari Davis

 Businessman Geoffery Pete, Post News Group journalist Troy Williams and BAMBD planner Marvin X

The audience heard from Geoffery Pete, owner of Geoffery's Inner Circle, a key venue in the Black Arts Movement Business District, located at 14th and Franklin. Geoffery gave a brief history of all the talent Oakland has produced. The BAMBD vows to fight for improvements of Mr. Pete's venue. We call upon the City of Oakland to make possible such improvements as it did the Fox Theatre.

BAMBD also calls upon the City to stop their eviction of Anyka Barber's Betti Ono Gallary, an essential venue in the BAMBD.


Gallery owner Anyka Barber is facing eviction from the BAMBD
by the City of Oakland. We must fight her eviction! Black Businesswomen
Matter! We call upon President McElhaney and Mayor Libby Schaaf
to stop the eviction of our sister.

Bishop J.E. Watkins gave the opening prayer and said he is opening a TV studio at Liberty Hall, the building founded by the Garvey Movement.

Former Black Panther Party Chairwoman,Elaine Brown

Elaine was introduced and invited everyone to the 50th Anniversary of the Black Panther Party that will take place at the Oakland Museum of California in October.