Negro Digest-Black World

Negro Digest/Black World: Exploring the Archive 1961-1975

Publisher John H. Johnson introduced Negro Digest in Chicago in 1942 as a new Reader's Digest type magazine for the African American community. In its early days, the publication was mainly a collection of reprinted articles concerning African American interests. While early sales reached up to 150,000 issues per month, the magazine's success was soon extinguished by Johnson Publication's new magazine, Ebony. Becoming an unprofitable venture, Negro Digest folded in 1951.

However, Negro Digest's early failure would not reflect its later success. As critic and poet Kaluma ya Salaam wrote, "for the publication of Black Arts creative literature, no magazine was more important than the Chicago based Johnson publication Negro Digest/Black World." The early 1960s marked a growing interest in black consciousness, writing, and art. In 1961, Johnson revived Negro Digest under editor and notable black intellectual Hoyt Fuller. The second incarnation of the magazine would be much different, transforming it from a catalogue of stories that regarded black interests into a vanguard publication that acted as a leading forum and voice in the Black Arts movement. Under Hoyt Fuller's guidance, the magazine underwent many changes, reporting on controversial issues such as Black Power and giving voice to local Chicago poets such as Haki Madhubuti (don l. lee) and Carolyn Rodgers, who probably would have otherwise been left unknown. The publication's eventual transformation into the more politicized and globally focused Black World marked its desire to act as not only a literary space for African Americans but Black people through out the world. Fuller wrote in a rare editorial note dated May 1970, that the magazine would aim to "routinely publish articles which will probe and report the conditions of peoples and their struggles throughout the Black World," with newfound mission of "guarding against the opportunists and charlatans who would exploit Black Art and Literature for their own gain and the spiritual and artistic colonization of Black people."

Negro Digest/Black World is a massive archive. While the first issues of Negro Digest from the 1940s and early 1950s shouldn't be forgotten, the rebirth of the magazine in the early 1960s is of great use to those studying histories of activism, Black Aesthetics (both literary and artistic, local and national), and historical reflections of the period. While there is a wealth of phenomenal material, navigating this archive can be an extremely difficult task because of its breadth and the variety of material. Luckily this resource is still very available at many libraries since it was so widely circulated and read during its lifetime. A renewed scholarly interest in these publications could have a profound effect on the way we conceptualize the Black Arts movement and black activism during this period because many scholars rely on the valuable yet overly authoritative texts like Black Fire. Excavating key works from Negro Digest/Black World illustrates its utility for scholars and enthusiasts of the period across all fields. Further exploration of this untapped resource could have a profound effect on the scholarly direction of this field and a renewed interest of literature during the period.

Engaging Negro Digest/Black World is much easier if one is familiar with the format throughout its years of publication. Often, the issues are built around a common theme; but regardless, they always concern themselves with some aspect of the black experience. There are annual poetry and theater issues, which highlight works by well-known artists and critics such as Amiri Baraka and Addison Gayle, as well as lesser-known participants in the movement. The general format of the issue is an editor's note, several stories, poems, or political essays pertaining to the general theme of the issue, and then the "regular features," which include "Perspectives (notes on books, writers, artists, and the arts)," Humor in Hue," (witty political comics about race by various black artists), and selected poetry.

Negro Digest/Black World is such a fascinating artifact because the content of each issue seems to evade rigid binaries of conservative/liberal, reactionary/radical, and instead functions as a forum for different issues and ideas that were unavoidable realities of the black public sphere. For example, the June 1967 issue of Negro Digest (which cost 35 cents) contains an excerpt from Black Skin White Masks by the extremely influential psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon entitled "Black Man, White Woman," while at the same time a piece by Martin Luther King Jr. called "Stand on War and Peace: Martin Luther King Jr. Explains." Issues of Negro Digest/Black World, such as the June 1967 issue, leave the magazine's political stance rather opaque, making it all the more interesting in reconstructing a historical and ideological sketch of the period.

In addition to the exposition of various viewpoints, the magazine was also a very real space for the performance of public debate. For instance, the debate from the November 1966 issue entitled "Black Power Symposium" is an invaluable piece for those who are interested in the feelings people had about Black Power before it became a widespread and arguably diluted concept. This particular debate features 12 different opinions ranging from Conrad Kent Rivers, founder of OBAC, to Anita Cornwell, a writer and former state employee, to Dudely Randall, founder of Broadside Press but also a librarian and poet. The sheer range of voices about this particular concept automatically points to how important this resource in constructing a historiography from an African American perspective. Another way debates manifest themselves were in articles often preceded (but not always) with the label "Perspective." A fascinating example is June Jordan's "White English: The Politics of Language," part of the August 1973 issue's "Focus on Language" feature, in which Jordan makes an extremely cogent appeal to readers about the importance of "black" English. At the end of the article, the political implications are amplified by the postscript that reads "Both her (June Jordan) award-winning teen novel His Own Where and Dry Victories, a history book, were written entirely in "Black Language." "One consequence," she writes, "is that the novel has been banned from the public schools of Baltimore Md." As this example illustrates, the magazine can be a host of literal debates or more conceptual and long running problems such as the one addressed by Jordan.

The political debates recordied in Negro Digest/Black World are of great importance, but this periodical also houses reproductions of rare artistic works and original aesthetic theory. For example, the June 1970 issue features an essay by Chicago poet and theorist Carolyn Rodgers entitled "The Literature of the Black: Feelings are Sense." While the essay is powerful on its own, it becomes even more valuable after Rodger's links to other black artists (she was a member of OBAC) becomes apparent. The dialogue about literary aesthetics is not simply being stated in the text, it flows as part of a longer-term dialogue throughout the magazine. In that sense, the periodical aspect of Negro Digest/Black World allows for the tracking of developing ideas and dialogue through the years. Another instance of a rare but extraordinary "find" in Black World is in the October 1971 issue article, "AfriCobra (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists): '10 in Search of a Nation." by Africobra artist Jeff Donaldson. Not only does this article contain the group's credo in the words of one of its most prominent member, but it also features a variety of rare images, such as Africobra member Jae Jarrell modeling her "revolutionary suit." This fascinating image has fallen almost completely into obscurity, only existing in this periodical's yellowing pages.

Negro Digest/Black World was published out of Chicago and therefore, whether intentionally or not, showcased local up-and-coming talent and political concerns of readers in the city. Since much of the activity of the late 1960s, particularly the Black Arts Movement, was occurring in the city of publication, the magazine is an excellent resource for those interested in the happenings in Chicago. This is particularly the case for studying OBAC. Often essays will be followed with a biographical sketch about the author, thus figuring out their location is a relatively simple task. It also, as illustrated by "Symposium on Black Power," can offer perspectives by local people, or otherwise unpublished works by authors such as Sam Greenly ("Sonny's Season" October 1971) or "Unpublished Poems by Conrad Kent Rivers," (September 1975). These are just a few artistic works that pertain to the local Chicago arts. There is also special attention paid to local issues that would resonate with the national African American community as well such as the statement "Fred Hampton: Martyr" by William E. Hampton in the May 1970 issue.

The best way to navigate Negro Digest/Black World is to either track down a particular article of interest (they are often cited but rarely republished) and explore the surrounding articles and issues or find a copy of Roots of Afrocentric Thought: A Reference Guide to Negro Digest/Black World 1961-1976 compiled by Clovis E. Semmes. While Semmes book is a slightly clumsy compilation, it seems to be the only way to sift through the material and get a short annotation about each article without actually having to approach the issues individually. Though this book seems obscure in subject matter, it is readily available in many large Chicago area libraries.

Despite the many treasures contained within the pages of Negro Digest/Black World, there is surprisingly very little secondary literature available on the magazine. Listed below are a few sources, however, this archive still remains under analyzed and underappreciated. Even the periodicals existence on microfilm is an uncertain reality, since it seems most libraries only recorded issues sporadically. Due to age and neglect, archival work with this resource seems to be a fleeting opportunity.

Selected Bibliography

Homage to Hoyt Fuller. Ed. Dudley Randall. Detroit: Broadside, 1984.

"From Negro Digest to Ebony, Jet and EM,Special Issue: 50 Years of JPC- Redefining the Black Image." Ebony March 1992.
A short history of Johnson Publications Inc's publications.

Negro Digest/Black World. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company.

Salaam, Kaluma ya "Historical Overviews of the Black Arts Movement." http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/blackarts/historical.htm
An excellent resource for the study of Black Arts Poetry, this particular article highlights the importance of Negro Digest/Black World as a resource.

Semmes, Clovis E. Roots of Afrocentric Thought: A reference Guide to Negro Digest/Black World, 1961-1976. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998.
ISBN: 0-313-29992-7
A reference guide that is extremely useful for navigating this periodical.

Semmes, Clovis E. "Foundations in Africana Studies: Revisiting Negro Digest/Black World, 1961." The Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2001): 195-201.
One of the few pieces of scholarship about the history of the magazine

Son of Man, Proverbs by Marvin X, Harlem, 1968, Doug Harris photo

Fly to Allah, 1968, established Marvin X as one of the key poets of the Black Arts Movement and the father of Muslim American literature. See Dr. Mohja Kahf on Muslim American literature.

In the September, 1969, Negro Digest/Black World magazine, Chicago poet Johari Amimi reviewed Fly to Allah: Fly to Allah by Marvin X, is more than poetry--it is singing/song, it is meditation, it is spirit/flowing/flying, it is blackness celebrated, it is prophecy, it is life, is all of these things and more, beyond articulation. Brother Marvin X is flying us/our/selves to Allah....

During 1968-69, Marvin X lived underground in Harlem, resisting the Vietnam war. He worked at the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, serving as associate editor of Black Theatre magazine. His Harlem associates included Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Don L. Lee, Sun Ra, Askia Toure, Milford Graves, Mae Jackson, Barbara Ann Teer. Ed Bullins was his host, along with the NLT family. He was also associated with Minister Farakhan and Akbar Muhammad at Mosque #7.

Godfather of Oakland Soul: Marvin X

"The Godfather of Oakland Soul: Marvin X" (Community Voices)

Paradise Love Mon, 13 Sep at 9:01pm

Marvin X

Marvin X! The X Man! The Godfather of Oakland Soul!

King Catalyst for the post Civil Rights, Black Arts Movement of the West Coast, simultaneously with his bi coastal literary arts buddy, Amiri Baraka of the east coast. The Senior Citizen General on the front lines against White Supremacy. Former crack addict who helped save himself and scores of others with his institution of The San Francisco Recovery Theater.

Former university professor and lecturer turned poet, patriarch, philosopher, prophet, psychologists, pastor and parablist at the Academy of da Corner in the heart of "The Town," on 14th and Broadway, where he holds office; not preaching to the choir, but to the common folk who come by seeking knowledge, solace and Father's Milk! Plato Negro, deemed by fellow Oakland play-wright, poet and icon, Ishmael Reed, the modern day Plato of Urban America, because of his school's similarity to the philosopher Plato's "Walkabout" schools in Athens of ancient Greece. Death row prophet Mumia Abu Jamal says, "Marvin X is a griot if there ever was one!"

More than just a Pan African and black nationalist, he's a World Sentinel of Human Decency who I would wager knows more about politics and has a keener, clearer and more humane perspective than most U.N. representatives. And if they had a chair in those hallowed halls for poets, and they should, my choice would be Marvin X!

Marvin's poetry and approach can be rather raw for some. And it may yet be a little early to fit him for a halo and sainthood. However, his current hottest selling of his dozens of books, which he churns out annually, rather monthly (according to the Last Poets, he writes a book a month!), not to mention his newly released $100 book, "The Parables of Plato Negro,"--his hottest is a chapbook called "The Mythology of the Pussy and the Dick." Wanda Sabir says his language knocks the socks off old ladies! Indeed, the title often times ruffles the feathers and suit collars of the bourgeois and academia (who Marvin sometimes accuses of not being able to get past linguistics and vernacular to save people's lives), but it is an honest account of how modern folk who try to claim ownership of people's sexual organs is causing many of the problems in the world and in relationships today, and have done so throughout history.

The message in this book is resonating on a grassroots level, like Eldridge Cleaver''s "Soul on Ice" did when it first came out, and has become a hit amongst urban youth who claim it helps them "step up their game" or realize that they have something - and are something - of value that deserves appreciation and respect. And the youth who otherwise don't read, do read this book and even squabble over ownership, as if it were black gold!

On a similar note, in one of his books of poetry he makes a hilarious and yet poignant point about how people get mixed up with each other intimately without ever getting to know one another. If I may paraphrase from memory: Last night we had sex ... but you don't know me. We're about to get married ... but you don't know me! We're going to have children .. .but you don't know me! We just had a fight ... but you don't know me! You're going to jail ... but you don't know me! We're getting a divorced ... but you don't know me!

Marvin's multitude of disciples include Ptah Allah El, who said, "Black studies went to college and never came home!" Wordslanger aka Ayodele Nzinga, director of the Thea Bowman Theater and founder of the Lower Bottom Playazz, and myself, Paradise, who was introduced to Marvin through one of his seminal classic poems, "Black history is World History."

Marvin can be reached and read on his websites, which has readers from all over the world. His newest project is touring with a local band of world class performing artists in a Readers Theater of parables from his new book, who were recently featured at the San Francisco Theater Festival.

Check out his books and book him and his reading group at these sites:

Black Bird Press News & Review
The Best of Dr. Marvin
YouTube
Parables, Fables, Musings Of Plato Negro By Marvin X

About Paradise Love

Paradise is an Oakland poet, party host, and creator of Midnight Fantasies on Blog Talk Radio (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/midnightfantasies). Visit him on Facebook! http://bit.ly/9KtqCM

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Expanded Version: Mythology of Pussy and Dick: Toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality

Monday, September 6, 2010

Mythology of Pussy and Dick Expanded

Coming Soon from

Black Bird Press

the expanded version

250 pages

A Marvin X Classic

Mythology of

Pussy and Dick

Toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality

Marvin X

Reader Comment

Brother and comrade Marvin,
Thank you for keeping me on the receivers list for your written works! I count myself among the privileged. As an artist i.e. truth teller-trail blazer you have always been cutting edge both in what you lived, experienced and the naked truth you bare in "emptying of Spirit out of itself" (as Hegel would put it) as did Trane's Offering. Very rare, and whether we all recognize it now or not we are fortunate to witness such openness and honesty, though it makes the smug uncomfortable in their fake comforts; show is the unessential masquerading as essential and therefore art as truth ripping off masks is often seen as dangerous expose.

I was reading Delores Nochi's Introduction to your new contribution, Mythology of Pussy and Dick: Toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality, and thinking of what she observed:

"Mythology of Pussy and Dick is a compilation of everything Marvin X has written on sexuality in America and the world. There are those who will miss this opportunity to receive wisdom from our brother because of the language he uses to describe the male and female anatomy, and his perceived objectification of women and men, and this is a tragedy because this information is crucial for men and women who are suffering from a psycho-linguistic crisis and inflicting actual violence upon lovers in their male/female and same gender loving relationships. These dysfunctional interactions are witnessed by children who are the next generation of couples... ..

I agreed with her and at the same time recalled the fate of those who preceded you in this undertaking - for instance the social scientist and psychologist Wilhelm Reich e.g. The Function of the Orgasm, Sexual Revolution and Sex-Pol [he was thrown into an American federal prison and his books burned in 1956, he died in an American prison in 1957 http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Book_burning#Wilhelm_Reich.27s_publications_.28by_U.S._Food_and_Drug_Administration.29

Also I thought of Lenny Bruce: Bruce served in the navy during World War II (1942-45) and began performing stand-up comedy in 1946. As he gained popularity in New York night clubs, his brand of comedy shifted from impersonations to free-wheeling monologues satirizing religion and politics. He released several comedy albums and appeared occasionally on TV, especially as a guest of Steve Allen and Hugh Hefner. In 1961 he was arrested after a performance in San Francisco and charged with obscenity. Bruce was acquitted, but for the next few years he was frequently in trouble with the law for using raw language on stage -- a no-no back then. In 1964 he was convicted of obscenity in New York and jailed for a few months (in 2003 Governor George Pataki posthumously pardoned him). http://www.answers.com/topic/lenny-bruce .

Delores' take on the depth and honest language of your work also made me remember the radical 60s and the writings of early contemporary feminists, such as the analysis of sexual biology by Anne Koedt The Myth of Vaginal Orgasm http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/vaginalmyth.html

But more directly your artistic style and the Avante-Garde revolutionary love and rebellion poetry and music of Archie Shepp - in particular his Blase http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpE9SN81H6E

So! Your latest contribution here is evidence that the struggle continues! Thanks and stay strong!

Lil Joe

Preface

After a life of failed relationships, I am now an authority on how to fuck shit up. But I also learned how to keep peace in the house by speaking the language of love and receiving it from my beloved. Call it the tone test, if you will, but the language of love will go a long way toward healthy male/female relations or any human relations.

My mother told me I didn’t need a wife but a maid, secretary and mistress. In the fourth quarter of my life, I must admit and confess I think Mom was right. After someone read my essay Creativity and Sexuality, they said we must keep a balance.

And this is true except for those like myself who manifest the addictive personality that consistently borders on the extreme, somehow missing that balance that provides the stability we need to survive and thrive in this turbulent world, now racing toward The End!

I am much like James Baldwin who said, “I had to live recklessly in order to live at all.” And it seems I am also like the Barakas who live with high drama. It is doubtful I would be able to live a life without drama, being the dramatist I am, although these days I try to stay in the no stress zone, yet drama finds me at every turn. I am fascinated with lesbians because interacting with them is so dramatic.

There is a natural dramatic tension when one desires what he can’t have! It’s a challenge, even greater than seeking a heterosexual woman, although she is fine with me, especially if she has mastered the language of love and doesn’t talk in a provocative language, i.e., don’t tell me to do shit. I don’t have to do a motherfucking thang!

As the Maid, the Ho, the Cook (see story inside) taught me, if you ask me right, in the right tone, I will do anything and everything, but if you come at me in a dictatorial manner that expresses domination, you can’t get nothing here! Matter of fact, I’ll do the opposite, as in kiss my ass.

Today, relationships are fragile at best because people are under great stress generally: will we have a job tomorrow, a house, a mate, sanity? So we can only take things one day at a time. Again, there is great insecurity among the people, thus relationships are enduring major stress.

Yet, we cannot get out of these human relationships because love is all there is, even living in the imagination will not suffice, ultimately, we must leave our dream state to encounter reality, and the reality is that we often connect with people with whom we know and don’t know, whom we love and don’t love, yet must love. It takes the same energy to love as to hate, same energy. My favorite song says, “The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love and be loved in return.”

--Marvin X

Introduction

by

Delores Nochi

Mythology of Pussy and Dick is a compilation of everything Marvin X has written on psychosocial sexuality in America and the world: domestic and partner violence, rape, honor killings, stoning of women, female genital circumcision, sexual anorexia, verbal and emotional abuse, manhood and womanhood rites of passage. There are those who will miss this opportunity to receive wisdom from our brother because of the language he uses to describe the male and female anatomy, his perceived objectification of women and men, and this is a tragedy because this information is crucial for men and women who are suffering a psycho-linguistic crisis and inflicting actual violence upon lovers in their male/female and same gender loving relationships. These dysfunctional interactions are witnessed by children who are the next generation of couples. They will emulate what they see elders enact.

The same people who dare judge his choice of words, his linguistic dexterity, are guilty of lingering in the comfort of their bedrooms watching shows on big screen TVs that depict graphic details of violence perpetrated against others, especially women, yet they call it entertainment. If children learn more from what they see than what we tell them, how will they process and act upon the continued sexual chaos that is manifested in our families and society?

The author has proven himself to be a leader and a teacher who has the best interest of the community at heart.Not only does he teach almost daily at his Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, but often on national book tours, speaking at such colleges and universities as Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, University of Arkansas, University of Virginia, Penn State, Temple University, Medgar Evers College, San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley, Laney and Merritt in Oakland. He speaks truth with language that can be understood by the least of us and the best of us. His credentials includes brief tenure at Fresno State University , 1969, University of California , Berkeley , 1972, Mills College , 1972, San Francisco State University , 1974, University of California , San Diego , 1975, University of Nevada , Reno , 1979.

He embraced the system and defied the system! Oriented in the Muslim tradition of polygamy or plural marriage (see his play In the Name of Love, Laney College Theater production 1981); he has conquered his own demons and held his own with associated intellectuals and psychopaths.See his memoir of Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 1979--one of the funniest books in history! In the words of James Sweeney “…Courageous and outrageous, he walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal.”

We all have war stories about relationships gone bad. The difference between Marvin X and the rest of us is that Marvin X has lived what he is writing about, survived it and is willing to talk about it, and holds nothing back, narrated in language that will grab your attention and cause an epileptic seizure!.Each story is rich with commentary which speaks to society’s attitudes about male/ female relationships: rape, athletes, toxic love, crack house sex, women without men, language of love, religious persecution of women (a woman stoned); gay and lesbian youth, same sex marriage, and much more…

His parables are ingenious commentary about events in real time. If you are a follower of his blogs, then you know with each daily entry he not only provides us with happenings locally and nationally, but walks us through events from a historical and global perspective.See www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com and www.parablesandfablesofmarvinx.blogspot.com.

Marvin X has chosen to sensitize our society by using words like pussy and dick. Language is fluid and if its primary use is communication, and if through words one fails to hit the target, then what is the point? It may be that the author is before his time, and in future generations, pussy and dick will become words of endearment, not relegated to the present negative connotations. Perhaps it will become a mantra chanted over and over as a pre-sex ritual. Why not? Lord knows we could use some more effective ways to get beyond reckless abandonment.

In his essay, The Maid, the Ho, the Cook, Marvin X demonstrates his tender side. Lil Joe describes this story as “One of the most beautiful pieces about real love I’ve ever read. The image of ‘crack-heads’ as scandalous and without human dignity is destroyed by Marvin’s recollection of this sister with whom he fell in love”. Because the object of MX’s affection is a whore, there are those, and you know who you are, who will lose the essence of this story which addresses real feelings and real interactions between a man and a woman. Perhaps, you have only loved when it was safe to do so. But all of us who have loved surely know that passion and feelings can at times be both spontaneous and unsolicited.

Is Marvin X the only courageous one among us who dares to “tell the truth and shame the devil”?

--Delores Nochi Cooper

NOI Archives Found

Early Nation of Islam documents found in Detroit

By JEFF KAROUB
Associated Press

A lawyer says more than 1,000 documents dating to the beginning of the Nation of Islam have been found in the attic of a home in Detroit, the city where the movement started.

Gregory Reed unveiled some artifacts Thursday at a Detroit mosque, including a rare 1933 signature of Nation of Islam founder W.D. Fard.

Reed says the documents reveal internal workings of the group founded on the ideals of black nationalism.

He says the boxes were discovered by an unidentified man whose family members were Nation of Islam "pioneers."

Reed says officials with the Chicago-based organization are aware of the documents and Reed's plans to display them at a proposed center.

A message was left today for Ashahed Muhammad, assistant editor for the Nation of Islam's newspaper.

Read more: Early Nation of Islam documents found in Detroit | freep.com | Detroit Free Press http://www.freep.com/article/20100827/NEWS01/100827047/1003/NEWS01/Early-Nation-of-Islam-papers-found-in-Detroit#ixzz0yxaINbQk

To Whom It May Concern:


Ayodele as actress, director and producer was consummate in her rendition of Opal Palmer Adisa's Bathroom Graffiti Queen. Since an actor can only excel when given a proper script, we must acknowledge the fine writing of Opal Palmer Adisa. But the actor takes the script to the next level of excellence and Ayo surpassed the script with her acting ability. A writer once described my writing as orgasmic. I must say the same about Ayo's acting in Queen.

Additionallly, I was totally pleased with the young men who delivered my first play Flowers for the Trashman.The Lower Bottom Playaz gave my drama the classical production it deserved after a half century in the Black Arts Movement.

We support Ayo's request for grant funds to continue her excellent work.

Sincerely,

Marvin X,
Chancellor,
Academy of Da Corner, Reader's Theatre
jmarvinx@yahoo.com
1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702

I AM OSCAR GRANT, essays on Oakland by Marvin X

OUTSIDECOVER (5200KB)

Cc: WE DEMAND REPARATIONS
Sent: Tue, August 17, 2010 8:10:31 AM
Subject: Re: URGENT: Support Afrika Today on KPFA and Baba Walter Turner!!!

On the proposal to move Walter Turner's Time Slot

As a listener of KPFA since 1962, the station has some positives and negatives. On the positive it is a source of left of center information. But on the negative, I suspect it is an underground Zionist entity. They will tell us about Hamas and Hezbollah, but we never hear directly from Hamas and/or Hezbollah, and this includes that undergound Zionist Amy Goodman. KPFA does not escape Ishmael Reed's labeling as a Jim Crow Media. The majority of the programing is white supremacy in the guise of liberalism and/or radicalism. Their desire to move Walt Turner from Monday night is but a white supremacy move to get Africans off prime time. Greg Bridges informed me they shall be moving on his program as well, Transitions on Tradition, that follows Walt Turner on Monday nights. A brother who recently departed KPFA said he was leaving because it was a Cointelpro entity. There are definitely persons on the air who are suspected agent provocateurs. The station recently had to disclaim their remarks made on the air.

Yes, we need Walk Turner, but we need to move beyond Jim Crow media and its Nigger Breakers as Ishmael entitled his latest book: Obama and the Jim Crow Media, and the Nigger Breakers, Baraka Press, Canada. In short, whites are the minority in the world and shortly in the US, therefore the majority programing should be from ethnic groups who are non-white.
--Marvin X
Academy of Da Corner
14th and Broadway,
Oakland
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Cc: WE DEMAND REPARATIONS
Sent: Mon, August 16, 2010 10:48:26 PM
Subject: URGENT: Support Afrika Today on KPFA and Baba Walter Turner!!!

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Runoko Rashidi
To: Runoko Rashidi ; BuildingAfricanLibraries@yahoogroups.com; globalafricanpresence@yahoogroups.com; TravelwithRunoko@yahoogroups.com; SmaiTawi@yahoogroups.com; SOA@yahoogroups.com; SonsofAfrika@yahoogroups.com; luv4self_network@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, July 25, 2010 9:52:32 PM
Subject: [SOA] SUPPORT "AFRICA TODAY"


Hotep Africans,

I am forwarding you this urgent message below from our Brother Walter Turner regarding a proposed program change from the KPFA's acting General Manager which would in short end brother Walter's ability to host the much needed "Africa Today" program. This could mean the end of this program as we know and depend on it as a media source for both local, national, and international news on the African Continent and the African Diaspora. We must support this Brother by writing the KPFA folks below and letting them know that we don't support their idea of the time change.

I ask you all both locally and out of the area to please take a small bit of your time and let these people know how we feel about losing that space and particularly our media scribe Brother Walter's ability to host this program. Brother Walter does not get paid for his effort of hosting this program so we are not talking about someone's job. This is this Brothers service to African People. Let's show a strong unity in this small but large segment of our struggle for uplifting our people.

In Struggle,
Naeem Deskins

Africa Today/ KPFA/ Your support is needed

From: Walter Turner Host/ Producer/Africa Today / KPFA

I am contacting you as a supporter and or long time listener of the
Program “Africa Today” on KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California.

AFRICA TODAY has been aired in various formats on KPFA Radio for more than 30 years. The initial host of Africa Today was Faraha Hayati and I have now hosted the program for more than 20 years.

I have been informed by Amelia Gonzalez, the Acting Assisitant General Manager of KPFA that there is a proposal to change the time slot of Africa Today from 7PM on Monday evenings to 11AM during a weekday. This time change will effectively end my ability to produce and host Africa Today.

I have attached a letter to the Acting Assistant General Mangager which explains my specific concerns regarding the proposed change and the impact that it will on my ability to host and produce the program.

Africa Today on KPFA is one of a very few national media programs that focuses on the Africa continent. Africa Today is a resource that our global community can not afford to lose. Please voice your support and work with others to voice collective support for the retention of Africa Today, in its current time slot, on KPFA Radio.

Please voice your individual and collective concerns to the following members of the KPFA administrative staff at your earliest convenience.

Thank you

Amelia Gonzalez [ amelia@kpfa.org)
Acting Asisting General Manager and Development Director

Ahmad Anderson ( ahmad@pacifica.org)
Interim General Manager

Baba Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma'at

"Take your steps... and, let our Divine do the rest. Walk in Faith... on each and every day!"

Ten Steps to Detox from White Supremacy

Here are some additional steps to Detox from White Supremacy


1. Turn off TVs and remove them from your house.
2. Stop buying white supremacy movies and white movies in black face.
3. Stop your woman and children from buying goods at white supremacy malls and stores.
4. Stop buying food that contributes to you getting white supremacy diseases. Most of the food is grown in oil, not soil. So you go from the petrochemical food to the pharmaceutical legal drug dealers in conspiracy with the doctor, nurses and undertaker, as described by Elijah Muhammad in the Myth of Yacub.
5. Stop believing in any myths, stories, tales, from the white man, including his religious myths, male/female myths of ownership and domination, or the socalled Patriarchy. As Dr. Nathan Hare teaches us, everything the white man says is a lie until proven to be a fact. This is Dr. Hare's "fictive theory." Furthermore, don't believe anything nigguhs say either until proven to be a fact.
6. Be in this world but not of this world. Stop worshiping white values and rituals such as Xmas, Easter, 4th of July, New Years (the day slaves were auctioned).
7. Think outside the box of white philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, history, linguistics.
8. Communicate with your mate by silence, not yapping day and night on the cell phone, talking loud but saying nothing, Mr. Loud and Wrong, as James Brown told us. Use ESP.
9. Detox your children in all the above or they shall grow up to be little devils, ungrateful bastards we call them, who will hate everything you are about, especially after you send them to the white man's colleges and universities to be edumaked. They will hate you because they have been brainwashed by the devil, yet they don't even know what you are about, as Amiri Baraka has said. And if you ain't about freedom, liberation,
land and sovereignty, you ain't about nothing, just a another nigguh in the woodpile, cannon fodder, fuel for the devil's fire.
10. Discard slavery religion and come into spiritual consciousness: you are within God and God is within you. Ain't nobody who's been dead two thousand years coming back to save you.Forget this fairy tale and live life to the fullest, your heaven and hell are right here on earth. Have any of the men and women who've been to outter space seen heaven during their journey? Did they see God in space? Angels? Surely, they should have passed God on their way to space or on the way home!

--Marvin X

See How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy by Dr. M (Marvin X), Black Bird Press, 2007, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley Ca 94702, $19.95.

Neo Griot Post on Abbey Lincoln

We shall never forget Abbey visiting when I lived on Fillmore Street during the 70s.

It was a down period in her life but she was an honored guest for she was a shero of mine as a sassy, arrogant, uncompromising soul sista, the kind we need today. When she entered my apartment, I remember giving her a long, hard hug for all she meant to me and our people. Peace and love, Abbey!

--Marvin X

VIDEO + AUDIO + OBIT: Abbey Lincoln, Jazz Singer and Writer, Dies at 80

Posted: 14 Aug 2010 05:27 PM PDT

Abbey Lincoln, Jazz Singer and Writer, Dies at 80

By NATE CHINEN

Published: August 14, 2010

Abbey Lincoln, a singer whose dramatic vocal command and tersely poetic songs made her a singular figure in jazz, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 80 and lived on the Upper West Side.

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Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Singer-composer Abbey Lincoln at her home in Manhattan in 2002.

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Ms. Lincoln in the 1968 film “For Love of Ivy.”

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Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos

Ms. Lincoln, 1991.

Her death was announced by her brother David Wooldridge.

Ms. Lincoln’s career encompassed outspoken civil rights advocacy in the 1960s and fearless introspection in more recent years, and for a time in the 1960s she acted in films, including one with Sidney Poitier.

Long recognized as one of jazz’s most arresting and uncompromising singers, Ms. Lincoln gained similar stature as a songwriter only over the last two decades. Her songs, rich in metaphor and philosophical reflection, provide the substance of “Abbey Sings Abbey,” an album released on Verve in 2007. As a body of work, the songs formed the basis of a three-concert retrospective presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2002.

Her singing style was unique, a combined result of bold projection and expressive restraint. Because of her ability to inhabit the emotional dimensions of a song, she was often likened to Billie Holiday, her chief influence. But Ms. Lincoln had a deeper register and a darker tone, and her way with phrasing was more declarative.

“Her utter individuality and intensely passionate delivery can leave an audience breathless with the tension of real drama,” Peter Watrous wrote in The New York Times in 1989. “A slight, curling phrase is laden with significance, and the tone of her voice can signify hidden welts of emotion.”

She had a profound influence on other jazz vocalists, not only as a singer and composer but also as a role model. “I learned a lot about taking a different path from Abbey,” the singer Cassandra Wilson said. “Investing your lyrics with what your life is about in the moment.”

Ms. Lincoln was born Anna Marie Wooldridge in Chicago on Aug. 6, 1930, the 10th of 12 children, and raised in rural Michigan. In the early 1950s, she headed west in search of a singing career, spending two years as a nightclub attraction in Honolulu, where she met Ms. Holiday and Louis Armstrong. She then moved to Los Angeles, where she encountered the accomplished lyricist Bob Russell.

It was at the suggestion of Mr. Russell, who had become her manager, that she took the name Abbey Lincoln, a symbolic conjoining of Westminster Abbey and Abraham Lincoln. In 1956, she made her first album, “Affair ... a Story of a Girl in Love” (Liberty), and appeared in her first film, the Jayne Mansfield vehicle “The Girl Can’t Help It.” Her image in both cases was decidedly glamorous: On the album cover she was depicted in a décolleté gown, and in the movie she sported a dress once worn by Marilyn Monroe.

For her second album, “That’s Him,” released on the Riverside label in 1957, Ms. Lincoln kept the seductive pose but worked convincingly with a modern jazz ensemble that included the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and the drummer Max Roach. In short order she came under the influence of Mr. Roach, a bebop pioneer with an ardent interest in progressive causes. As she later recalled, she put the Monroe dress in an incinerator and followed his lead.

The most visible manifestation of their partnership was “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite,” issued on the Candid label in 1960, with Ms. Lincoln belting Oscar Brown Jr.’s lyrics. Now hailed as an early masterwork of the civil rights movement, the album radicalized Ms. Lincoln’s reputation. One movement had her moaning in sorrow, and then hollering and shrieking in anguish — a stark evocation of struggle. A year later, after Ms. Lincoln sang her own lyrics to a song called “Retribution,” her stance prompted one prominent reviewer to deride her in print as a “professional Negro.”

Ms. Lincoln, who married Mr. Roach in 1962, was for a while more active as an actress than a singer. In 1964 she starred with Ivan Dixon in “Nothing but a Man,” a tale of the Deep South in the 1960s, and in 1968 she was the title character opposite Mr. Poitier in the romantic comedy “For Love of Ivy,” playing a white family’s maid. She also acted on television in guest-starring roles in the ’60s and ’70s.

But with the exception of “Straight Ahead” (Candid), on which “Retribution” appeared, she released no albums in the 1960s. And after her divorce from Mr. Roach in 1970, she took an apartment above a garage in Los Angeles and withdrew from the spotlight for a time. She never remarried.

In addition to Mr. Wooldridge, Ms. Lincoln is survived by another brother, Kenneth Wooldridge, and a sister, Juanita Baker.

During a visit to Africa in 1972, Ms. Lincoln received two honorary appellations from political officials: Moseka, in Zaire, and Aminata, in Guinea. (Moseka would occasionally serve as her surname.) She began to consider her calling as a storyteller and focused on writing songs.

Moving back to New York in the 1980s, Ms. Lincoln resumed performing, eventually attracting the attention of Jean-Philippe Allard, a producer and executive with PolyGram France. Ms. Lincoln’s first effort for what is now the Verve Music Group, “The World Is Falling Down” (1990), was a commercial and critical success.

Eight more albums followed in a similar vein, each produced by Mr. Allard and enlisting top-shelf jazz musicians like the tenor saxophonist Stan Getz and the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. In addition to elegant originals like “Throw It Away” and “When I’m Called Home,” the albums featured Ms. Lincoln’s striking interpretations of material ranging from songbook standards to Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

For “Abbey Sings Abbey” Ms. Lincoln revisited her own songbook exclusively, performing in an acoustic roots-music setting that emphasized her affinities with singer-songwriters like Mr. Dylan. Overseen by Mr. Allard and the American producer-engineer Jay Newland, the album boiled each song to its essence and found Ms. Lincoln in weathered voice but superlative form.

When the album was released in May 2007, Ms. Lincoln was recovering from open-heart surgery. In her Upper West Side apartment, surrounded by her own paintings and drawings, she reflected on her life, often quoting from her own song lyrics. After she recited a long passage from “The World Is Falling Down,” one of her more prominent later songs, her eyes flashed with pride. “I don’t know why anybody would give that up,” she said. “I wouldn’t. Makes my life worthwhile.”

via nytimes.com

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Abbey Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation

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Abbey Lincoln at Carnegie Hall in 2004.

By NATE CHINEN

Published: May 20, 2007

"I HAD a chance to be myself, and I was,” Abbey Lincoln said one recent afternoon, in a corner parlor of her spacious but unassuming ground-floor apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. This 76-year-old jazz legend was summing up her new album, “Abbey Sings Abbey” (Verve), but she could have been describing the central theme of her long and colorful career. On the walls around her were dozens of artifacts — photographs of her with jazz greats, plaques from politicians and family portraits she painted — attesting to the fullness of that story. Dominating the room was a piano, the instrument with which she wrote many of her symbolically charged and self-reflective songs.

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Podcast: Nate Chinen Interviews Abbey Lincoln (mp3)

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Abbey Lincoln with Sidney Poitier in the 1968 film “For Love of Ivy.”

Ms. Lincoln was on the mend from recent open-heart surgery, which might nudge anyone toward rumination. But sitting on a couch in loose clothing, she was as matter-of-fact about her health as she is about her work. Long recognized as one of jazz’s most arresting and uncompromising singers, she has more recently been celebrated as a gifted lyricist and composer. She is the rare jazz singer who writes her own songs, and the rare jazz songwriter whose music conveys the lessons of her life, like, “You can never lose a thing if it belongs to you.”

“Abbey Sings Abbey,” which is out on Tuesday, captures the depth of her art with majestic serenity and bittersweet clarity. As the title suggests, it looks back on her original songs, the first time Ms. Lincoln has dedicated a full album to her own work. Another first: It surrounds her richly textured voice with acoustic and pedal steel guitars, accordion and mandolin, in an American roots-music style. “For some reason,” she said, “it’s better than anything I’ve done before.”

And Ms. Lincoln — who was born Anna Marie Wooldridge, the 10th of 12 children — has done quite a lot in her five-decade-plus career. Her songs are almost certainly her proudest achievement, an impression she reinforces by quoting them liberally, and commandingly, in conversation. “I’m a philosopher, you know,” she said, several minutes into an interview marked at first by wariness, then candor and humor. She frequently reached back into her history, reminiscing even about the things she’s glad to have left behind.

Fifty years ago Ms. Lincoln was on track to become a film and cabaret siren, appearing in the Jayne Mansfield movie “The Girl Can’t Help It,” and on the cover of her 1956 debut, “Affair ... Story of a Girl in Love,” in a décolleté dress and a come-hither pose. She had already spent two years in Honolulu as a supper-club attraction. “I was a glamour queen there too,” she said, smiling faintly. “I met Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday. I’d do my show and run to see Billie. She’d stand on the stage and never move, except for her eyes.”

Ms. Lincoln would eventually be hailed as a successor to Holiday, for her interpretive prowess as well as a slight resemblance between their grainy yet supple vocal timbres. But that accolade was well beyond the horizon when she left Hawaii for Los Angeles, where she met the lyricist Bob Russell, who became her manager. “One time he told me, ‘SinceAbraham Lincoln didn’t free the slaves, maybe you could handle it,’ ” she recalled with a laugh. “He named me Abbey Lincoln.”

Emancipation became a genuine preoccupation for Ms. Lincoln after she met Max Roach, the maverick bebop drummer she credits with “helping me find myself”; they married in 1962. In New York Mr. Roach brought her into his world of artistic experimentation and political engagement. Ms. Lincoln cut herself loose from her satiny image. She’s fond of recalling the emblematic moment when she burned the dress she sported in “The Girl Can’t Help It,” which had previously been worn by Marilyn Monroe. By 1960 she was vocalizing with a raw, spine-tingling power in Mr. Roach’s “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite,” a momentous civil-rights anthem.

In 1961 Ms. Lincoln made some early forays into lyric writing on an album called “Straight Ahead” (Candid) that sparked a public discussion about racial prejudice in jazz, after one reviewer derided Ms. Lincoln as a “professional Negro.” She seems to view those tensions now in an almost clinical light. “People remember you for what you stood for,” she said simply. “And if you didn’t stand for anything, they remember that too.”

One song Ms. Lincoln versified on “Straight Ahead” was “Blue Monk,” by the pianist Thelonious Monk, who stopped by the recording studio to bestow his blessing. “He whispered in my ear just as he was leaving, ‘Don’t be so perfect,’ ” she said. That bit of advice has stayed with her over the years. “Blue Monk” opens the new album.

It wasn’t until her 40s that Ms. Lincoln began to come into her own as a composer. After her divorce from Mr. Roach in 1970, she withdrew from the spotlight, taking an apartment above a garage in Los Angeles. She released an album after a revelatory trip to Africa in 1972, but otherwise directed most of her energies inward. Her songs reflected that spirit of introspection. “I got some people in me,” she wrote.

Moving back to New York in the 1980s she resumed performing, eventually attracting the attention of Jean-Philippe Allard, a producer and executive with Polygram France. Ms. Lincoln’s first effort for what is now the Verve Music Group, “The World Is Falling Down” in 1990, was a commercial and critical success and eight more albums followed, each involving elite jazz musicians and refined jazz arrangements.

The new album purposefully departs from that formula. Mr. Allard, speaking from Paris, said that he and Jay Newland, the engineer on almost all of those Verve releases, had long shared a quiet conviction. “Abbey’s songs have this folk element that is not well represented in a jazz context sometimes,” he said.

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Podcast: Nate Chinen Interviews Abbey Lincoln (mp3)

Mr. Newland, who produced “Abbey Sings Abbey” with Mr. Allard, traces the concept for the album back at least a decade, to a recording Ms. Lincoln made of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” She’s a singer-songwriter too, Mr. Newland recalled thinking at the time.

The idea was rekindled last year, when the producers worked together on an album by the Afro-European pop singer Ayo. Among the songs they recorded was Ms. Lincoln’s “And It’s Supposed to Be Love,” in a new arrangement driven by the guitarist (and as it happens, former Dylan sideman) Larry Campbell. Mr. Campbell was tasked with paring down a number of Ms. Lincoln’s other songs, in preparation for a recording session.

“I was a little skeptical,” Mr. Campbell said by cellphone, driving near Nashville. “How do you take all these really sophisticated harmonic structures and break them down to virtually folk songs?”

It turned out to be easy once he was in the studio with the versatile jazz bassist Scott Colley and the prolific rock drummer Shawn Pelton. Many of Ms. Lincoln’s songs employ a verse-chorus structure more in line with folk songs than jazz standards; some, like “The Music Is the Magic,” resemble nursery rhymes. Though the three musicians had never worked together before, they quickly devised a gently twangy atmosphere for the songs. Later the arranger Gil Goldstein fleshed out some tracks, adding his own deft accordion lines, along with parts for a cellist, Dave Eggar.

Ms. Lincoln exudes a powerful authority throughout the album, whether striking a quietly wistful note on “Should’ve Been” or appealing to a distant creator in “Down Here Below.” Her flickering alto sounds ratified by age; her phrasing is subtle and sure.

“I’ve got about 15 years on some of the songs, so it’s supposed to be a little different,” she said. “If I was imitating myself, that would be pitiful.”

Many more singers are likely to mine Ms. Lincoln’s songs, given that “Abbey Sings Abbey” presents them so clearly, and with so few adornments. Earlier this year the jazz vocalist Kendra Shank released “A Spirit Free: Abbey Lincoln Songbook” (Challenge). Her advice to any artist would be “to sing your own song,” Ms. Lincoln said. “Don’t look to me, look to yourself.” Still, she noted with evident satisfaction a report she had received: a couple of nights earlier, a singer in a club had been pressured by an audience member into singing “Throw It Away,” one of her signature songs.

The singer was Cassandra Wilson, who recorded the song on a recent album, and who has often worked with the rootsy instrumentation now being used by Ms. Lincoln. “I learned a lot about taking a different path from Abbey,” Ms. Wilson said. “Investing your lyrics with what your life is about in the moment.”

That includes the tougher moments, of which Ms. Lincoln has lately had a few. Sitting on her couch, surrounded by the totems of her life, she repeatedly admitted to a lingering fatigue. “I didn’t come here to stay forever, I know that,” she said. “So if they want to bring me home, I’ll be glad to go. It’s easy for me to say it, but I mean it too.” She has vague plans to bequeath her apartment to the community as an arts center: Moseka House, after the name she was given 35 years ago by an official in Zaire.

Of course her greatest legacy will be her music, which she isn’t ready to relinquish. “They’re my songs, and I sang ’em and I’ll sing ’em,” she said. “It’s not the last time I’ll sing ’em, either.” In August she will headline both days of the 15th Annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, which takes place in Harlem and the East Village.

“All along the way there were things to do/always some other someone I could be,” Ms. Lincoln said, citing lines from “Being Me,” which closes the album with a rumination on her lifelong search for an honest self. “Abbey Sings Abbey” is the manifestation of that search, a study in gravity and wisdom that could only have come, one suspects, at this point in her career.

“I should be excellent by now,” Ms. Lincoln said. “Otherwise, when is it going to be?” She drew herself up into a regal posture, grinning mischievously. “I’m baaaaaad.”

>via: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/arts/music/20chin.html?pagewanted=1&fta=y

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GO HERE FOR TERRY HOWCOTT'S ABBEY LINCOLN TRIBUTE FEATURING 26 VIDEOS!!!

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GO HERE AND HERE FOR NEO•GRIOT ABBEY LINCOLN VIDEO POSTINGS