Georgia State University Professor and Chair of Black Studies, Akinyele Umoja, was in the Bay Area to interview Black Arts Movement co-founder Marvin X. Over dinner at a Cambodian restaurant, Akinyele asked the author of The Wisdom of Plato Negro, several questions on the birth of Black Arts West Theatre in San Francisco, 1966. Akinyele's main reference was Marvin X's 1998 autobiography Somethin' Proper,
Black Bird Press.
Question: What was the role of Ethna Wyatt (Hurriyah Asar) in Black Arts West?
Marvin X: She was an organizer and keeper of peace between us brothers: Ed Bullins, Duncan Barber,
Hillary Broadous and Carl Bossiere. She kept us from killing each other with the power of her love. She was not an artist but a comrade in revolution.
Question: What made you join the Nation of Islam?
Marvin X: I joined the Nation of Islam because I was a black nationalist, I wanted a black nation and I appreciated the spirituality of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
Question: When did you join the NOI?
Marvin X: 1967, Easter Sunday. The Black House project with Eldridge Cleaver, Ed Bullins, Ethna Wyatt and myself was falling apart from ideological differences between us artists and Eldridge who was pushing Communism. This difference would lead to a rift between so called cultural nationalists and the Black Panther Party, who dismissed anyone who didn't pick up the gun as a reactionary or cultural nationalist, especially artists and intellectuals.
Question: How did you get to the mosque?
Marvin X: The mosque came to us in the form of a brother Alonzo Harris Batin, who became guru of Black Arts West. Alonzo taught us savage artists Islamic civilization, even though he was a career criminal who had spent time with Eldridge Cleaver in San Quentin. Black Panther Earl Anthony, aka Earl the Squirrel, a self-confessed snitch wrote a play about Eldridge and Batin, produced off Broadway by Woody King.
But Batin taught us how to eat to live, with bean soup, carrot pies, Whiting fish, wheat bread, with a butter and honey spread. He taught us that we were so-called Negroes and other Supreme Wisdom of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He taught us not to bow down to corrupt officials in the NOI. Batin was highly upset when I told him I had confessed to NOI officials in Chicago that Ethna and I had been fornicating. He roasted me for confessing to the likes of National Captain Raymond Shariff, National Secretary John Ali (FBI agent).
Another major influence was Ali Sharif Bey, an Ahmedia Muslim who spoke several languages and was well versed in Islamic history. Sharif was our Arabic teacher (he gave me my first Arabic name, Nazzam which means organizer, and he was our Islamic studies teacher. He was against sectarianism and religiosity, citing the unity of religions, especially in adhering to primitive myth and ritual.
As per how early Islam was in my writings, my first play Flowers for the Trashman has lines addressed to the white man that any one can recognize as coming from the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The play was written around 1965.
Question: What was your relationship with Mamadou Lumumba?
Marvin X: He was like my teacher, highly intellectual and analytical, spoke French and Spanish. I met Kenny Freeman or Mamadou Lumumba at Merritt College, 1962. I met him the same time I met Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Donald Warden, Richard Thorne, Ernie Allen, Isaac Moore, Ann Williams and Carol Freeman, Mamadou's wife. I used to go over their house to get knowledge, share my writings. My early writings would appear in SoulBook, edited by Mamadou. But I would go to their pad and if I happened to be there at six o'clock, the KPFA evening news would come on. I have been listening to KPFA since 1962.
Question: You have said the Black Arts Movement gave birth to the politicos?
Marvin X: Larry Neal said the Black Arts Movement was the sister of the Black Power Movement.
I say the Black Arts Movement was the mother, a kind of half-way house for persons to get their black consciousness then move forward into the political realm. Co-founder Bobby Seale acted in my second play Come Next Summer, circa 1965, even before the founding of Black Arts West, 1966. Eldrdige Cleaver had founded the Black History Club at Soledad Prison, visited by the staff of Black Dialogue Magazine, 1966. We would publish the writings of Eldridge and the poetry of Alprintis Bunchy Carter and other inmates. Before it appeared in Soul on Ice, Black Dialogue published Eldridge's essay My Queen, I Greet You.
Upon his release from Soledad, December 1966, I was the first person Eldridge hooked up with, and he used his advance from Soul on Ice, essays, to fund Black House, a cultural/political center. No matter what, Eldridge was influenced by the cultural happenings at Black House, even though his main objective was pushing Marxism, something we artists rejected. And once I introduced him to Black Panther Bobby Seale, the world knows the rest. (See my memoir Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the devil, Black Bird Press, 2009)
Once the Black Panther Party ridiculed the intellectuals and artists for reactionary behavior in not picking up the gun, the Bay Area political atmosphere became toxic: brothers and sisters who had once been together were not ideological enemies. Violence was used to suppress political dissent or any behavior not in harmony with the Black Panther Party. Many artists fled to the east coast, musicians, writers, painters. They felt threatened by the dogmatic BPP.
On one level, it would have been nice if we could have had at least working unity, functional unity. The irony is the the Black Arts Movement nurtured black consciousness into the politicos, then they turned on Mother!
It wasn't until the Pan African Festival in Algiers that the Black Panther Party got a clear understanding of the essential role of Culture and Art in revolution.
