Confession of Ex basketball player Marvin X 9/12.18

Confession of Ex Basketball Player Marvin X
draft 9/10/18

Preface

What I am about to tell you is going to shock you beyond belief as I shocked DJ Davey D when I told him I was writing this essay Confession of an ex-basketball player. But it's true. It is a story of how one can transcend the illusions of life, things we thought were priority, vital to our breath of air, yet, Solomon told us when I was a child I did childish things, when I became a man childish things mean nothing. Elijah Muhammad taught us the world was not made for sport and play. He told all his followers, including Muhammad Ali, the world was not for sport and play. HEM's sole focus was our liberation into a nation of our own. But we must take a break, R and R, sometimes, sooner or later.

All armies must, even in the low intensity national liberation battle of North American Africans. Sports is a sometimes necessary diversion from the real world of dread, make believe and conspicuous consumption, the one billion five trillion illusions of the monkey mind (Guru Bawa).ort

But some of us come to realize sports is indeed a diversion from the real world that would drive us to the brink of suicide or homicide if this world was our sole focus. Like music, sports soothes the wild beast in us while stimulating our tribal instincts in athletic prowess.

For me as a child, teenager and college student, basketball was my life, a way to get away from home in a safe space. Shooting basketball probably saved me from descending off the precipice of juvenile criminality, although the coaches bet I would fuck up before the season was over at Edison High in Fresno. For sure, although an A student and athlete, several times I found myself in Juvenile Hall for stealing from the snack shop at White's Theatre where all us Blacks went on Sunday.

The question is how did I get so far away from something I loved? 

Shall we say there are passages (tech language portals) we go through in life. A critical ritual in Christology is the seven stations of the cross, although the primary Christian myth-ritual is crucifixion, resurrection, ascension.
As I Write Tonight

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As I write, the music of my childhood growing up in West Oakland is playing, the Hammond B3 organ. Honestly, even now when I hear the Hammond, I time travel to growing up on 7th Street, West Oakland, Harlem of the West: that Hammond B3 organ takes me immediately to 7th Street: organ music blasting from cafes, beauty and barber shops, restaurants, pool halls, shoe shine parlors like Perry's, John Singer's Club; upstairs was the Pullman Porters Union, the first Black union in America, headed by C.L. Dellusm, uncle of Congressman and former Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums.

There was Slim Jenkin's Restaurant where Josephine Baker was advertised for months, along with Earl Father Hines. When I passed Slim Jenkins hustling Jet and Ebony, I was fascinated at the billboard advertising Josephine Baker because my parents talked about her so much. I was in elementary school and in the Cub Scouts as I hustled Jet and Ebony magazines up and down 7th, from Peralta to Pine Street, so I mostly stood outside and listened to the music, although I could enter barber and beauty shops, pools halls and hear the juke box up close. Customers didn't know I was more interested in the music than selling Jet and Ebony.

I sold down 7th to Pine which was the end of the line for the district, now called the Lower Bottom, although I never heard that term until lately. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who uses the term Lower Bottom did not grow up in West Oakland. But the socalled Lower Bottom was the end of the line, actually Pine was the Ho' Stroll and the across from the Amtrak Station on Pine was the Ho' Hotel, rooms rented by the hour. I sold Jet and Ebony in this area, making my way back to 7th via Peralta Street passing the West Oakland Library where as elementary school children they tried to teach us about Negroes in literature, although I wasn't ready nor were my classmates as I recall.

Beyond Pine and Seventh Streets, the "Lower Bottom"

Pine was the last street in West Oakland, next was the Army Base and Naval Supply Center, where Mom worked from time to time as a clerk typist while Dad held down the Florist Shop at 7th and Campbell. We lived in back of the shop without hot water and the toilet was outside the back door. We bathed in a tin tub after heating water on the stove. From our living quarters in back of the shop, we could look out the window to view the Negroes "acting a fool" on 7th as Granny said when she came to visit and sat in the window on weekends when 7th was crowded with people enjoying the night life, including sailors, soldiers and common folk. The sidewalks  were crowded and cars were bumper to bumper. I think Granny relished watching our people when the clubs let out: that's when the drama began over the Mythology of Pussy and Dick: Army and Navy brothers fighting with hood brothers over women. 

Basketball at New Century Rec Center

My basketball career began at New Century Rec Center, next door to MacFeely Elementary School, where I spent the 3rd and 4th grade. But New Century's gym was my home away from home. Soon I was addicted to basketball. It became my drug of choice. At New Century I saw a dance teacher that my elementary school mind said she was a beautiful queen. I could not say she was an African queen because I knew nothing about Africa except Tarzan and Jane.

Dance teacher Ruth Beckford was royal with her short natural--who had a natural in the 50s? All I knew was she was black and beautiful. But my primary interest was basketball. When I got to Lowell Junior High, I made the team and a cheer leader tongue kissed me, scaring me to death. I knew nothing about the tongue kiss. But on the Lowell team was Joe Ellis who went on the play for the Warriors. At a basketball school, I won a trophy for hitting 9 of 10 at the free throw line. McClymonds star and NBA player Paul Silos was there.

DeFermery Park, aka Bobby Hutton Park 

Defermery Park basketball court separated stars from wannabees, after all Bill Russell played there, Paul Silos, Joe Ellis, Jim Hadnot and other  graduates of McClymonds who went professional, McClymonds, School of Champions, pride of West Oakland and the City at large after producing so many State champions in all sports. Let me acknowledge my homeboy from Fresno, Coach Benny Tapscott. 

Basketball in Fresno

As Mom and us children moved back and forth from Oakland to Fresno depending on Mom and Dad marital relations because they  were tripping and eventually divorced, but when in Fresno my basketball career continued at Frank H and Frank Smith on the West Side. We used to play at Frank Smith on the outside courts. Benny Tapscott was there, Odell Johnson, later stared at St. Mary's and became President of Laney College. All the Edison High players were there, especially Edison High star Billy Hicks, my neighbor in the projects. Odell went to Catholic School but his brothers made the team at  Edison High.

I recall playing basketball at Defermery with the Pointer brothers (brothers of the Pointer Sisters singing group); the Aikens brothers, et al. If you could, and I did, maintain myself on court with the McClymonds brothers, I didn't feel bad. But New Century Rec had prepared me for the Defermery acid test.

Lowell Jr. High trained me to engage the Defermery Park brothers, hell, we all played at New Century. It was the West Oakland's best gym.

OG Basketball Player, 91 years old

A few days ago in the parking lot of a grocery market, I recognized a brother I remembered from New Century and Defermery: he always had a braid in his hair. He was sitting at the wheel of a faded gold classic Cadillac. As I headed into the market I recognized him and couldn't resist saying something to him. I said, "Hey, bro, I remember you playing basketball at Defermery. Matter of fact, didn't you play at New Century?"

He said yes. I said, "Hell, bro., you was old in the 50s as I recall. How old are you now?" He said, "91. I graduated from high school in 1944. Wasn't no Merritt College or Laney so I went to Community College in San Francisco." I was honored to be in his presence because I surely remember him, especially at Defermery, a master of the game. There were other brothers like Big Joe who used to use his weigh to muscle into the hole. at New Century and Defermery.

Basketball in Fresno

In Fresno, Edison was the school of champions. I spent my high school years on the team at Edison. I recall we played against Lemoore High School that had one black player, Tommy Smith. With five Blacks on our team, Tommy and his crew weree no match, we beat their asses. It was like Lebaron James playing the Warriors. Do the math: 1 vs 5!

But we were humbled to see John Carlos and Tommy Smith raise their fists at the Mexico City Olympics.  Soon after John and Tommy's Mexico City affair that shocked the world that descendants of  the American Slave System (Ed Howard term) had the nerve to raise their fists at USA domestic colonialism, I found myself exiled in Mexico City, along with many other political refugees from throughout the Americas. I was one of many young political refugees from Dominican Republic, Cuba, Columbia, Venezuela to whom Mexico gave refuge. Thank you, Mexico, thank you.

Mexico City Exile

My Mexico City contact was the great revolutionary artist Elizabeth Cattlett Mora. She picked me up from the bus station and gave me initial refuge but said I could not stay with her because she was being watched because she was a Communist, although teaching at the University. Alas, before the Olympics students at the university were massacred and when parents went to the university the parents disappeared, so Betty Mora gave me temporary refuge and connected with those who could help me further.

Blacks in Mexico City, 1970

There was a community of Black Americans in Mexico City who had no plans of returning to the United States of America, in fact, they informed me that any human beings who wanted to endure the oppression meted out to North American Africans in the USA needed to endure such but it was not for them. These North American Africans had adjusted themselves to Mexican culture as an alternative to blatant USA racism, although Mexico had it's racism in its attempt to reconcile its mixed heritage of Spanish, Indian and African. After all, Mexican revolutionary heroes were Yanga, Vicente Guerrero, Afro Mexican George Washington and Abraham Lincoln of Mexico. Zapata, Afro Mexican revolutionary hero. 

Praise for Mexico

I loved Mexico's leit motif Por favor (please) repeated on every occasion to show civility, humility and appreciation.

We praise Mexico for giving refuge to political refugees from throughout the Americas. Elder revolutionary Betty Mora instructed me that I would be fine as long as I stayed out of Mexican politics, which I did, until I decided to teach Black Power to students at an English language school and was fired. I spent time and hustled books with brothers at the African and Caribbean embassies. We had conversations on politics, in particular brothers from Ghana who informed they felt more equipped to deal with their English ex-colonial masters than the Russians President Nkrumah associated with, who sold them unusable military equipment. We think Nkrumah's vision of a United States of Africa was beyond these ambassadors. Brothers at the Caribbean embassies informed me they could not buy my Black Power literature even though they could travel home with diplomatic bags. At this time, 1970, Black Power literature was banned throughout the Caribbean. Why do you think Marcus Garvey left Jamaica, Stokely Carmichael and CLR James left Trinidad? These were slave and neo-colonial colonies. When I told my host in Mexico City, Betty Mora, I was going to Belize, then British Honduras, she was horrified, "No, Marvin, don't go, Belize is still a colony of Great Britain. They are in raw colonialism not neo-colonialism." As a hard headed North American African, I ignored the wisdom of Betty and departed to Belize with my wife now pregnant with our child we would name Nefertiti. Many years later, Nefertiti accompanied me to Alameda County Juvenile Hall where I spoke to the youth in the gym. When Nefertiti saw the females come into the gym, Nefertiti whispered, "Dad, those girls look tore up." And they did. Nefertiti told me later that at first she couldn't identify with the girls until she thought about her parents being in flight from oppression when she was conceived." We are in flight in our socalled land of the free and home of the brave. Tore up from the floor up, children, parents, grandparents, community. We are under great stress, most importantly our mental condition, but physical condition as well, especially our obesity. I am working on mine, especially when I recall my athletic past along with the How to Eat to Live teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad who ignited the American health food revolution. 

I connected with the grandsons of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad who were attending school at the University of the Americas, described by one of my Mexico City hosts as "a din of iniquity". They were the sons of Herbert Muhammad, Manager of Muhammad Ali.  I was sent a press badge as Foreign Editor of Muhammad Speaks, appointed by Herbert Muhammad, who was also Publisher of Muhammad

Speaks. I wrote articles on Afro-Mexicans, including stories on Elizabeth Cattlett Mora, perhaps our greatest revolutionary artists; in the mode of Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Cattlett Mora identified with youth in the Black Power Movement, respecially the Black Panthers, thus, like Gwen, Betty Mora is a Master BAM Elder, her works speaks for itself, see Negro Es Bellow, i.e., black is beautiful using Black Panther iconology, a piece she was working on when she gave Marvin X refuge at her house. She and her husband, muralist Poncho Mora, were witnesses at the civil marriage of Marvin X and Barbara Hall, mother of their daughters Nefertiti and Amira. In the Maroon tradition, Marvin X snatched student Barbara Hall from Fresno State University, where he taught journalism, black literature and drama in the Black Studies Department, 1969, 70 students registered for his classes until Gov. Ronald Reagan discovered the lecturer was on trial in San Francisco for refusing to fight in Vietnam. Entering the State College Board of Trustees meeting, the said, "I want him off campus by any means necessary." Marvin faced Freesno Superior Court and was banned from Campus, the College claimed he was never hired, although he gave final grades to his 70 students from his classroom across the street from FSU at the Christian Center that provided him a classroom. FYI, Gov. Reagan also removed Angela Davis from lecturing at UCLA because she was a Black Communist, along with Marvin X, a Black Muslim who didn't allow whites in his classes, including the media. FYI, Mormons taught at FSU at this time and they believed Blacks could not enter the priesthood, later changed. Banned by Fresno Superior Court from entering FSU, Marvin X was simultaneously fighting his draft case in San Francisco. Students from throughout California supported his fight against serving in Vietnam. A group called the United Students of California said, "We want Marvin X not in jail, not in Vietnam but in the classroom."

After being found guilty of draft evasion, Marvin X didn't wait for sentencing, he went into exile a second time, this time to Mexico City and Belize, Central America, from which he was soon arrested and deported back to America. In Belize, then British Honduras, the Minister of Home Affairs said in his deportation order: Your presence in not beneficial to the British Colony of Honduras, therefore you shall be deported back to the United States of America. Until the plane leaves to Miami at 4PM, you shall be placed under arrest. 

   

Who Won Tonight?

Who won tonight? Warriors! Warriors! Warriors! Everybody loves winners. I love winners. I salute the Oakland Warriors! Oakland is the City of Warriors, City of Resistance, like Fallujah in Iraq, destroyed yet resistant. Oakland North American Africans, yes, City of Champions by the Warriors victory tonight, the Pullman Porters Union, Black Panther Party and the battle continues....Let the now generation take the baton, let them not reinvent the wheel but learn from Ancestor mistakes and avoid them, move into the world of your making. Khalil Gibran said your children come through you but they are not you. You are the bow, they are the arrow! 

I am not watching the game. I am writing this article. I have never watched a Warrior game or any other NBA game. I can't believe myself after spending my childhood and young adulthood playing basketball night and day, sleeping and eating basketball.

But truthfully, I cannot believe as a basketball player--and I did not mention I was on the team at Merritt College after graduation from Edison and returning to Oakland to attend Merritt.  Before I get to Merritt, let me finish my high school career as a guard. Most significantly, I suffered a knee injury that pretty much ended my career because the injury recurred even when I got to Merritt College. But at Merritt my main problem was my West Oakland brothers from McClymonds, John Aikens, Jackson, Bobby Chapman, hell, our first team guard could dunk! But I was not going into the hole with those tall brothers from McClymonds, they weren't going to elbow me in the head. After suffering another knee injury on the road, I think it was against Fresno City College, I gave up basketball and started playing tennis. Wasn't that many blacks into tennis in 1963. When I beat a tall white boy on the tennis court, he threw his racket down and walked off the court.

I continued playing tennis until I taught at the University of Nevada, Reno, and my children visited me for the summer. My son, Darrel, a high school tennis champ, beat me set after set and laughed all the way. I was then that I realized youth is no match for the elders. My son ended my tennis career forever.

My athletic interest was rekindled when my oldest son Marvin Keith played college football as defensive end, captain of the defense. The few of his college games I attended, I saw him sack the quarterbacks. And this was all right with me until he thought I was the quarterback to sack as abandoned father.

I was elated when he tried out for the San Francisco 49s but was cut. He didn't pursue his athletic career but went into computer programming. When he worked for PGE, he said, "Dad, do you know how much I make?" I said no son, he said, "Eight thousand dollars every two weeks." All I could say was wow. He showed me his hand computer  that controlled all the PGE computers in Northern California. After my son was cut from the 49rs, I had no further interest in football, although I played football, yes, tackle football in the hood with no protective gear. You think we had gear in the hood?
But as hustler I made money during the San Francisco Super Bowels, hustling caps, shirts, etc.

The Battle of the Bay World Series

When the 1989 earthquake hit the Bay, I was hustling T shirts at the Eastbay Terminal. I was at Mission selling when the quake hit and I had to take shelter in the cove of a building. A Latina woman was shouting for me to take cover with her as the quake caused buildings to fall before my eyes. The Battle of the Bay was no more. I boarded an AC Transit bus to Oakland, but after getting on the bridge aboard the bus, the bridge fell and cars went into the bay. When the AC bus stopped, passengers were ordered off the bus and we walked back to the terminal. The rest is another story,just know North American Africans celebrated Xmas in October.

Warriors win NBA title again

The beauty of Oakland is that it is the City of Warriors in every genre, sports, politics, arts, culture, radical solutions.

What About Warrior Politics

Can Oakland solve its pressing housing crisis caused by gentrification and globalism? We hope you understand Globalism transcends White Supremacy. When I moved into a subsidized apartment by the Lake, Latinos were the repairmen, but after the change ownership of Asians, the Latino workers are no more, only Chinese who speak no English.

We must therefore update our analysis of oppression, alas, it is no longer the white man but Global Man who cares nothing about racism only economics. You may be surprised at this multi-cultural phenomena that may include global investors from Latin America, Africa, Arabia, China, India, at al.

City of Resistance 

And yet, few understand Oakland as City of Resistance to USA domestic colonialism.
Oakland resisted with armed resistance, no MLK, Jr. non-violence;Oakland style, fuck the police, back dat ass up bitch pig ass motherfucka.

Don't  no Oakland soldiers fear yo ass OPD pig motherfucker, back yo ass up. We 7th Street Niggas.
Back yo ass up. Yeah, we crazy so don't fuck wit us. Leave us the fuck alone. West Oakland fa life.
Power to the People!

Warriors Victory and continued occupation of Oakland's Lake Merritt

The Warrior Celebration in Oakland continued Black people's occupation of Lake Merritt along Lakeshore Ave. Vendors were numerous with African clothing, jewelry, art work, food, books(Marvin X) and socializing with ample marijuana and alcohol, a celebration of Black Unity, Joy and Entrepreneurship.

We call upon politicians to make the necessary policy changes to make permanent the Black presence at the Lake an extension of the Black Arts Movement District that begins from the Lower Bottom of 14th Street to Lake Merritt. This should be done in the name of racial and economic parity. North American African vendors should be exempt from City and State taxes for five to ten years pending reparations. Lake vending should be a pilot project to extend Black vending along the 14th Street corridor to inspire a Black economic and cultural Renaissance in Oakland, once known as Harlem of the West!

--Marvin X, BAMBD Co-founder

9/12/18

Prez Donald Trump is the Devil in the Book of Job

Prez Donald Trump is the Devil in the Book of Job

Marvin X at the University of Chicago, 2015

photo  Burrell Sunrise

Don't be scared of Prez Donald Trump, he just the devil, like the one in the Book of Job. If Trump is the devil, who is Job? Job is the so-called Negro who was kidnapped, brainwashed, raped, tortured and terrorized until reduced from Kunta to Toby and accepted his job for life, yes, job as in Job. Even today, after 400 years of involuntary servitude, most so-called Negroes, aka North  American Africans, only want a job, sometimes called "a slave" (Gotta get to ma slave, man, later).

So although the idea of do for self or entrepreneurship is slowly creeping into his consciousness, especially after Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad, because they recognize the glass ceiling awaits them, as did my darling daughter Muhammida El Muhajir realized after reaching the heights of corporate America (NIKE, William Morris Agency, et al.)  and departed to Ghana (See her interview with Al Jazeerah, Blaxit). She noted that after graduating from Howard University with a B.S. in Microbiology, on a track scholarship, "I ran track to be a winner. I am not going to stay in any race that I have no possibility of winning. Ghana may not have electricity 24/7 but they don't have white supremacy 24/7. I am not followed around in expensive stores, restaurants and hotels. I am black among my Black people!"

Cheikh Anta Diop on Northern Cradle Tragedy and Southern Cradle Tragi-Comedy

Cheikh Anta Diop taught us there is no tragedy in Southern Cradle or Kemetic/African drama . The essential theme in European or Northern Cradle drama is murder! Check out the Greek dramatists and especially Shakespeare.

The primordial African drama is the Resurrection of Osiris, based on the annual ebb and flow of the Nile or Hapi River and the renewal of crops from death to resurrection celebrated in the Harvest festival ritual revised by Maulana Karenga (FYI, Karenga was the Southern California representative of Oakland's Afrcan American Association, under the leadership of Attorney Donald Warden, aka. Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour who went on to represent OPEC and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).

Did Kwanza originate in Oakland?

Let us consider Kwanza originated in Oakland with the AAA, just for historical fact, along with the AAA's influence on Black Panther founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale (See AAA member Ed Howard on Oakland and Kwanza).

The Afro American Association was critical in the West Coast Black Arts Movement and Black Studies. (In Sha Allah, Marvin X will explore this history in his forthcoming The Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University, co-authored by Nefertiti Jackmon and published by Black Bird Press, Oakland.

Osiris as Kemetic/Egyptian Black African Savior God of Resurrection

This prototypical savior drama (see Kersey Graves The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors or Christianity Before Christ) of crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, the Osiris myth/ritual, followed kidnapped Africans to the New World, yes, that wilderness of North America and throughout the Americas or Diaspora.

The Osiris Resurrection drama was synchronized in the variety of Kemetic/African spiritual expressions throughout the Americas, including Vodun, Condomple, Santaria, Holy Ghost Church, et al., no matter the US, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, Brazil, at al.  These New world Africans who had actually lived in the Americas Before Columbus as Moors, continue to express their myth/ritual spiritual expressions, but it was the same  expression Nile Valley vision of Resurrection and Joy, no matter the death of Africans in the Americas, genocide, the indefatigable African spirit.

Rev. James Cone: The Cross and Lynching Tree: Osiris, Job, Jesus, Negro

Our beloved Ancestor Rev. James Cone said we cannot understand Christianity and our role in the Christian myth/ritual until we come to terms with the Cross and the Lynching Tree. We can identify with the Crucified Jesus as Osiris or imagine ourselves as the central character in the Book of Job.

God tells the devil to try Job to see if he will remain faithful. God said, "Devil, you can do anything to him but kill him." So the devil agreed to God's project, as if the devil had a choice since he was God's servant as well. He certainly didn't have power over God!

The devil proceeded to torture Job to no end, inflicting him with all manner of diseases, boils, abscesses, loss of property, children, even his wife turned against him, crying, "Job, why don't you curse God and die!"

But Job persisted as Abdullah, i.e., servant of God.

We are all Abdullah, even the devil, Shaitan, as we see in the story of Job. Job was given a test that he passed: he kept the faith, a true trooper. He was solid, he never bent, never submitted.

Prez Donald Trump as Devil

As per Prez Donald Trump, keep the faith of your ancestors who endured the worse horrors any people endured in the history of the world; alas, the Jews suffered Hitler for four or five years while you suffered 400 years, yet you have no memory of your suffering.

Is it not a psychological fact that victims of trauma can't  remember what happened to them? Dr. Nathan Hare says we don't suffer amnesia because amnesia implies we simply forgot, but Dr. Hare claims we suffered a severe degree of menticide or murder of the mind, hence we are in such a state of trauma and unresolved grief that we don't understand we have won the battle with the devil as depicted in the Book of Job.

The Enemy will not tell you when you are winning!

A partner of mine said, "The enemy will never tell you when you are winning!" You think they will announce on CNN, NPR, FOX?

North Americans achieved National Sovereignty today after 400 years. The US Government agreed to pay 16 Trillion in Reparations and agreed to partition  land on a coast of the United States for the establishment of an independent state known as  The Republic of  North American Africa.


Trump's Duty as Devil

Prez Trump's duty as the devil is to try you to see if you are indeed a true trooper, i.e., Abdullah, servant of God/Allah. He's duty bound to inflict you with economic deprivation, although he claims you are in the best economic shape since you arrived in the wilderness of North America. Do you have living wage jobs? Are you able to halt the gentrification of your hoods coast to coast, from Harlem to San Frdaancisco's Fillmore and West Oakland?

Malcolm X: Hoodwinked and Bamboozled

Malcolm X told you not to be hoodwinked and  bamboozled! Elijah Muhammad told you not to be victims of tricknology!

In fact, Elijah tricked the trick out of the trick; call it reverse psychology. Read Message to the Black Man by Elijah Muhammad , i.e., Black Studies 101. Elijah gave us an original mythology, even Marcus Garvey didn't give us the whole enchilada, although he studied with Duse Muhammad Ali in London before coming to America to connect with Booker T. Washington. Duse Muhammad gave him the concept of One God, One Aim, One Destiny, African for Africans, those at home and abroad. Today this is called Pan Africanism. Pan African-ism is the most potent concept in the Pan African world, a primal motivation of the African Union, although  the African Union is plagued with contradictions: At this moment the AU is a repetitious  continuation of the failed European model Africa adopted after de-colonialism and now trying to implement while the EU is falling apart as we see with Brexit. Italy is on the road to implement a nationalist, populist agenda, anti globalist and anti neo-liberalism agenda.

Booker T and Marcus Garvey

Washington died before Garvey could meet with him, although he understood Washington's philosophy of do for self, which Garvey implemented as best he could, fighting black bourgeoisie all the way, including W.E.B. DuBois. It is a sad chapter in  our history that our intellectuals conspired with the newly formed FBI to drive Garvey out of the USA, the greatest Black Nationalist leader of all times, until the coming of Elijah Muhammad who claimed he was only continuing the work of Garvey. And he did so, building the Nation of Islam into the greatest organization after Marcus Garvey. Consider Elijah's students: Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Farrakhan, Wraith Din Muhammad, Marvin X, et al.

Have no fear of the devil, Prez Trump. Don't be afraid to make a deal with the devil, although he claims to be master of Art of the Deal. But we know the devil planned and Allah planned, but Allah is the Best Planner.

Give the devil Brownie points for pardoning the first Black Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson for violating the Black Man Act, i.e., transporting white women over state lines,.and for pardoning  our beloved sister Alice Johnson. FYI, what is the meaning of John in Arabic? John means life giver, Arabic Yahya. Jack and Alice were given life by the will of Allah through the devil. Her lawyer reported Alice said, "It feels like I have been resurrected from the dead...."

We suggest the devil, Prez Trump,  stop cherry picking our oppressed people and give a general amnesty to all captives in USA dungeons, gulags, jails and prisons of America, most of whom are poor, mentally ill and drug addicted, plus lacked proper legal representation due to their poverty.

Oh, Children of Job, do not be afraid to look the devil in his blues and don't blink. God got your back and your front. Be blessed and ever on the alert. Do not leave your post without being properly relieved, Soldier!
--Marvin X
6/6/18

P.S. We cannot end this story without an antidote of how God/Allah blessed me in harmony with the Job myth/ritual. The Book of Job ends with Job keeping the faith and therefore being blessed with double everything he lost. Crack heads will remember how we used to run through the hood with a double up of Crack. Well, since the 60s I spent my money, in the words of my dear Mother, on travel and books. But Crack made me sell my library and when Eldridge Cleaver and I smoked together and ran out of money, I told him to look around his room which were book cases full of books. He immediately agreed to sell the books for Crack and we did, even down to the last book case.

In the  Kemetic tragi-comedy and Christian Jobian myth-ritual, I have been blessed with more books in my apartment than I ever imagined. Dr. Nathan Hare gave me his entire library, more or less; I also inherited the library of my mentor, the Honorable John Doumbia, comrade of Malcolm X in their Harlem hustling days, along with many of my daughter Amira's books from her study at Yale and Stanford Law School.

Marvin X, "Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland!" (Ishmael Reed) returns to the Academy of da Corner #1, downtown Oakland, 14th and Broadway, center of the Black Arts Movement Business District he co-founded, made official by the Oakland City Council, January 19, 2016

Marvin X took a break from finishing his Notes of an Artistic Freedom Fighter

to return to his Academy of da Corner #1, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland across the street from City Hall and Oscar Grant Plaza. Marvin X says it is the most dangerous classroom in the world. In what classroom do US Marines get shot in the head by police and the cased closed? If US Marines can get shot in the head by police, what chance did Oscar Grant have? My involvement with murder under the color of law began with the first case the Black Panther Newspaper headlined The Richmond Police Killing of Denzill Dowell, 1966. Of course Denzill was hardly tahe first Black killed in California history by police under the color of law. In 1979 the OPD were killing a Black man a month, until they killed my best friends baby brother, Melvin Black. I was teaching English at the University of Nevada, Reno part-time and working as a planner/data analyst for a community services agency, plus teaching in Upward Bound at UNR and teaching technical writing at Nevada Community College. The Nevada Committee for the Humanities gave me two planning grants via the National Endowment for the Humanities. I had a theory that when one enters a town, there are two people to know immediately: the preacher and the banker, afterall, the preacher knows everybody and the banker will, to my surprise, let one get overdrawn but continue to withdraw money. But as a dramatist, I know all dramas come to The End.

So I was living the good life until the OPD killed my friend's baby brother. How could I enjoy my joy while my friends and comrades are in trauma and grief from the low intensity eternal battle with the forces of evil, no matter what color in this global conspiracy to bleed to death the 85% oppressed who are deaf dumb and blind to ultimate reality, a step above the low information vibration. In this era of the cellphone computer, there is no excuse for ignorance. Google Becky and she will tell you everything going on in the world. Becky will say Did you mean that....? But if one is stuck in the world of make believe and conspicuous consumption (Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie); if one dresses like an NBA player while one paycheck away from homelessness, there is a serious problem here. The question is how sick is the patient: mild, moderate or severe? 

Time to leave Reno, the biggest little Mississippi in the world
 
My revolutionary comrades in Oakland demanded I leave Reno immediately and help my friend and his family in their hour of grief. I didn't want to return to the battle field, after all the Mormon mafia in Reno was treating me royally. I was one of the two or three Blacks teaching and/or working at UNR. When Eldridge Cleave came to stay with me, as per the ladies,  he said I'd picked all the lilies in the field. Yes, I was single and living a licentious life. I gave him a white girl student who was having sex with Black athletes, me and anyone else with a dick, she told me. She couldn't boil water without burning the pot. In the players manner, I gave her to Eldridge, telling him she gave good head, which was a lie and Eldridge, being a connoisseur of sex, chided me for claiming she gave good head. The connoisseur claimed nine out of ten women were an insult to a dick.For sure, not every woman will describe herself as a beast, those who do, usually are a beast!

When my daughters visited me that summer, they really  didn't like Efetayo. Nefertiti said, "Dad, you take one and bring another. And please don't let Efetayo cook. She burns up everything." And about my young student from UNR Upward Bound, Bernice, Nefertiti said, "Dad, she's just a baby." Bernice was 18 when I "caught her" while teaching Upward Bound. Ok, I have a love for young people. FYI, I married two of my students, Nisa from UC Berkeley and Barbara/Hasani from my controversial lectureship at Fresno State University. Nisa is mother of my daughter Muhammida, Barbara/Hasani is mother of Nefertiti and Amira. 

Bernice was victim of sexual abuse from her male relatives, so traumatized when we tried to have sex she went into convulsions. We have no clue what trauma our children have experienced. Often men don't care about the woman's trauma and grief, for htmen have an insatiable desire to stick their penis in any hole, even a hole in the ground. At the end of Upward Bound, Bernice called me in the middle of the night saying she was going to kill herself. I told her I would drive the hundred miles to Hawthorn to keep her from killing herself. Is there recovery from sex with father and brother in law?
Is there recovery from having sex with your three brothers until they are no longer brothers but  boyfriends who this sister/now girlfriend sets a schedule for her brothers/boyfriends.

See my memoir My Friend the Devil. FYI, Nevada is the most conservative state in the union. Ronald Reagan's campaign for president was operated out of Reno. His best friend was Senator Paul Laxalt of Reno. Head of the Republican National Committee  was Attorney Frank Fahrenkopf of Reno.

My boss at the Community Services Agency where I worked as a planner, came from a meeting with State officials and told me to tell Eldridge if he didn't leave Nevada they were going to kill him, even though a black AME preacher had given him land near Lake Lahontan, Silver Springs Nevada, near Reno, where Cleaver wanted to establish his ministry. The residents in this conservative community wanted no part of Cleaver and as his chief assistant, he sent me to the planning committee to address his presence in the area, especially since the land donated by a Black AME preacher and his white wife was adjacent to Lake Lahontan.

The planning committee meeting, open to the public, was like a lynching party but they wanted Cleaver not me, so he stayed alive and I did as well although in the old days any nigger would have been fine. Do you think I was saved from the lynching tree because I was teaching at University of Nevada? I don't think so. But they didn't want me, they wanted Nat Turner.

Soon after my boss delivered the message from Massa that Eldridge Cleaver had to go, and with  Rev. Chicken Wing reversing his land donation, probably on pain of death, Cleaver packed up and left my house in Reno. At the same time I concluded my days of lasciviousness  were over and it was back to the battlefield. The final straw came after Cleaver departed and shortly after I did as well to help organize a response to the killing of 15 year old Melvin Black, my best friend and top Arabic student's tragedy. Even though I was living a good life (I do better around Conservative whites--I didn't care that a reporter from the Reno Gazette let me know he was a Red Neck. Just give me respect. I am a Blackneck. I don't want your woman. Will you want to agree not to mess with mine, I will surely agree to leave yours alone. Now I must be honest and say that since I had a class full of white girls who were fucking the Black athletes and reported their activities to me, yes, despite their parents, who included UNR professors, told their children, "Niggers are bad news." For sure, the white girls found out Niggers are good news and came after me as well.   The most important thing I learned from working with Eldridge Cleaver was he demanded I arrange first class accommodations whenever we traveled. It was a great lesson to demand first class treatment since we are addicted to second class service.  I had no choice since teaching and working in Reno, I read the San Francisco Chronicle daily, along with the LA Times and the NY Times. The catalyst was picking up the SF Chronicle that morning then throwing it down after seeing the headlines about another Black man killed by the OPD, but later that night I flipped to the back page and there was pic of my friend Lawrence McKinney, aka Abdul Rahim and his sister Charlotte Black protesting at City Hall.

We formed a community planning committee that decided on The Melvin Black Human Rights Conference at the Oakland Auditorium. According to Edith Austin, the master journalist and political organizer, she said 5,000 Blacks attended from 12 Noon to Midnight without incident. I called my friend Minister Farrakhan who agreed to be the featured speaker. Other speakers included Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, Paul Cobb, Oba T Shaka, Dessie Woods Jones, et al. After a monologue by Khalid Abdullah Tarik Al Mansour, aka Att. Donad Warden, founder of the Afro American Association that gave birth or consciousness to the Black Panther Party, Black Arts Movement, Black Studies and Kwanza (Maulana Karenga was the Los Angeles representative of the Afro American Association).

I will close with this: after the Melvin Black Human Rights Forum, the OPD killing of Blacks subsided, but what followed was drive by killings with UZIs and the epidemic of Crack cocaine that took us backward beyond slavery.

--Marvin X

6/1/18

El'Malik Abdul Muhammad and Master Teacher Marvin X at  Academy of da Corner #1, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. Marvin X has educated and counseled several members of the Muhammad family on spirituality and male/female relations. His 18 page pamphlet on partner relations Mythology of Pussy and Dick is a black underground classic, a healing treatise (biblotherapy) for elders, parents, sons and daughters. A sixteen year old female read MOPD with her mother and told the author, "I wish I'd read it when I was eight!" An elder gentleman told MX, "I hate to admit it but I learned something from your MOPD. Today someone asked did Trump write it. I shouted as they passed, Harvey Weinstein wrote it, although MOPD is for the liberation of all men and women globally who suffer from the addiction to the patriarchal mythology of domination.

Marvin X returned to his Academy of da Corner #1, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland in the center of the Black Arts Movement District along the 14th Street corridor from the Lower Bottom to Lake Merritt. He was immediately inundated with problems of the mentally ill and persons suffering trauma and unresolved grief. A black mother gave him a leaflet with her murdered daughter's pic seeking community support since the OPD has been slow to respond. A white man in a pink dress stopped by with his hands tied with wrapping cloth. A beautiful sister came through wanting to read the Bible to Marvin X, but he ushered her away with her Bible reading. A brother with no shit proceeded to climb the light pole until one of his friends called him down. He then came to Marvin's book and literature table and asked if he could get (his regular) two dollars to move his mad act across the street. Marvin immediately reached into the donation jar and gave the man $2.00. A conscious seeking brother gave a iet$30.00 donation for the collected books of Drs. Julia and Nathan Hare. A sister refused the Movement Newspaper with the Red, Black and Green flag in the centerfold. She said she didn't put flags in her house. Anyway, what dat flag about? Master teacher told her it was the Pan African flag created by Marcus Garvey. She still didn't want it. Recently, Marvin X went into shock when a young man came to his Lakeshore Ave. Academy and asked if Marcus Garvey was an NBA player?

Blacks with consciousness are often presumptuous and arrogant when dealing with the ignorant of our people, to say nothing of white people who have convinced many of us they know everything, yet one need only look at the world White supremacy/lunacy has created. With a trillion dollar national security budget, America cannot insure the safety of her white school children, no need to mention the murder, trauma and grief non-white children have long endured. I am so tired of quoting James Baldwin, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe."

A young brother stopped to buy some conscious literature. A sister perused with great interest and said she would return. Some return, some don't, and this is coast to coast, whether Marvin's Academy is in Wash, D.C., Philly, Newark, Brooklyn, Harlem. Dirty South too. The consensus is that Marvin X has a different point of view and people are seeking something different, especially something provocative and challenging their long dormant brain cells.

--Marvin X/El Muhajir (the migrant)

6/1/18
Final Draft Table of Contents, Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X
6/1/18

Marvin X speaking at Laney College, Oakland, 2015

photo Alicia Mason

Cover design Adam Turner

                Marvin X speaking/reading at University of Chicago Sun Ra Conference, 2015
         (See Youtube video of Sun Ra Symposium on Afro-futurism at University of Chicago) 
                                                                 photo Burrell Sunrise

Chapter One  Transcendence

Bar B Q Becky and Black Revolution at Oakland’s Lake Merritt

Is President Donald Trump a Damn Fool or Triple Damn Fool?

Of Conundrums and Quagmires

Dear Parents

Dear White Folks

Love Letter to Gay/Lesbian Youth

Racism in America: the Grand Denial

Imagine a Black  Nation!

Black nationalism, flower children and the summer of love

Transcend the low information vibration:

Talk at San Francisco State University

The revolutionary who never came in from the cold: Talk with University Of California, Merced  Students

Revolution against fear

Romanticism/Idealism

Left/Right Paradigm

Every day is a holy day

Why are North American Africans Reactionary

US Violence--level the playing field--everybody pack!

Children and the national security of the united states

Sectarianism

Whiteness and Communal suicide

How to stop violence in the Pan African hood; reply by Rudolph Lewis

The Black Woman is God: from Sarah to Serena

Last Rites of Muhammad Ali

Chapter Two Obama Drama

Pull yo pants up fada prez

Excuse me, Mr. Prez

Fictional interview with Prez Obama

Fictional Prez Obama speech to Muslims

On Prez Obama’s fake speech to Muslims

Fictional Prez Obama’s speech on Afghanistan

Chapter Three Reviews

Black Arts Movement to Hip Hop: A Black Dialogue: Eric Arnold, Rene Guzman, Kim McMillan, Dr. J. Vern Cromartie, Marvin X; Respect Hip Hop Exhibit and The Education of Jahmeel--photo essay by Adam Turner

Marvin X reviews Marvin X in Concert; photo essay by Adam Turner

Sisyphus Syndrome, a Jazz Opera by Amiri Baraka

Black Panther film pre-review

Black Panther, an Afro-futurist film in the Myth-Science tradition of Sun Ra

Addendum to Black Panther review: A psycholinguistic deconstruction of the Arabic word Nisa or Woman

Django

Sun Ra Arkestra at SF Jazz Center; photo essay by Adam Turner

Maestro Michael Morgan’s Oakland  Symphony Notes on Vietnam Concert

Mama at Twilight, Death by Love, a play by Ayodele Nzinga

Film Fences, based on the August Wilson drama; reply by Dr. Abdul Alkalimat

Maestro Michael Morgan’s Oakland Symphony Black Panther Concert

Lifer, the Glen Bailey Story, a play by Ayodele Nzinga

Black Odyssey, a play by Marcus Gardley

Chapter Four

The Black Arts Movement (BAM)

Film script: Marvin X Driving Miss Libby

BAM 50th Anniversary Celebration at Oakland’s Laney College

BAM Wish List

Letter of invitation to join BAM 27 City Tour

Abstract for the BAM 27 City Tour

BAM Speakers Bureau

Straight Outta Oakland

BAM Baby Mayor Ras Baraka and the Newark, New Jersey, Police Model of Symbiosis

Chapter Five

Black Arts Movement Business District (BAMBD)

Oakland City Council approves BAMBD, January 19, 2016

Symbiosis of Poets and Politicians

Black Bourgeoisie Art and Opportunism

Culture Pimps and Ho’s in the BAMBD

Economics in the BAMBD

BAMBD Billion Dollar Trust Fund

How the BAMBD Billion Trust Fund will be allocated

BAMBD Meets Carmel Developers

Letter to Carmel Developers

Afrocentric Design of the BAMBD, A Talk with Architect Fred Smith

Toward Non-violence in the BAMBD

Confidential Notes that ain’t confidential; reply by Oakland City Council President Lynette McElhaney

Letter of Apology to Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and her reply

Call for United Front at Oakland City Hall Black History Celebration

Chapter Six

The Cross and Lynching Tree: Assassination of Editor Chauncey Bailey

Who killed Chauncey Bailey?

Between the Devil and Deep blue sea

A Shakespearean Tragedy

OPD Gang

Chauncey and Malcolm X

Fake News Chauncey Bailey Project

Chauncey’s last story

Final thoughts: Endgame

Order this book now, limited edition, signed by Marvin X. 
Prepublication price $19.95, otherwise $29.95, 500 pages of wisdom 
from the freest Black man in non-free America, 
says James Sweeney

Marvin X's mother, a deeply spiritual business woman, told him to use 
the mind God gave you, boy. And you don't need them niggas, they 
need you. Don't let them use you, think for 
yourself. Well, for a half century, Marvin X survived exile, deportation, 
prison, black and white balled, house arrest, agent provocateurs, snitches
and the jealous and envious haters and blockers. No matter, Marvin X is indefatigable, 
peripatetic and tenacious. A prominent political and spiritual leader told Marvin X he was 
the most self confident person he'd ever met.

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