Coming soon: A video/audio documentary: The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

 

The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

A Video/audio documentary based on the archives

of Marvin X

The Life and Times of a North American African

Poet/Playwright/Activist/Educator/Producer/Publisher/Editor/Philosopher

 

“Most of all, I’m a thinker. I’m thinking 24/7. Even when I’m making love, I’m thinking about a poem, or about how nice it would be if there was another beautiful woman beside me (Divine Discontent or the addictive personality?). Sometimes I think it is one of my multiple personalities who desires that other woman, not me. For sure, that other guy ain’t gonna be satisfied until the other woman appears!” LOL

--Marvin X

 

Brief Bio

Born May 29, 1944, Fowler, CA

Parents: Marian Murrill Jackmon and Owendell Jackmon I

Maternal grandparents: John and Eva Murrill, Fowler CA

Maternal great grandfather: Ephraim Murrill, his death at 99 was noted in the Fresno Bee Newspaper, 1941, “....he was respected by both whites and blacks….”

Upon Marvin X’s birth, his parents were publishing the Fresno Voice, a black newspaper in the Central Valley. They also sold real estate. Because of redlining, his parents sold many blacks their first homes, including Odel Johnson, Emeritus President of Laney College, Oakland. When his parents separated while living in Oakland, his mother returned to Fresno to become one of the first black female real estate brokers and the model for black business women.

As a disciple of Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, Marian Murrill Jackmon used her real estate business to counsel blacks on their multiple issues. Clearly, she passed her spiritual baton to her “star child” who cannot escape writing in the didactic mode, no matter prose, poetry, drama. Of course this is the African style as well. Lately Marvin X uses parables and fables to instruct. You shall see his use of didacticism throughout this documentary. Alas, he is a teacher above all else, although academia did not appeal to him. He briefly taught at San Francisco State College/University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Fresno State University, Mills College, Merritt, Laney, University of Nevada, Reno, and elsewhere. He still lectures coast to coast at colleges and universities.

But he is most comfortable at his Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland or Lakeshore Ave.

 

 

 Co-Founder of the Black Students Union, San Francisco State University, 1964

Co-Founder of Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, 1966

Co-Founder of the Black House, San Francisco, 1967

Co-Founder of the National Black Arts Movement, 1960s

Founder of Black Educational Theatre, San Francisco, 1972

Co-Founder of the Black Men's Conference, Oakland CA, 1981

Founder of Recovery Theatre, San Francisco, 1996

Co-Founder of the Black Arts Movement Business District, Oakland CA, 2016

 

Marvin X's archives were acquired by the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, also by Dr. Ellen McLarney, Chair,  Islamic Studies Department, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. See her chapter on Marvin X in her forthcoming book on Black Arts Movement writers inspired by Islam. On Marvin X as the father of the genre known as Muslim American literature, see Dr. Mohja Khaf, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. 

 

Comments

 

"When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experiences in a lyrical way."

--James G. Spady, RIP

 

"The USA'S Rumi, Saadi, Hafiz!"

--Bob Holman

 

"His writing is orgasmic! ...He reaches in and pulls from a life lived hard, deep, wide, high, low, i.e., a sacrifice in blood. At the root of sacrifice is sacred, which is of God and for God. He has lived and examined the lives of the proverbial 10,000 black men and women. His writings give us the truth of that experience, lived and examined."

--Fahizah Alim

 

"He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland!"

--Ishmael Reed

 

"He's the African Socrates teaching in the hood!

--Dr. Cornel West

 

"Marvin X has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the founders and innovators of the Revolutionary School of African writing."

--Amiri Baraka, RIP

"The starting point for Muslim American literature is Marvin X!"

--Dr. Mohja Kahf, Professor of English and Islamic Studies, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

 

"...Highly informed, he speaks to many societal levels and to both genders—to the intellectual as well as to the man/woman on the street or the unfortunate in prison—to the mind as well as the heart. His topics range from global politics and economics to those between men and women in their household. Common sense dominates his thought. He shuns political correctness for the truth of life. He is a Master Teacher in many fields of thought—religion and psychology, sociology and anthropology, history and politics, literature and the humanities. He is a needed Counselor, for he knows himself, on the deepest of personal levels and he reveals that self to us, that we might be his beneficiaries.

--Rudolph Lewis, Editor, ChickenBones: A Journal

 

 

 

The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

Written and directed by Marvin X

 

Executive Editor Ken Johnson

 

Academy of Da Corner Production

from the archives of Marvin X, aka El Muhahjir

 

 

 

Featuring

 

Dr. Cornel West

Amiri Baraka

Sonia Sanchez

Fillmore Slim

Dr. Nathan Hare

Rev. Cecil Williams

Mayor Willie Brown, San Francisco

Mayor Libby Schaaf, Oakland

Muhammida El Muhajir

Amira Jackmon

Nefertitti Jackmon

James Rhodes

Tacuma King

Phavia Kujichagulia

Kumasi

Umar Ben Hasan

Geoffery Grier

Dr. Ayodele Nzinga

Rudi Mwongozi

Destiny Muhammad

Raynetta Rayzetta

Mechelle LaChaux

Kele Nitoto

Suzzette Celeste

Dr. Julia Hare

Ishmael Reed

Tarika Lewis

Bobby Seale

Elaine Brown

Pam Pam

Doris Knight

Hunia Bradley

James Sweeney

Cat Brooks

Mrs. Amina Baraka

Nisa Ra

Val Serrant

Zaid Mwongozi

Sam Anderson

Donald Lacy

Davey D

Mutima Imani

Rev. Andriette Earl

David Murray

Earle Davis

Akbar Muhammad

Abdullah Muhammad

 

 

 

Tentative Segments, 60 minutes each

Narrator Marvin X

1 Intro by Marvin X

2 Conversations with Dr Cornel West, Parts I and II

3 In the Crazy House Called America Concert, African American Cultural Center, San Francisco, cerca 2002

4. Interviewed by Pam Pam, KPOO Radio, San Francisco, audio

5. Conversation with  Black Panther Party Co-founder Bobby Seale

6The Black Arts Movement: Conversation with the Last Poet, Umar Ben Hasan

7Black August  and the American Prison Movement, Marvin X interviews Black August Griot, Kumasi

8Introduction and Conversation with Amiri Baraka At Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2009, Audio

9Audio Interview with Donald Lacy on the 50th Anniversary of the Black Panther Party

10Marvin X performance at Yoshi's SF, opens for Amiri Baraka and Roscoe Mitchell of the Chicago Art Ensemble

11Forum on Drugs, Art and Revolution, Sista's Place, Brooklyn NY, participants: Sam Anderson, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Amina Baraka, Elombe Brathe, Marvin X

13 Talk at Black Caucus of California Community Colleges

14 Reading at UC Berkeley with Amiri Baraka

15Marvin X in Concert at Black Repertory Group Theater

16 Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, SF State University, April 1, 2001

17 Marvin X at SF Juneteenth

18Marvin X, producer of BAM 50th Anniversary, Laney College, Peralta College Television 

19Marvin X at Sun Ra Conference, Symposium on Afro-futurism, University of Chicago

20Marvin X in Concert at Warm Daddy's, Philly, accompanied by Marshall Allen, Danny Thompson, Noel,members of Sun Ra Arkestra; Elliott Bey, Alexander El, Ancestor Goldsky, Rufus Harley on Bagpipes

21Marvin X In Concert with Amiri Baraka, Black Repertory Group Theater, Berkeley

22Amiri Baraka 75th birthday party, Yoshi's SF

23 Marvin X reads Amiri Baraka's Dope at Malcolm X Jazz festival Oakland, accompanied by

David Murray, Earle Davis and the BAM Poets Choir and Arkestra

24 Tenderloin Black Radical Book Fair, 2004

25SF Theater Festival

26Memorial for Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka, New York University

27Docudrama One Day in the Life, Banam Place Theatre, North Beach, SF

28Talk at Berkeley City College

29Interview by Junious Ricardo Stanton, Philly Locks Conference

30Interview and Reading at WBAI, NYC, National Poetry Month

31 Reading Nigga Wanna Pimp on Wall Street

 

32. December 12 Movement Press Conference at NY City Hall

33. Reading at UMASS Cultural Center

34 Marvin X reads his short film script Driving Miss Libby (Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf), video

35. Marvin X and Dr. Ayodele read X's fictional interview with President Obama, audio

 

 

Photographers, Videographers

Ken Johnson

Khalid Waajid

William Hammons

Kamau Amen-Ra, RIP

Adam Turner

Gene Hazzard

Peralta Television

Berkeley City College

Greg Fields

Amadi Ajamu

Travion Cotton

Leon Teasley

 

Sponsors of past Marvin X projects

Mayor Willie Brown’s Office

Zellerbach Family Fund

SF Arts Commission

Marin County Board of Supervisors

Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission

Columbia University

National  Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Humanities

California Endowment

Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union

Black Arts Movement Business District, CDC

Akonadi Foundation

WBAI Pacifica Radio, NYC

Hard knock Radio, KPFA Radio, Berkeley

Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s Office

 

If you would like to be a sponsor of this documentary,

call Marvin X: 510-575-7148

Your sponsorship can be tax deductible. Here is a final

comment from our recently departed ancestor, James

W. Sweeney: "Courageous and outrageous, Marvin X

walked through the muck and mire of hell and came

out clean as white fish and black as coal! He is the

freest Black man in non-free America!"

--James W. Sweeney, RIP

 

(c) Marvin X 2020

All Rights Reserved

 

Contact: mxjackmon@gmail.com

 

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Hapi b day, Sonia Sanchez, Queen of the Revolutionary Black Arts Movement, BAM, the most radical literary and artistic movement in American history

Sonia is my revolutionary lover, would give my life for her as I know she would do the same for me. I have no doubt about this. Our revolutionary black national liberation was/is not about money, being in the system, fame, fortune, ego, brand, none of the above stupid shit. When they closed down, i.e., defunded the Black Arts Theatre in Harlem, this was the model for the national black arts movement, then and into the now, except some don't smell the coffee. Nothing, absolutely nothing has changed since they defunded the Black Arts Theatre in Harlem. In our delusion, we think we can work with the City, State and Governmental Agencies, but why don't you smell the coffee. When they decide to defund you, they defund you and you are surprised, perplexed, thinking you were down with the political pimps in black face. Alas, doesn't Africa, the Caribbean and the US have a plethora of black politicians who are white men dipped in chocolate?

--Marvin X, Co-founder of the National Black Arts Movement and Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District

Hapi b day, Sonia Sanchez, Queen of the Revolutionary Black Arts Movement

Hapi b day, Queen Sonia

my revolutionary comrade

poet priestess of liberation

I salute you

your freedom chants wails

calls from the wild of your mind

lifting sisterhood on high

like Harriet making brothers stand tall

no kneeling shuffles passive actions

going nowhere

you are still here my dear

calling us to freedom

dancing into the upper room

qualified to be there

let your words confound the fools

let the wise rejoice the love you shared

coast to coast

black arts

black studies

black life

--Marvin X

9/9/20

Marvin X visited his long-time friend and revolutionary comrade earlier this year during his east coast book tour sponsored by Duke University Professor Ellen McLarney, Chair of the Islamic Studies Department. She is writing a book on the Black Arts Movement Poets inspired by Islam, with chapters on Amiri Baraka, Yusef Iman, Askia Muhammad Toure, Umar Ben Hasan of the Last Poets, Sonia Sanchez, Marvin X, et al.

L to R: Mrs. Amina Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Marvin X, Amiri Baraka, New York Riverside Church, Memorial for Dr. Betty Shabazz

photo Risasi

Let me share a story of black poets. No, change my mind. Ok, well, if truth be told, one night at the Baraka's house in Newark, we were drunk, Amiri, Amina and myself, not Sonia, and were playing poker. The next morning Sonia informed me, "Marvin, that was not poker you were playing last night. I don't know what that was." Of course as. drunk you don't remember shit. But I do remember we decided to do a reading and I told Sonia I wanted to read, with her, her dramatic dialogue poem. She agreed to read her poem for male and female characters, but when I began reading the male lines, she went over to the piano that the Baraka's had bought for Nina Simone when she briefly lived with them, and began playing some avant-garde shit. She was avoiding reading with me, so I read both parts since I am a dramatist, yes, in the house with dramatists (Amina, Amiri, Sonia and myself). Sonia continued accompanying me on the piano so I continued reading both parts of the poem dealing with painful male/female relationships. I sensed the poem was too traumatic for her but was therapeutic for her to play the piano. The poem is in her collection Wounded in the House of a Friend. My review of the book is in my forthcoming Mythology of Pussy and Dick.

--Marvin X

 Let killers kill

no matter pain

how many Russians killed stopping Nazis

Allies say they won the war did 30 million Allies die

who won world war II

Who won korea

never ending war into now

Vietnam who won?

McNamara told you we didn't win couldn't win

Is Iraq liberated

you organized Isis destroyed Isis

you and your axis of evil

House of Saud House of Zionism

House of White

Globalism has no sides no right no wrong

money no matter

can't lose when bet on both sides

Fake news blues

you gave Iran  billions of their money

why you lie like you did favor

you gave them money owed

no favor you tell

pay you no attention

don't listen to white lies

mixed with Globalist China Russian poison

mixed with Silicon Valley lies

high tech lies

data lies

logarithm lies

transcending white supremacist lies

but lies none the less

except in your mind

virus mind'

vaccine cured mind

but no vaccine can cure your white supremacist virus

full blown

terminal

beyond recovery

social distance no suffice

antibodies no suffice

constitutional irreparable 

recovery not possible

short term long term 

no matter

you beyond repair

ask yourself

do you desire change

no

domination only

money is not the matter

capitalism no matter

socialism no matter

the matter is beyond money

the 1% got all the money

what more

sex

with children

sex

animals

sex

wit yo mama daddy

what

fuck a tree

leave us be

but you got can't help its

like killers kill

get a nut

killing

how many Isis did you kill in Iraq

how many children in Yemen 

Afghanistan

twenty years for naught

trillions for naught

dead bodies for naught

and this is human

democracy

capitalism

freedom

democracy

capitalism

freedom

democracy

capitalism

freedom

keep russians out

india out

iran out

china out

usa stay

usa stay

democracy

capitalism

freedom

stay

stay

stay.

--Marvin X

9/7/20

Oaktown Philosophers in da hood

Left to right: Kokavulu Lumukanda and Marvin X

"Lumukanda is the only intellectual in the Bay Area!"--Paul Cobb, Publisher, Post News Group. 

"Marvin X is Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland."--Ishmael Reed, Emeritus Lecturer, UC Berkeley, MacArthur Genius Awardee

"Marvin X is the African Socrates teaching in the hood!"--Dr. Cornel West, Harvard University, #4 of the 50th Greatest Minds in the World, 2020 

Comment  by Marvin X

Don't discount the remarks of Paul Cobb. Without a doubt, Lumukanda is one of the great grassroots Intellectuals in the Bay Area, after all, he operated several book stores in downtown Oakland. For sure, he is equal to another book store owner, Dr Raye Richardson of Marcus Garvey Books. She was declared The Mother of Black Studies. Shall we declare Lumukanda the Father of Black Studies in the Hood, since he was never a part of black academia, alas, nor was J.A. Rogers, our greatest Black historian, quoted by WEB Dubois and Elijah Muhammad, among others. Don't discount our great grassroots Intellectuals! I will put J.A. Rogers against any Western trained African/Negropean histriographer. Name them:

Cheikh Anta Diop

Chancellor Williams

Dr. Ben

Dr. Clarke

WEB Dubois, love his The World and Africa, wherein he quoted Rogers.

George M James, Stolen Legacy

As per myself, I am saddened by the fact that non black and white scholars, i.e., Asian and Arab, have found the interest to deconstruct me.

1. Bob Holman, a Jew, I presume, put me in the center of Persian literature when he called me the USA'S Rumi, Saadi, Hafiz. This is the greatest honor of my life as a writer. Do you think it matters to me that I am not recognized in European and Negropean/African literature? But what writer writes to be recognized by anyone? I write to write, not to be famous or commercial. More than likely, if I didn't write I would be a killer, mass killer, and 50% of my victims would be white, the other 50% black. Ask the Mau Mau! Ask Harriet Tubman, i.e., she had to put a gun upside the head of slaves who didn't want to be free. What did she say, "I could have freed more slaves if they had known they were slaves!" Alas, in 2020 one must fight with the neo-slave to free him/her from neo-slavery.\

2. Dr. Mohja Khaf, Syrian poet declared The Black Arts Movement poets the founders of the genre Muslim American literature, no matter they were/are not Sunni, Shia or profess their original sectarian version of Islam as all Muslims do, see Senegal and their Saint Bamba! Touba, the African Holy City is as sacred as Mecca to African Muslims. 

3. Dr Ellen McLarney, Duke University. We await her book on the Black Arts Movement poets and the genre of Muslim American literature.

4.  We must credit our dearly departed Critic James G Spady for the most intense deconstruction of my writing and radical activist career. See his essays on Marvin X.

5. Also, althout it has nothing to do with me except in the long history of African Muslim American history, as per black history in Arabia, after Rogers World's Great Men of Color, et al, critical reading is Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire by Drusilla Dunjee Houston.

6. Of course we cannot neglect From Babylon to Timbuktu.

7. Again, as per Marvin X, see Critic Lorenzo Thomas, RIP, for attempting to put me in the Islamic tradition. Please note, I have not tried to be in any tradition. At the Malcolm X Jazz Festival in Oakland, I was introduced by a hip hop poet as one who called myself Rumi. Por favor, I have never called myself Rumi, Hafiz, Saadi, Plato, Socrates or anyone but myself, i.e., a nigga in da alley with the machete with blood shot eyes drinking rot gut wine. Now deconstruct this shit, por favor!

Comment from our Great Historian John Bracey

Greetings Marvin and friends,

Hope that all is as well as possible in your parts of the world.

I would add to your list St.Clair Drake's magnificent 2 volume Black Folk Here and There. The first volume contains

one of the few efforts to analyze and incorporate the insights of the scholars you mentioned into  debates that too often

take place as if they had never written a word. Drake's work is so unique in method and scope that few academics have figured

out how to teach it.

      I had the privilege of  experiencing first hand the talents of most of the scholars you mentioned who were alive in my time. Chancellor Williams taught the Intro to Sociology course in the Howard U. Honors Program. He published two books on the politics and culture of  contemporary Africa in the 1950's before the wave of newly independent states. He gave me signed copies of each in the hope that Africa would soon get the attention it deserved. The Destruction of Black Civilization solved that problem.

I have a picture of Chancellor and Nana Nketsia in my living room a decade later. I had invited Chancellor and Nana to lunch on the occasion of Chancellor giving a lecture at Amherst College. Chancellor, along with St Clair Drake and Lorenzo Turner, my favorite

teachers at Roosevelt University, were most generous, in and out of the classroom, in sharing their knowledge of Africa.

Dr. Clarke and Dr. Ben were delights to be in the presence of. I could ask one question then sit back and listen to their hour long answer. I once persuaded Dr. Clarke and Harold Cruse to share a panel on Cruse's Plural But Equal at a meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. They both promised me that they would behave and act scholarly in front of the younger folk. That lasted all of five minutes when Dr. Clarke opened up with a blistering attack on Cruse's book, politics and personal life. Harold fought back and it was intellectual pandemonium for an hour and a half. I passed on Cruse's request for a "rematch" since he felt he had been ambushed by Dr. Clarke.

In 1956 my mother dragged me to a lecture by Dr. DuBois at Rankin Chapel at Howard U. I was fifteen years old and Friday night was party night.

I grew up on a campus surrounded by many of the nation's leading artists and  thinkers, e.g., E.Franklin Frazier, John Hope Franklin, Sterling Brown, Frank Snowden, Dorothy Porter, Merze Tate, Margaret Just Butcher, Lois Malliou Jones, James Porter. My sister and I had been going to lectures and other events since elementary school.

Though almost 90 years old,  Du Bois was different. On the way home I asked my mother had he written anything she thought I should read. She said try The Souls of Black Folk. I read it in one evening and never looked back. I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

Bear with me for going on so long. Your email stirred up a lot of fond memories.

      Stay safe and well.

      

      Peace,

     John Bracey

    

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