Marvin X's Notes on the Land Question: A Conversation with his daughters Nefertiti and Amira Jackmon facilitated by Bamidele Demerson, Curator of the African American Museum Library
Oakland, CA, February 6, 2021
As I said at the opening of our conversation today on Zoom, I give all praise and honor to my ancestors, i.e., my parents Owendell and Marian Murrill Jackmon, for this talk on the Land Question, the essential question as per our liberation from American oppression.
At my birth, May 29,1944, my parents were publishing The Fresno Voice, a black newspaper in the central valley of California, additionally, they were real estate brokers who sold most of the North American Africans their first homes in Fresno during and after WWII, since redlining was the practice of white real estate brokers. So I am honored to have had conscious parents or as they were called back then A Race Man and Race Woman, meaning they were for the people. Consciously and subconsciously. I have the spirit my parents blessed me with and I am happy to see my daughters, Amira and Nefertiti in the tradition. (And don't let me leave out my daughter Muhammida El Muhajir, now a resident in Accra, Ghana, and a leader in the Blaxit Movement that is urging Black Americans to return to the Motherland as she has done, along with several thousand young and old North American Africans. See her TED Talk and interviews on Al Jazeerah and the BBC.)
Muhammida El Muhajir, middle daughter of Marvin X.
In the sometimes arrogant manner of her father, she said, "Dad, tell North American Africans don't come to Accra, Ghana without checking in with me! My Howard University alumnus, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, tried it but we ended up at the same house party in Accra!" Muhammida is the Pan African Editor of BBPNR.
Today's discussion was centered on the Land Question issue of our magazine Black Bird Press News and Review, a quarterly that began in response to the need to have our own voice after the City of Oakland established the Black Arts Movement Business District, January 19, 2016, as part of its Downtown Plan for the next 25-50 years, although we were not aware of this plan until it neared the final report.
The Black Arts Movement Business District comprises over 100 blocks from the Lower Bottom of 14th Street to Lake Merritt that Blacks have recently claimed as vending space, despite complaints beginning with Bar B Que Becky and Lakeshore Ave. residents. Just as Asians double park in Chinatown, Blacks park in the middle of Lakeshore Ave. since parking is limited.
This is a question of space and land that we have been perennially deprived of or severely proscribed. In this BAMBD area and a plethora of market rate housing developments and retail spaces that likely will be unaffordable for those artists, merchants and business persons in our designated BAMBD District. More than likely, rather than equity owners in the City of Oakland Downtown Plan for the next 25-50 years, we shall be museum pieces, relics of what used to be but is no more, archives at the African American Museum Library and the Oakland Museum of California adjacent to the end of our district at Lake Merritt.
Let me digress on black bodies in space and time
Imagine this: On a speaking engagement at the University of Virginia, I was invited by my host to sit in on a graduate seminar on Space. The professor noted that 900 slaves lived on one acre of land. I wanted out of her lecture at this point as it was overwhelming to me. And then later my host wanted me to see the house Thomas Jefferson built on the campus. When we arrived at the house, I asked him what brick did Thomas Jefferson lay? My host was disgusted that I could not appreciate the land use and labor of Thomas Jefferson. I was horrified that my host gave such honor and respect to such a devil, child molester and slave owner. Alas, my host was my nephew and I'd been invited by the campus NAACP that changed the room where I was supposed to speak three times to make sure few students heard me. This is not new. I have been invited to speak on college campuses and paid thousands of dollars but hardly any students were in the audience because the hosts didn't want students to hear my talk.
Today's Zoom discussion was centered on the Land Question issue of our magazine Black Bird Press News and Review, a quarterly that began in response to the need of having our own voice after the City of Oakland established the Black Arts Movement Business District, January 19, 2016, as part of its Downtown Plan for the next 25-50 years, although we were not aware of this plan until it neared the final report. In short, we were not to be an integral and/or equitable part of said plan, perhaps, an afterthought as we have been throughout our sojourn in the wilderness of North America, especially after we were liberated from the American slave system, with the critical help of 200,000 North American African troops who were made to disarm before we could achieve self-determination, sovereignty and full independence, thus our condition morphed into virtual slavery under short-lived Reconstruction followed by Jim Crow and raw white supremacist state supported terror, including KKK lynchings, especially slave catcher violence that soon became police violence under the color of law down to the present moment.
As Guest Editor Nefertiti explained that land theft was an essential component of our disenfranchisement, beginning with the nullification of the 40 Acres and a Government mule promised the ex-slaves until President Lincoln was assassinated. Those without land became sharecroppers or virtual slaves. Black land owners were often prepared to defend their land with armed self-defense groups. (See We Will Shoot Back by Akinyele Umoja, and the classic Negroes With Guns by Robert F. Williams. Of course armed self defense by North American Africans reached its zenith with Oakland's Black Panther Party for Self Defense under co-founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, 1966.)
The destruction of Black Wall Street, 1921, was defended by armed black warriors although the white racist massacre left an untold number of black victims not known even to this day.
In a summary discussion of the Land Question issue of BBPNR, Attorney Amiri Jackmon explained her community investment project known as MiniUP, based on twenty-years as a high finance bonds attorney. She is transferring her knowledge of finance to enable community development projects owned by the community. She explained the Land Trust is fine for low investment projects but not if investors seek a large return on their money. The land trust can be utilized to prevent gentrification, if nothing else. Since she expanded her portfolio to estate planning, she was asked about probate because so many Blacks lose their property in probate court, especially due to sibling rivalry, jealousy and/or severe mental illness, including fear of death on the part of the deceased relative, perhaps the reason they did not have a living trust. Attorney Jackmon said in California there is a very cheap document that can be filed to escape probate court and the expense of estate planning.
African American Museum Library Curator, Bamidele Demerson, discussed his article on Property Rites in Gullaland, South Carolina. In his field study of the Gullah people, he noted their traditional property inheritance rites that were trans-legal, i.e., property descended through patriarchal lineage and housing and land was owned accordingly, i.e., the wife moved with her husband's family, a tradition well known in the Caribbean and Africa.
Marvin X noted that during the times he wrote at the home of a friend in Beaufort, South Carolina, she lived on the property of a Gullah patriarch whose family members lived next door or across the road from each other.
Marvin X noted the Gullah young people have no love for their beautiful island property and seek to escape to Savannah and Atlanta, and New York, Bamidele added, and too hell with their island paradise. Yes, the Gullah Negro rather be in the cities of hell rather than their paradise islands that Ted Turner tried to purchase so much of the land they ran him out of the area!
What did Malcolm X say in Message to the Grass Roots? "The only landless revolution is the Negro revolution."
In the first Great Migration, we ran from the south to the north only to become wage slaves, landless and disconnected from our elder's knowledge as well. The Second Great Migration back to the South began around 1970, if I recall of Nefertiti's remarks. New York Times writer Charles Blow's new book The Devil You Know calls for another Great Migration back to the South, only this time he hopes we will assume the necessary political power to secure ourselves on the land. I say it will be dubious without a military force for our Black National Security, including an Iron Dome air defense system to prevent another Black Wall Street attack by white supremacists full of rage, jealously and envy at Black National Liberation and political power.
Curator Bamidele asked Guest Editor Nefertiti if she will continue this discussion in our print issue and online conversations. She did not answer affirmatively but let me deal with my daughters because the Land Question is the only question as Malcolm X said, "Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice and equality." (Message to the Grass Roots, November 10, 1963)
--Marvin X
2/6/21
P.S. A video of this Zoom discussion will be available ASAP from the African American Museum Library and/or
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The next issue is April 1, 2021. Guest Editor is Dr. Ayodele Nzinga. The issue will discuss the
Black Arts Movement Business District, CDC under her direction.
graduate of Yale, B.A., Psychology, and Stanford University Law School. She has argued cases
before the Texas Supreme Court and won cases against Burger King and the Port of Oakland.
Her client, the late developer Willie Cook said, "She is the smartest woman I ever met, white or black. She represented me in my suit against the Port of Oakland, opposed by seven high priced lawyers and whipped them all without raising her voice!"
