The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

Marvin X on National Book Tour: The Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables/fables

Marvin X is on national tour with his book The Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables and fables, Black Bird Press, 2012. He is looking for venues in the following cities:

September

Houston, Texas
Atlanta GA

Savannah GA
Beaufort SC

October

Washington DC
Philadelphia PA

November

Newark NJ
Brooklyn NY
Harlem NY
Boston MA

If you would like to book him in the Dirty South, please call Nefertiti Jackmon @ 832-549-0937. For East Coast booking, contact Muhammida El Muhajir  @ 718-496-2305. Email Marvin X: jmarvinx@yahoo.com.


Three Reviews of the Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables/fables by Marvin X

Marvin centers himself in his “classroom/clinic,” his “Academy of da Corner” at 14^th and Broadway, Oakland, California. There he sells his “empowering books” and offers insight, advice to mothers (e.g., “Parable of the Woman at the Well,” 58), wives (e.g. “Parable of the Preacher’s Wife,” 29), and lovers. “Other than the white man, black men have no other pressing problem—maybe with another brother, but 90% of the brothers come to Plato with male/female problems” (“Parable of a Day in the Life of Plato Negro,” 148).-- from review by Rudolph Lewis

Review by Rudolph Lewis

 

 

For Marvin X, a founder and veteran of the Black Arts Movement of the late 60s/early 70s, we who strive for a rebirth of humanity must choose to be a mentor rather than a predator. “No matter what, I am essentially a teacher,” he lectured at California College of the Arts, where he was invited by poet devorah major. Marvin has taught at Fresno State University; San Francisco State University; UC-Berkeley and San Diego; University of Nevada, Reno; Mills College, Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland. But, Marvin warns, “The teacher must know . . . no matter how many years he gives of his soul, his mental genius is not wanted” (“Parable of the Poor Righteous Teacher,” 12).

Gov. Ronald Reagan ran him out of Fresno State University, 1969, with the help of the FBI’s Cointelpro which employed a hit man who sought him out after an agent provocateur murdered his choir director Winfred Streets, who died from a shotgun blast to the back (“Parable of American Gangsta J. Edgar Hoover,” 171).

Pressured out of black studies academia, Marvin contends such programs now attract “sellout” Negroes, or if such African American elites are sincere and dedicated and allowed to remain, many die early from “high blood pressure, depression, schizophrenia, paranoia.” One or more such conditions, he believes, brought on the early and unexpected deaths of poet June Jordan, scholars Barbara Christian, and Veve Clark at UC Berkeley and Sherley Ann Williams at UC San Diego (“Parable of Neocolonialism at UC Berkeley,” 115). There remain nevertheless many educated colored elite all too willing to put “a hood over the hood” and lullaby the masses with “Silent Night,” while “colonialism [is] playing possum” (“Parable of the Colored People,” 42).

In “Wisdom of Plato Negro,” Marvin teaches by stories, ancient devices of instruction that appeal to a non-literate as well as a semi-literate people. (Fables differ from parables only by their use of animal characters.)  The oldest existing genre of storytelling used long before the parables of Jesus or the fables of Aesop, they are excellent tools, in the hands of a skilled artist like Marvin X, in that he modifies the genre for a rebellious hip hop generation who drops out or are pushed out of repressive state sponsored public schools at a 50% clip. Marvin X is a master of these short short stories. Bibliographies, extended footnotes, indexes, formal argumentation, he knows, are of no use to the audience he seeks, that 95 percent that lives from paycheck to paycheck.

These moral oral forms (parables and fables), developed before the invention of writing, taught by indirection how to think and behave respecting the integrity of others. Marvin explained to his College of Arts audience, “This form [the parable] seems perfect for people with short attention span, the video generation . . .  The parable fits my moral or ethical prerogative, allowing my didacticism to run full range” (“Parable of a Day in the Life of Plato Negro,” 147). But we live in a more “hostile environment” than ancient people. Our non-urban ancestors were more in harmony with Nature than our global racialized, exploitive, militarized northern elite societies.

The American Negro or the North American African, as Marvin calls his people, is a modern/post-modern phenomenon, now mostly urbanized, and living in domestic war-zones for more than three centuries. Black codes have governed their speech and behavior; they have been terrorized generation to generation since the early 1700s, by patty rollers, night riders, lynchers, police and military forces, usually without relief by either local or federal governments, or sympathy from their white neighbors or fellow citizens, though they have bled in the wars of the colonies and the nation to establish and defend the American Republic. Their lives have been that of Sisyphus, rising hopes then a fall into utter despair. Such are the times we still live.

To further aide the inattentive reader, most of the 83 sections of this 195-page text begins with a black and white photo image. Although most of these parables were composed between January and April 2010, some were written earlier. A few were written in 2008 (e.g., “Parable of the Basket,” 109) during the election campaign, and a few in 2009 (“Parable of Grand Denial,” 153) after the installation of Barack Obama as president of the United States. Three of these short short stories—“Parable of the Man with a Gun in His Hand,” “Parable of the Lion,” and “Parable of the Man Who Wanted to Die”—were first published in the June 1970 issue of Black World. His classic “Fable of the Black Bird” (86) was written in 1968. The “Fable of the Elephant” (7) and the “Fable of Rooster and Hen” (97) are quite similar in form and style to the black bird fable.

Marvin’s traditional or “classic” parables and fables, written during the BAM period, differ from the ancient fables and parables, which were told in an oral setting within a rural community with some wise men available by a campfire or candle light to explain the story told. In written form the writer in some manner must explain or make the meaning evident, preferably without the mechanical explanation tacked on. That would be a bore and not quite as pleasing to a hip urban audience, as what has been achieved by Marvin’s improvisation on the genre.

Thus Marvin uses humor, sarcasm, irony, exaggerated and sometimes profane language of one sort or another to capture the inattentive reader’s attention. In the first parable, “Parable of Love” (2), Marvin explains, “every writer is duty bound to speak the language of his people, especially if he and his people are going through the process of decolonization from the culture of the oppressor.”  His parables are “highly political” and intended also as a kind of “spiritual counseling.” As he points out in “Parable of Imagination,” artists in their work must “search the consciousness for new ways of representing what lies in the depth of the soul and give creative expression to their findings” (160).

“Under the power of the devil,” our lives tell us a story we hardly understand, Marvin discovered from his teachers Sun Ra, Elijah Muhammad, and others. The church, the mosque, the temple do not provide the needed spiritual consciousness for out time. Nor do 19th century radical political ideologies. As Stokely Carmichael told us in 1969, ideologies like communism and socialism do not speak to our needs. They do not speak to the issue of race. We are a colonized people, he argued, whose institutions have been decimated, our language mocked (e.g. Bill Cosby), our culture when not yet appropriated and stolen called “tasteless” by black bourgeois agents or stooges (e.g., Jason Whitlock in his criticism of Serena Williams at Wimbledon doing a joyful jig after her victory and winning a gold medal).

In “Wisdom of Plato Negro,” Marvin X is about the work of decolonization, though BAM has been commodified as a tourist icon at academic conferences and in university syllabi. The “sacred” work of the artist remains. Its object is to “shatter lies and falsehoods to usher in a new birth of imagination for humanity” . . . to “promote economic progress and political unity” . . . to undermine “pride, arrogance, and self-importance” (160). Although he is critical of the black bourgeoisie, Marvin knows that they have skills our people need, that we must find a way to bring them home. They must  learn to have as much respect for the Mother Tongue as they have for the King’s English (“Parable of the Black Bourgeoisie,” 35).

“Wisdom of Plato Negro” deals not only with the political but also with the personal. That means he cannot live his life in an academic (or ivory) tower, or up in a mountain, writing and publishing books. In “Parable of the Man Who Left the Mountain,” written in 2008, he explains, “in the fourth quarter of my life, I can only attempt to finish the work of being active in the cause of racial justice, of using my pen to speak truth, to put my body in the battlefield for the freedom we all deserve” (45). 

Though he sees the problem as economic and political, one that keeps us poor and powerless, our oppression is “equally” one that creates “a spiritual disease or mental health issue.” (45). Racial supremacy for him not only affects the body or the potential to obtain wealth, it also affects the soul. It is at the heart of the drug war crisis. Black people seek to “medicate” themselves with drugs or the ideology of racial supremacy to find relief from the pain of racial oppression and the suppression of the imagination. Drugs and racial supremacy both are addictive and create dependency. In numerous instances, Marvin calls for moderation of desires and discipline, to “detox” from an addiction to racial supremacy and other “delusional thinking” (“Parable of Sobriety,” 177).

Marvin centers himself in his “classroom/clinic,” his “Academy of da Corner” at 14^th and Broadway, Oakland, California. There he sells his “empowering books” and offers insight, advice to mothers (e.g., “Parable of the Woman at the Well,” 58), wives (e.g. “Parable of the Preacher’s Wife,” 29), and lovers. “Other than the white man, black men have no other pressing problem—maybe with another brother, but 90% of the brothers come to Plato with male/female problems” (“Parable of a Day in the Life of Plato Negro,” 148). In contrast to his street work, the racial experts seem rather lost. Marvin reports on a 2008 conference held in Oakland by the Association of Black Psychologists, which has a membership of 1,500 Afrocentric psychologists. Even the experts with two and three Ph.D., “victims of white witchcraft,” he discovered do not know how to heal the community. When leaders don’t know, “why not turn to the people?”  (“Parable of the Witch Doctor,” 24).

There is much more that can be gained from a slow reading of “Wisdom of Plato Negro” than what I have tried to recall in this short report. Marvin X writes about such topics as sexuality and creativity and their relationship, on war, the weather and global warming, and numerous other topics that all tie together if we desire to bring about a rebirth of humanity. This highly informative, insightful, and creative volume can be of service to the non-reader as well as students and seasoned scholars, if they want to be entertained or to heal their bodies and souls so that they can become mentors rather than predators.

“Wisdom of Plato Negro” ends with the “Parable of Desirelessness” (193), which mirrors the “Parable of Letting Go” (61). In the materialist culture of contemporary capitalism we are beset on all sides by “greed, lust, and conspicuous consumption.” There are a “billion illusions of the monkey mind” that lead nowhere other than an early death, suicide, or cowardly homicide. We all must “hold onto nothing but the rope of righteousness.” That will guide us along the straight path to full and permanent revolution and liberation.

Rudolph Lewis is the Founding Editor ChickenBones: A Journal www.nathanielturner.com 

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Additional Notes by Rudolph Lewis on The Wisdom of Plato Negro

Thanks, Marvin, I am deep into the Parables. I am looking at the construction of the book. I see that you have shortened it. I found your parable of the lecture at the California College of Arts helpful in that it presented a brief response to what your parables are. I have taken about fives pages of notes, many come from Parable of Imagination. That was masterful in your insight into the role that the educational system play in the suppression and the oppression of those on the margins, particularly black youth.

I'll try to keep the review short (500 words or so) but we'll see. I am still making myself pregnant. I have been skipping about in the text, which may indeed be advantage for the reader you have in mind. But I wanted to see how you constructed the work. I see that most of the pieces were written between January and April of 2010. But you also have pieces from 2008 and 2009, and pieces published in 1970 and 1973. I do not know that you called them "parables" at the time.

I am still meditating on the whole notion of "parable" and "fable." I checked the dictionary definitions. I have yet to read the fables. I have read at least one of the dialogues. I will get to the one on "bitch" sometime tonight. I remember the parable of the man who talked to cows. That was indeed humorous.

In any case my present task is to finish reading the last four or five parables. I am now on the Hoover piece and your experience with the FBI. You are rare indeed: to have been steeped in all of that and lived to the tell tale, and to tell it as boldly as if you were still there. As Gore Vidal pointed out in writing his memoir, Memory is piled upon memory upon memory, and so we remember our memories for we tell them through filters of life, knowledge, and years and years of intellectual and other experiences.

But the thing is that so many who lived through the experiences of the 60s and 70s are living other lives, lives of the status quo, lives that they owe to the company store. You may in this incarnation of Marvin  be the only revolutionary of the 60s an 70s who is struggling as ever for a "revolution of conscious and society" in the present. I have looked at some of the material from the 50th anniversary of SNCC and other civil rights veteran. Their memories do not inform their present.

Of course, Julius Lester may be an exception. He was always a man of the Imagination. But I have not kept up with his novels. Some of them however seem quite to the point, though I do not know how he resolves the conflict that continues, or exactly who his audience is. As you may know he is now a Jew.

In any case, your Call for a Renaissance of the Imagination is exceedingly important. What seems most important is that you never cut yourself off from the lumpen (the dopefiends, the hustlers, the workers), those who have tragic relationships with their lovers and children, those who can’t afford a $100 an hour psychiatrist. It is indeed important that you point out the deficiency of health care in our communities and how everything is commodified in the interest of the few.

Your "classroom/clinic" has kept you grounded to the realities of racial oppression. Many racial activist have sold their souls and become wheeler/dealers of the powers that be. A few went into city and state government, like Marion Barry and courtland Cox, and Ivanhoe Donaldson, and Julian Bond and John Lewis. Many are union execs, and on the leash of their whites bosses. Union execs are part mafia/part political hacks of the Democratic Party. Obama can kill a million spy on hundreds of millions and they will die for Obama, rather than the common man, woman, and child. Of course, like any sane conscious person Obama is preferable to Romney and Tea Party. But to die for Obama is to lose the way of ethics in defense of humanity.

Well, what I am trying to say. I am deep into your Wisdom, in your thought, thinking and construction of a literary work that is quite post-modern, an interactive text that would not have been possible before the invention of the web, as indicated by your dialogues.

My only comparison to what you have done is Jerry Ward's "The Katrina Papers." Of course, his book is grounded by the destruction of an American city, New Orleans , and the tragic destruction of his own home and much of its contents, including papers, records, tapes and other personal items.

But of course, your work is grounded by your Academy of the Corner, and your daily contact with the ongoing tragedies of our people. Those stories are told in your parables. I thank God for a Marvin X, a Plato Negro.

I will try to have a review of the book by Wednesday.

Loving you madly, Rudy

Rudolph Lewis, Editor

ChickenBones: A Journal

www.nathanielturner.com 

Muhammad Speaks Reviews the Wisdom of Plato Negro

Marvin X has provided a reflective  work that explains the condition of Black people in America today. He not only explains how we have arrived at this wretched juncture in our history, but offers wisdom as to how we may regain the love of self and family that was decimated through the drug and cultural wars that were aimed at our people.

It is sad to note that a people who were coming of age and promise in the 1960’s and 1970’s were nearly destroyed by the ‘deliberate’ crack epidemic which robbed us of ourselves, and robbed our children of their parents.

Marvin X candidly admits that his addiction to crack robbed his children of their father and his wife of a husband. 

The reader is indeed lucky that he survived his addiction, and that his talent for writing and storytelling survived so that his work may live as a testament and instruction to future generations.

He rightly describes the current economic crisis Black America sees itself in as our being the ‘donkey’ of the world that every other people ride to economic prosperity.  Black people live with this reality daily, as we patronize others who come to this country sell us food, liquor, do our nails, sell us hair, and the list goes on.  We witness them take our money, and deliberately not live in our community.  We know that they would never think of patronizing us.  Yet, we are willing participants in our own exploitation.

Why do we continue this path to economic destruction? Are we like the parable of the elephant as described by Marvin X? The circus elephant   tied by a simple rope and did as his trainer instructed, until one day, he decided to break free, wreaking havoc on everything in his path?

Are we Samson, who brought the pillars down on the temple and destroyed himself along with his tormentors?

The Wisdom of the Plato Negro is a must read for it explains the contemporary condition of our people. What path we will take to correct this condition is in our hands.

Raushana Karriem

Editor-in-Chief Muhammad Speaks Newspaper, Atlanta GA

8/29/12

Review by Ishmael Reed 

Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley

If someone would write a book de-mythologizing the Black Power movement, how would they assess it? One of great nobility, or one of hypocrisy, one of courage or one of cowardice, one that fostered change in the status quo, or one
that was part of the problem. Or would one conclude that it was one having mixed results.
       

That it  modified the direction of The Civil Rights Movement, which was heading toward Anglo Saxon assimilation, the way that many Irish, Italian and other white ethnic groups lost their roots and thereby lost their souls, is indisputable. 

Marvin X, who is not only a terrific writer but a Black Power historian has served us well by listing all of the 60s poets who were influenced by Islam and other non-Western sources, (though, without Muslim scholars there’d be no Western civilization.) 

African writers, whom I interviewed for my book about Muhammad Ali find African American Muslim conversion puzzling since they view Islam as an invader’s religion and one that treats the indigenous population, harshly, but one cannot underestimate the influence of Islam upon the world.

However,if I had to pin down the influences upon Marvin X’s The Wisdom of Plato Negro,Parables/Fables,I would cite the style of Yoruba texts. I studied for some years under the tutoring of the poet and scholar Adebisi T.Aromolaran ( “ Wise Sayings For Boys and Girls”)and was guided through some texts in the Yoruba language which revealed that didacticism  is a key component of the Yoruba story telling style. Africans use proverbs to teach their children the lessons of life. Marvin X acknowledges the Yoruba influence on his book, The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/Fables.

  He imparts wisdom by employing cautionary tales and uses his own life and mistakes to consul the young to avoid mistakes. George Bernard Shaw said that if you don’t write your own plays, others will write them for you and they will “degrade”and “vulgarize” you. As part of a grant, I attended local theater for three years and found the portraits of blacks to be offensive,mostly. The women were prostitutes and the men were like the black man in “Precious,” a bestial evil. 

Marvin X in “One Day In the Life”, his classic play about recovery, which I saw at the Black Rep., the only local theater that doesn’t depend upon a audience that desires guilt free productions, was one of the few plays that wasn’t escapist, or preached post racism or blamed the victim.

Moreover, unlike some of the books written by popular African American writers, his book does not look backward to the period of slavery, though some of that is here. He writes about the contemporary problems of a community under attack. He blames crack for causing “ a great chasm between adults and children, children who were abandoned,abused, and neglected, emotionally starved and traumatized.”

       

Pundits,scholars and reporters who have posed as experts on the inner city, but
don’t live here, have blamed the middle class for abandoning the urban centers.They’re wrong. The middle class is making all of the cash from profits from vice. They run the motels, where the prostitution trade takes place. 

When Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker slapped an injunction against two prostitution hotels which were scenes of child sex trafficking, beatings and rapes by pimps, the proprietors complained that she cost them $80,000.

The middle class are the absentee landlords, who plopped down a crack house in my neighborhood, they’re storeowners who make hundreds of thousands of dollars selling liquor. None of these proprietors is black! When I asked the Muslim who runs the Northside Supermarket, who was paid a fawning tribute by a clueless Chronicle reporter, who painted him as some kind of Santa Claus, when those attending our neighborhood crime meetings have complained about the criminal activity in from of his store for years,I was called out of order by an Oakland policeman, who turned out to be a friend of his, when I asked what a Muslim was doing selling liquor?

I wrote, “I am sure that I’m not the only North Oakland resident who is outraged by Chronicle writer, Justin Berton, portraying Yahya ‘Mike" Korin of Northside Supermarket as some kind of neighborhood Robin Hood who hands out turkeys to the poor at Xmas.

“I've attended meetings over the years, where our neighbors, black, white, and Hispanic, have complained about this store which attracts some of the most unsavory elements in our neighborhood and whose violent behavior has threatened the safety of our residents.” I had to mention whites because “Mike” was claiming
that only newcomers were protesting against his store, and that he was some
kind of benevolent uncle to the folks.

Marvin X exposes the situation of other ethnic groups invading black neighborhoods and making the lion’s share of profits from vice, while the media focus upon the mules of the operation, the pathetic and disgusting pimps, the drug dealers who are killing each other over profits that are piddling next to the great haul made by the suppliers of the guns and the drugs. Don’t expect the local newspapers to cover this end of the distribution.
       

Marvin X writes: “ The so-called Negro is the donkey of the world, everybody
rides him to success. If you need a free ride to success,jump on the Negro’s back and ride into the sunset. He will welcome you with open arms. No saddle needed, just jump on his back and ride him to the bank.”  

When you learn that the government ignored the dumping of drugs into our neighborhoods by their anti-communist allies, you can understand the meaning of Marvin X’s words. Not only are invading ethnic groups and white gun suppliers benefitting from using the black neighborhoods as a resource ,but the government as well.*

Marvin X also takes aim at the Dream Team academics who “parrot” the line

coming down from the One Percent that the problems of blacks are self-inflicted.
“The state academics and intellectuals joined loudly in parroting the king’s every wish. Thank God the masses do not hear them pontificate or read their books. After all, these intellectual and academic parrots are well paid, tenured and eat much parrot seed. Their magic song impresses the bourgeoisie who have a vested interested in keeping the song of the parrot alive.”
        

Marvin X’s answer to this intellectual Vichy regime has been to cultivate 
off campus intellectuals by conducting an open air classroom on 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, which is how the peripatetic philosophers like
Plato used to impart their knowledge in open air academies.

The Black Arts movement expanded the audience for poetry. It inspired thousands of young people to write. They are the grandmothers and grandfathers of the Hip Hoppers. They produced children who are high achievers. The only thing that could mar the Black Arts legacy is its tolerance for a lunatic fringe. One, who used to edit a black magazine, but hasn’t written a lick since the 1960s, came out here recently and was greeted warmly, when if you put some white skin on him and covered him with tattoos, he’d be indistinguishable from your ordinary low level skin head,without the Budweiser six pack.

I would give the Black Arts a mixed review. I’m the one who said that in
the global village, nationalism is the village idiot. But I have supported it in concrete ways because the Black Nationalist movement is the only roadblock to black culture becoming extinct!
     

Moreover,some of those who were Yacubists of the 60s changed. Muhammad Ali,who met with the KKK during the 1970s, recently attended his grand son’s Bar Mitzvah.
____________

* Parry, Robert “How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal,
Derided by the mainstream press and taking on Reagan at the height of his popularity, the freshman senator battled to reveal one of America's ugliest foreign policy secrets” Salon.com, Oct.25,2004


Ishmael Reed,author of “Going Too Far, Essays About America’s Nervous Breakdown”
Email: ireedpub@yahoo.com

When Parents Bury Children

Amiri Baraka, Jr., Amiri Baraka, Amina Baraka

 When Parents Bury Children

for the Barakas on the loss of Shani Baraka

 Shani Baraka and her partner, Rayshon Holmes, were murdered

Death!

a pain nothing can kill

no words suffice

no tears complete

we are numb

alive

yet dead inside

walk with pride

hiding open wounds

a bleeding only you

can see touch feel

others try

some are true

honest

but do they really know

the pain of loss

a child

so young so bright

now the emptiness forever

except the memory of all the yesterdays

from birth til now

thoughts of joy confound

make us smile

if only for a moment

like eternity

then gone into the night of forever

and so we walk

crippled yet brave

each day wondering

pondering

the price of life and love

cost of moments lost yet found again

as we walk and talk

to the spirit world

where death does not enter

only living water flows

as we flow

between life and spirit

which are one.

--Marvin X

9/29/03

Marvin X- "Black History is World History" (poem written in the 80's)@Fr...

Black History is World History by Marvin X, 

The USA's Rumi, Plato, Saadi, Hafiz--Bob Holman, Ishmael Reed

Black History Is World History

By

Marvin X


Before the Earth was
I was
Before time was
I was
you found me not long ago
and called me Lucy
I was four million years old
I had my tools beside me
I am the first man
call me Adam
I walked the Nile from Congo to Delta
a 4,000 mile jog
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY
I lived in the land of Canaan
before Abraham, before Hebrew was born
I am Canaan, son of Ham
I laugh at Arabs and Jews
fighting over my land
I lived in Saba, Southern Arabia
I played in the Red Sea
dwelled on the Persian Gulf
I left my mark from Babylon to Timbuktu
When Babylon acted a fool, that was me
I was the fool
When Babylon fell, that was me
I fell
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY
I was the first European
call me Negrito and Grimaldi
I walked along the Mediterranean from Spain to Greece
Oh, Greece!Why did you kill Socrates?
Why did you give him the poison hemlock?
Who were the gods he introduced
corrupting the youth of Athens?
They were my gods, black gods from Africa
Oh, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
Whose philosophy did you teach
that was Greek to the Greeks?
Pythagoras, where did you learn geometry?
Democritus, where did you study astronomy?
Solon and Lycurgus, where did you study law?
In Egypt, and Egypt is Africa
and Africa is me
I am the burnt face, the blameless Ethiopian
Homer told you about in the Iliad
Homer told you about Ulysses, too,
a story he got from me.
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY
I am the first Chinese
China has my eyes
I am the Aboriginal Asian
Look for me in Vietnam, Cambodia & Thailand
I am there, even today, black and beautiful
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY
I used to travel to America
long before Columbus
came to me asking for directions
Americo Vespucci
on his voyage to America
saw me in the Atlantic
returning to Africa
America was my home
Before Aztec, Maya, Toltec, Inca & Olmec
I was hereI came to Peru 20,000 years ago
I founded Mexico City
See my pyramids, see my cabeza colosal
in Vera Cruz and Yucatan
that's me
I am the Mexican
for I am mixed with all men
and all men are mixed with me
I am the most just of men
I am the most peaceful
who loves peace day and night
Sometimes I let tyrants devour me
sometimes people falsely accuse me
sometimes people crucify me
but I am ever returning I am eternal, I am universal
Africa is my home
Asia is my home
Americas is my home
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY

This poem was written circa 1982 while Marvin X taught English at Kings River College, his last teaching gig.

Suggested reading list

The complete works of J.A. Rogers
The World and Africa, W.E.B. DuBois
Stolen Legacy, George M. James
The African Origin of the Major Religions, Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan
Message to the Black Man, Elijah Muhammad
They Came before Columbus, Ivan Van Sertima
"African Explorers in the New World, " Harold Lawrence,
Crisis, June-July, 1962. Heritage Program Reprint, p. 10
The Destruction of African Civilization, Chancellor Williams.
The Cultural Unity of Africa, Cheikh Anta Diop.
Man, God and Civilization, John G. Jackson

Marvin X is now available for speaking engagements readings/performance

Call 510 200 4164

send letter of invitation to

jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Marvin X comments on Town Hall Meeting on Gun Violence, hosted by Congresswoman Barbara Lee

Oakland Town Hall Meeting on Gun Violence

Hosted by Congresswoman Barbara Lee

January 30, 2016, 1PM

Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church

1188 12th Street

West Oakland CA

Fifty years later, it is almost impossible for me to attend rallies against the police for murdering our young men and women. I applaud  people like Oakland's Cat Brooks, Chepus Johnson and the Black Lives Matter Movement. Thank God they have the energy. After fifty years, I'm emotionally and mentally drained, especially after losing my own son to suicide. Imagine, on psycho drugs, he walked into a train, a brilliant young man who graduated from UC Berkeley, attended Harvard and studied in Syria at the University of Damascus. Dr. Nathan Hare says suicide and homicide are but different sides of the same coin, often situational disorders caused oppression. Often homicides are suicides because the person didn't have the nerve to kill himself so he made someone else do the job. Franz Fanon said the only way the oppressed can regain their mental health is by engaging in revolution to end oppression. Revolution is seizing power. Ras Baraka has demonstrated this in Newark, NJ. And he was blessed with revolutionary parents, so he is well trained for his mission to transform Newark, NJ, a city much like Oakland.

--from Part two: My life in the Global Village by Marvin X

They advise you when you are faced with a terrorist that you should hide, run or fight, but when your babies are dying,  it's time to start fighting!--Dr. Ayodele Nzinga 

 

US Congresswoman Barbara Lee

Despite my declaration to myself that I would cease attending meetings on police and/or Black on Black homicide (for my mental health), this Saturday I found myself at a Town Hall meeting on Gun Violence, hosted by Oakland's beloved Congresswoman, the Honorable Barbara Lee.  The meeting was moderated by the Honorable Lateefah Simon and Special Guest Lynette McElhaney, President of the Oakland City Council, with youth panelists Treyvon Godfrey and Dane'Nicole Williams.

The meeting began at 1PM but I had arrived at 10AM, confused about the time after a Friday tumultuous but insightful conversation with my childhood friend and co-worker on the Black Arts Movement District, Paul Cobb, also publisher of the Post News Group. Paul had to inform me that we are now officially recognized in the 14th Street corridor, downtown Oakland, with the monumental task of creating the Black Arts Movement Business District, not for ourselves but generations to come for the next fifty to one hundred years.

We were both blessed to have grown up together on West Oakland's 7th Street, Harlem of the West, end of the line for the Amtrak train and headquarters of the Pullman Porters Union, the first Black union in America, founded by A. Phillip Randolph and Oakland's C.L. Dellums, uncle of Oakland's radical Congressman, Ronald V. Dellusms, also a former mayor.

Paul and I often fondly recall growing up in West Oakland, a Black cultural and economic district, similar to San Francisco's Fillmore and New York's Harlem. We were blessed with parents and relatives known as RACE MEN and WOMEN, i.e., people dedicated to the upliftment of the North American African nation. Our parents were inspired by the Marcus Garvey Movement. Before moving to Oakland, my parents published a Black newspaper in Fresno The Fresno Voice. In Oakland they became florists at 7th and Campbell. Paul's relatives owned a grocery store near 7th and Pine.

Paul Cobb and Marvin X

photo Walter Riley, Esq.

When we learned there was talk of a Black Business and Cultural District along the 14th Street corridor, Paul said, and I agreed, well, ok, let's move from 7th to 14th Street, that's a double up!
After the City Council passed legislation establishing the Black Arts Movement Business District, Paul urged me to become more politically astute. "You got to stop writing all day and connect with people. Don't be selfish but invite others under the BAMBD tent. You have been successful, so let the community enjoy the success! You can expand on your success or shoot yourself in the foot and destroy the "movement" you have created. Let the entire community rejoice in this BAMBD project. Do the necessary things to make it legitimate so no one can say you are running a fraud or scam."

In truth, Marvin X has no desire to run a scam. He's called for a billion dollar trust fund for BAMBD, not for himself, but to lay the foundation for generations to come. "I have no need of a billion dollars. I'm beyond money. People ask me how I get things done, how I bring people together like Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Angela Davis, the Last Poets, Askia Toure, Haki Madhubuti, Dr. Cornel West, Danny Glover. I reply that I get on the telephone and  tell them what I'm doing. They know I'm not running a scam! After all, we've known each other, most of us, fifty years. We are true troopers. We've gone through revolution and those of us who've survived know we are true to the game! We'll take a bullet for each other!"

 Angela Davis, Marvin X, Sonia Sanchez

p

 Marvin X and Danny Glover, both were in the BSU at San Francisco State University; later Danny performed in Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, 1966, co-founded by Marvin X and playwright Ed Bullins.
photo Kenny Johnson

BAM co-founders Amiri Baraka (RIP) and Marvin X

After a 47 year friendship, this was their last picture together 

cerca 2014

Because Paul Cobb wanted me to connect with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, especially since she gave the Black Arts Movement a commendation on last year's 50th anniversary and sent a representative from her office to ask what I needed for the celebration at Laney College, I returned to the church about one thirty, just in time to hear a video of President Obama discussing gun violence. As I listened to him, my mind said America is the number one arms merchant of the world so why does she not expect  "blow back" for the mass murder of men, women and children around the world, mostly poor people in mud huts without electricity, clean water and bathrooms, full of ignorance, disease and reactionary religiosity? How can you, Mr. President, have a weekly check off list of people to kill around the world, including American citizens, yet not expect blow back? The universe doesn't work like this. As James Baldwin said, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe!"

We appreciate you, Mr. President, but do the right thing: transfer that trillion dollar military budget into education, housing and jobs for poor and middle class Americans. Offer America's marginalized young men and women the same three things you offer insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan if they stop the violence and pledge allegiance to their constitutions: education, housing and jobs.

And stop cherry picking prison reform, give a general amnesty to the 2.4 million incarcerated brothers and sisters, 90% of whom were dual diagnosed at the time of their arrests, i.e., they suffered drug abuse and mental illness, not to mention their pervasive economic condition of dire poverty, unemployment and miss-education.

After the video of President Obama, the Town Hall meeting began with a panel discussion moderated by Lateefah Simon. She introduced the panelists that included youth and politicians Barbara Lee and Lynette McElhaney, President of the City Council. Thus began the session dealing with the trauma and grief I had vowed to avoid after fifty years of the same. But it was inescapable because I was trapped in the room, sitting next to Paul Cobb, my friend of nearly 65 years. People began to testify, from youth to adults, including Lynette McElhaney, President of the City Council, who's just buried her grandson due to violence. We heard from high school students who'd suffered the lost of twenty friends in the last year. Unbelievable! One student said she'd lost eight of her friends. Then a mother spoke who said she'd lost both her sons and was now childless. She said the killers walk around the community without fear, are often arrested for gun related charges but released. The distraught mother said no gun laws would prevent such killers from their mayhem. Tears began to swell in my eyes.

FYI, in 1979 I was teaching at the University of Nevada, Reno part time and working full time as a planner for a Community Services Agency, living a good life. But I used to read the San Francisco Chronicle to keep abreast  events in the Bay Area until I got tired of reading about the Oakland police killing one Black man per month. One morning I read the Chronicle to see the OPD had killed another Black man so I read no further, throwing the paper down in disgust, but picking it up later only to turn to the back page to discover the youth the OPD had killed that day was my best friend's 15 year old brother, Melvin Black. There was a picture of my friend Rahim and his sister Charla Black protesting outside Oakland City Hall. I was horrified, then numb but soon received a call from my comrades in Oakland who told me to get the hell out of Reno and come help the family and community in their grief.

I resisted because I was living the good life, being treated royally by the Reno Mormon conservatives. You know Black nationalists get along great with racists better than we do with pseudo white liberals--see Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. FYI, Nevada is the most conservative state in the union--Gov. Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign was run from Reno, Nevada--his best friend was Reno Senator Paul Laxault, and the head of the Republican National Committee was Frank Ferankaf of Reno.

Aside from teaching at UNR, Nevada Community College and CSA, I received two conference planning grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities via the Nevada Humanities Committee.

I was able to invite Eldridge Cleaver and other Bay Area folks  to participate in two conferences I produced for the Nevada Black community: Dr. Harry Edwards, Nantizi Cayou, Dr. Wade Nobles, Professor Sherely A. Williams, Sacramento Bee writer Fahizah Alim, et al.

I finally decided to depart Reno and return to the battleground of Oakland to helpe organize a rally at the Oakland Auditorium in which five thousand Blacks gathered from 12 noon til midnight without incident, as reported in the San Francisco Sun Reporter by Edith Austin, Godmother of Bay Area Black politics (RIP).

After the rally with participants Angela Davis, Paul Cobb, Oba T'Shaka, Dezzie Woods Jones, Dr. Yusef Bey, Eldridge Cleaver, Donald Warden, aka Khalid Tariq Al Mansour, and Minister Farakhan, the OPD killing of Black men stopped but Crack cocaine and drive by killings began and has continued until today. I worked with Oakland's Mother Theresa, Betty King (RIP) and her Neighborhood Pals, Inc., and with mother's who'd lost sons to drive by killings in the turf wars that followed the cessation of OPD killings under the color of law. A Police Review Board was established that was impotent and exists today with the same impotency.

Today, I sat listening to the testimonies of those suffering grief and trauma from America's 400 year war against North American Africans, victims of the American Slave System as Ed Howard informed us.

Oakland Post Editor Chanucey Bailey
assassinated in broad daylight, downtown
Oakland, 14th and Alice, now the BAMB
District

Suddenly a man came up to Paul Cobb threatening his life over an article that was published in The Oakland Post. (Paul's Editor, Chauncey Bailey, was assassinated in broad daylight at 14th and Alice, over an article that was never published and the material was public information!) The man continued threatening Paul, claiming the article put him and his family's life in jeopardy and if anything happened to any member of his family, Paul was going to pay.  An undercover OPD officer heard the conversation and ushered the man out the church.

Now I was truly traumatized and full of grief, ready to depart to my space to recover, which means I was ready to go write about today's dramatic events. I stayed on to greet and take a picture with Congresswoman Barbara Lee and converse with others present, including Comedian Donald Lacey who is pushing a sign saying LOVE LIFE as people enter Oakland on the freeway. Donald's daughter was murdered while sitting in a car across the street from McClymonds High School, once and still Oakland's School of Champions.

We stayed with Paul until the OPD officers arrived and he filed a complaint.

Can you believe this incident with Paul happened at a church event to curb gun violence? We know violence in our community is so pervasive it occurs at funerals of violence victims. There is no end to this madness! In a 1968 interview with James Baldwin at his New York apartment, he said to me, "It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad!"

--Marvin X

1/30/2016
Part Two: My life in the Global Village: Notes of an Artistic Freedom Fighter

From Part Two: My life in the Global Village

Notes of an Artistic Freedom Fighter

I have called for the Red, Black and Green flag to fly up and down the Black Arts Movement Business District along the 14th Street corridor, downtown Oakland. Saluting the flag should help us regain our mental equilibrium and make others, including police, recognize we are a nation of people and must be respected as such. I often give the example of the gay/lesbian flag that flies down Market Street in San Francisco as one goes toward the gay/lesbian community. By the time one gets to the  community, one gets the feeling that we must have respect for this community and not engage in homophobic language and behavior. It should and must be the same in the BAM Business District. This must be a sacred space that we must respect. And this vibration must spread throughout our community. I suggest the Red, Black and Green fly throughout our community to let ourselves and the world know we are a people with cultural consciousness, who originated from the womb of civilization. It will help us understand when we kill our brothers and sisters, we kill ourselves. When others kill us, they kill themselves as well. James Baldwin said, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe!"

--Marvin X

1/17/16

Dr. Nathan Hare does the BAM BAM in preparation for the Marcus Garvey Unity Parade and Founders Concert in celebration of the Black Arts Movement Business District

 The Honorable Marcus Garvey

We think North American Africans in Oakland should celebrate the Black Arts Movement Business District with a Marcus Garvey parade down 14th from MLK, Jr. Way to Lake Merritt for a rally and festival. King Theo of the Malonga Center should lead the people with his dancers doing the BAM BAM  (suggested by Dr. Nathan Hare). Dr. Hare says, "BAM BAM in boxing connotes a quick one-two punch."

Dr. Nathan Hare, Sociologist, Clinical Psychologist, Father of Black and Ethnic Studies, former professional boxer, demonstrates the BAM BAM for Marvin X.

BAM photographer/videographer Kenny Johnson said, "We gonna be doin da BAM Thang everywhere."

Black artists gather at Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant Plaza in front of Oakland City Hall, prior to City Council vote that established the Black Arts Movement Business District, January 12, 2016.
Front: Khalid Waajid; Amir Aziz, Duane Deterville, Judy Juanita, Eric Arnold, Tureada Mikell, Marvin X, Tarika Lewis, DeMar-con Gipson, Blystk Kmba, Crsna Cox, Jaenal Peterson, Jahaninh Omi Bahari, Janeah Taylor, Yancie Taylor, Tracy Mitchell, Ron Linzie, Dennis X, Wanda Ravernell
photo Adam Turner

President of Oakland City Council, Lynette McElhaney 

Thanks BAMBD Community Planners

 

Hello all:

I want to appreciate all of the culture keepers for supporting this effort and expanding upon this concept.  I cannot tell you how gratified I am that what I once believed to be a personal idea was actually me tapping into the wellspring of passion and love for this concept that long predates my arrival on the council.  I am humbled.  Spirit is all-knowing and all-wise and I am truly honored to be in a position to help fulfill - or at least facilitate - the fulfillment of this community desire.

While I appreciate everyone's contributions, I want to extend a very special note of thanks to Joyce Gordon (an absolute gem), Duane Deterville (whose cogent presentation helped me see the importance and power of linking this effort to historic and global movements), Paul Cobb (whose deep knowledge of people and place fully expanded my appreciation of the corridor) and Marvin X, who, without doubt, has been the most vocal proponent for the celebration of the Black Arts movement and the claiming of a space to honor the contributions of Black artists.  I also want to thank the business owners Craig, Geoffrey, Oscar, Corey and Veronica and city staff for their insight and support.

This is just the first step.  We have a lot more work to do.  Looking forward to expanding the team and finding ways to fund the vision.

With deep Oakland-love, Lynette


Council President Lynette McElhaney, Marvin X, Duane Deterville; Middle row: Gerry Garzon (Oakland Public Library), Tureeda Mikell, Jaenal Peterson, Aries Jordan, David McKelvey, Eric Murphy (Joyce Gordon Gallery); Back row: Eric Arnold, Kwesi Wilkerson, Charles Johnson, Alicia Parker (Oakland Planning Department), Shomari Carter (Supervisor Keith Carson's Office). Far right: Elder Paul Cobb, Publisher, Oakland Post News Group. 

Let's Celebrate the Black Arts Movement Business District with a Marcus Garvey Parade and Founders Concert

 The Honorable Marcus Garvey

We think North American Africans in Oakland should celebrate the Black Arts Movement Business District with a Marcus Garvey parade down 14th from MLK, Jr. Way to Lake Merritt for a rally and festival. Brother Theo of the Malonga Center should lead the people with his dancers doing the BAM BAM  (suggested by Dr. Nathan Hare). Dr. Hare says, "BAM BAM in boxing connotes a quick one-two punch."

Dr. Nathan Hare, Sociologist, Clinical Psychologist, Father of Black and Ethnic Studies, former professional boxer, demonstrates the BAM BAM for Marvin X.

BAM photographer/videographer Kenny Johnson said, "We gonna be doin da BAM Thang everywhere."

;

King Theo

 Sonia Sanchez

We also propose a benefit concert for the Black Arts Movement Business District Trust Fund. The concert will present BAM Founders and showcase the BAM Babies--the next generation of artistic freedom fighters.

YGB, Young, Gifted and Black

l
BAM Baby, Mayor Ras Baraka, Newark NJ


 Nikki Giovanni

Alice Walker

Askia Toure

The Last Poets

 (invited, unconfirmed)
Danny Glover
The Last Poets
Sonia Sanchez
Nikki Giovanni
Alice Walker
Avotcja
Askia Toure
Marvin X
Ishmael Reed
Al Young
Mayor Ras Baraka
YGB
Paris
Marc Barmuthi

The BAM Poet's Choir and Arkestra:

Paradise

Kujichagulia

Marvin X and Danny Glover

 
Universal Negro Improvement Association soldiers. Did you know
there is a Marcus Garvey UNIA Hall in Oakland?


 The UNIA Black Cross Nurses. We call upon the Bay Area Black Nurses Association to participate in the BAM Business District Unity parade.

On the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, we call upon the BPP veterans to participate in the BAM Business District Unity parade. Panther Cubs also!


The 200,000 North American African troops were critical to the US winning the Civil War. We call upon Black Veterans to march in the BAM Business District Unity parade.

FYI, BAM/Black Power activists were patriots who believed in the values of American democracy. We believed in the American revolution. We quoted the US Constitution in our raps and principles. We believed in the consent of the governed, yet we suffered taxation without representation. We suffered a military defeat by the US Government. We hereby call upon all veterans of the US military to connect and support the BAM/Black Power veterans, especially those in need. We call on Black military veterans to reach out and touch the soldiers in America's domestic war against the freedom and independence of North American Africans, e.g., Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, Socialists, Communists, Liberation theologists and others. Now there are some who completely missed the 60s. They are like the girl who said Wake up to what? Poor girl doesn't even know she's asleep. But US military veterans, reach out and touch your brothers in the war for freedom in America.

We call upon the Nation of Islam to join the BAM Business District Unity Parade.

BAM poets Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou doing the BAM BAM!

We suggest the Marcus Garvey Unity Parade in honor of the man who taught us Black Unity.
"Up you mighty people, you can accomplish what you will!" He gave us the Red, Black and Green after hearing a racist song, "Everybody got a flag 'cept a Coon!"Let's do the BAM BAM!

For more information about this proposed event, call 510-200-4164 

jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Where Shall We Look For God?

This Far by Faith "The Evolution of the Nation of Islam"