Marching With Manning Marable
I have only marched a few times in my life. I was never much on marching, especially during the Civil Rights era. As a member of the Nation of Islam, we were not taught to march but to do for self by taking authority over our lives and construct the institutions needed for survival and thrival, whether economic, educational, spiritual, military and political.
But on the eve of the Million Man March I was living in Philadelphia at one of Father Divine’s hotels near the University of Penn. I was hustling my poster poems on the streets of Philly and often hustled across the street from City Hall, sight of the murder trial of Mumia Abu Jamal. As I was hustling and not trying to be politically involved, I did not cross the street to City Hall where Pam Africa, Ramona Africa and others in the Move organization were supporting justice for Mumia. But I would see them across the street while selling my poster poems.
Then one day Rev. James Bevels who had worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., came from the Mumia Rally on his way home. When I approached him to buy a poster, he said, “You should be across the street selling your posters, “ pointing to the City Hall rally. He departed and I thought about finally crossing the street. Eventually I did, only to feel disappointed because they were playing a tape that sounded like the voice of a white man.
I couldn’t understand why they were playing this tape, only to discover it was the smooth voice of Mumia Abu Jamal, smoother than Peter Jennings and Ted Kopel.
From that day I took more interest in the trial of Mumia Abu Jamal. And then came the day of a massive rally and march beginning at City Hall. I went to the march and ran into many friends, including poet Sonia Sanchez and Khalid Muhammad. I made Khalid recognize me as I had gained a few pounds during my recovery from Crack addiction.
Khalid then embraced me and introduced me to his son, Farakhan, then seven years old. Since the march took place on one of those unbearably hot and humid east coast summer days, I sought refuse in a store for cold water and watched the marchers leave City Hall for the Liberty Bell. I had no desire to march in the hot sun, until I saw Khalid marching alongside Akbar Muhammad, Minister Farakhan international representatives, and Manning Marable, the great historian who has joined the ancestors.
The Spirit told me to join them so I rushed from the comfort of the air conditioned store to the join my colleagues, although I did not really know Manning, but we acknowledged each other and I joined the trek to the Liberty Bell to help save Mumia from the death chamber.
In my autobiography Somethin’ Proper, 1998, I described what happened as I marched with Manning, Herman Ferguson, Khalid, Akbar and little Farakhan:
…Akbar and I embraced and I joined the march, falling in the rear behind Khalid, who was mobbed by photographers…as we continued toward the Liberty Bell, little Farakhan turned and grabbed my hand, pulling me next to his father. The child put me on post securing his dad. When I would fall to the rear, here came his hand, pulling me up front again. When people, mainly white, got between his father and me, he motioned for me to move them away. This little child of seven was a soldier. He told me to tell the people, “Excuse me, but just don’t touch them.!”
When we finally arrived at the Liberty Bell, I was in my security groove. Khalid didn’t want to speak because he was afraid the media would purposely misquote him, possibly try to attribute something to him that would make Mumia’s situation worse.
Minister Farakhan was supposed to speak, but sent Akbar instead. His absence visibly upset Pam and Ramona Africa and other rally organizers, but Farakhan was preparing for the Million Man March, attendance at a Mumia rally was probably too controversial for him.
Anyway, cooling out under a shade tree, I asked Khalid what was up with him and the Minister. He said he was unable to communicate with the minister, although the Final Call said he was back in good standing….
This rally was the only time I was with Manning Marable, but he had impressed me with his social activism as well as his intellectuality. There is certainly some irony in the fact he made his transition days before his greatest work, a biography of Malcolm X, would be released. We never had faith in his Autobiography since it was completed after his death and much of it was considered spurious. We have learned our suspicions were right since the FBI had approached Alex Haley to delete certain information. Three chapters were removed that have now been found. We are thankful that Manning’s book will shed new light on the life and times of Malcolm X and clarify how profoundly the FBI and the New York Police were involved in his assassination, much like the Oakland Police and City Hall were involved in the assassination of Oakland Post Editor, Chauncey Bailey.
Those who question the role of the OPD in the murder of Chauncey, need only peruse Manning’s book to see the critical role of the FBI, New York police, along with the Nation of Islam, and persons in Malcolm’s organizations, ( OAAU and Muslim Mosque, Inc.), played in his assassination.
--Dr. M (Marvin X), Prime Minister,
First Poet’s Church of the Latter Day Egyptian Revisionists
www.firstpoetschurch.blogspot.com
Malcolm X scholar Manning Marable dies at 60 By CRISTIAN SALAZAR The Associated Press NEW YORK — Manning Marable, an influential historian whose forthcoming Malcolm X biography could revise perceptions of the slain civil rights leader, died Friday, just days before the book described as his life's work was to be released. He was 60. His wife, Leith Mullings, said Marable died from complications of pneumonia at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. She said he had suffered for 24 years from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease, and had undergone a double lung transplant in July. "I think his legacy is that he was both a scholar and an activist," she said. "He believed that history could be used to inform the present and the future." She said Marable's latest book, "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention," will be released Monday. Two decades in the making, the nearly 600-page biography is described as a re-evaluation of Malcolm X's life, bringing fresh insight to subjects including his autobiography, which is still assigned in many college courses, to his assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan on Feb. 21, 1965. The book is based on exhaustive research, including thousands of pages of FBI files and records from the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department. Marable also conducted interviews with the slain civil rights leader's confidants and security team, as well as witnesses to his assassination. Blair Kelley, a history professor at North Carolina State University, called Marable's death a "devastating" loss for black historians. "I can't believe he died before the book came out. He really deserved the opportunity to be celebrated for his groundbreaking scholarship," Kelley wrote on Twitter. "He touched so many of us as an activist, scholar, historian, political scientist, publisher, mentor. Truly a great man." Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a statement that Marable's "contributions to the struggle for freedom of African Americans will never be forgotten." "Dr. Marable brought one of the keenest intellects of our age to the contemporary conversation on race in America," he said. Born in Dayton, Ohio, on May 13, 1950, Marable wrote in his book, "Speaking Truth to Power," that he was born into the era that witnessed the emergence of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as nonviolent movements in the South struggling to break the back of white supremacy. But he was the child of middle-class black Americans, he wrote, his father a teacher and businessman, his mother an educator and college professor. He watched from afar as blacks in the South rebelled against segregation and racial inequality, and as a teenager found his emergent political voice writing columns for a neighborhood newspaper. He wrote that his mother encouraged him to attend King's funeral "to witness a significant event in our people's history." He served as the local black newspaper's correspondent, he wrote, and marched along with thousands of others during the funeral procession. "With Martin's death, my childhood abruptly ended," he wrote. "My understanding of political change began a trajectory from reform to radicalism." Marable followed a scholarly path but turned toward progressive politics to help shape his understanding of the world and his people. He wrote hundreds of papers and nearly 20 books, including the landmark "How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America," published in 1983. At Columbia University, where he was a professor, he was the founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and established the Center for Contemporary Black History. Besides his wife of 15 years, he is survived by three children and two stepchildren. ___ AP National Writer Jesse Washington in Philadelphia contributed to this report. ___
