Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil, A Memoir by Marvin X

Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil, A Memoir
By Marvin X

March 21, 2009

Introduction

Marvin X‘s newest book, “Eldridge Cleaver: My Friend, The Devil” is an important Expose!, notonly of whom his good friend really was… (I confess I thought something like that, in less metaphysical terms, from the day we met, at San Francisco State, 1967) But also of whom Marvin was/is. Now, Marvin has confessed to being Yacub, whom Elijah Muhammad taught us was the “evil big head scientist” who created the devil. (Marvin’s head is very large for his age.)

What is good about this book is Marvin’s telling us something about who Eldridge became as the Black Panther years receded in the rear view mirror. I remember during this period, when I learned that Marvin was hanging around Cleaver even after he’d made his televised switch from anti-capitalist revolutionary to Christian minister, denouncing the 3rd World revolutionaries and the little Marxism he thought he knew, while openly acknowledging beating his wife as a God given male prerogative, I said to Marvin, “I thought you was a Muslim” . His retort, “Jesus pay more money than Allah, Bro”, should be a classic statement of vituperative recidivism.

But this is one of the charms of this memoir. It makes the bizarre fathomable. Especially the tales of fraternization with arguably the most racist & whitest of the Xtian born agains with Marvin as agent, road manager, co-conspirator-confessor, for the post-Panther – very shot- out Cleaver. It also partially explains some of Cleaver’s moves to get back in this country, he had onetime denounced, and what he did after the big cop out. Plus, some of the time, these goings on seem straight out hilarious. Though frequently, that mirth is laced with a sting of regret. Likewise, I want everyone to know that I am writing this against my will, as a favor to Yacub.—Amiri Baraka. Newark, 5/13/09

Chapter 1

It all began at Soledad Prison, sometime during 1966. Black Dialogue magazine was approached by attorney Beverly Axelrod about making a visit to the Soledad Prison Black Culture Club. The editors agreed to make the visit, including myself as fiction editor. The other editors included Art Sheridan, Gerald, Aubrey and Peter LaBrie, Sadaat Ahmed, Joe Goncalves, Duke Williams, et al. We made our way down the coast to Soledad. I was both excited and sad because my brother Ollie was probably an inmate at the time, though I can't remember.

Our staff was taken to the hosting officer's apartment and briefed on what to do and not to do. No contact with inmates, no passing or taking of literature. We agreed but it didn't mean a thing. Soon as we got inside the meeting room we knew what we were going to do. At first we got inside and saw the brothers seated, with the meeting in progress. Eldridge was chair and his lieutenant was Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter. Bunchy was a very handsome black man, so handsome it belied his leadership qualities as head of the Los Angeles Slauson gang.

But chairman Cleaver was a giant of a man, tell, light skinned and articulate. But more than the words said, I was immediately impressed with the organizational structure with brothers on post with military style discipline. It was probably the first time I'd seen black men so organized. We know now according to brother Kumasi that this was the beginning of the prison movement in California and the nation, this black culture club of mostly young black men confined to the dungeon as so many are today, causing havoc in black family and community life.

In this Soledad dungeon would come a prison movement on par with the black student movement, black arts, and black studies. As I listened to Chairman Eldridge speak, I said to myself this is a dangerous Negro if allowed to depart these walls. Clearly, he was well read after a total of eighteen years of confinement in the California Gulags. I would learn later he was soaked in Marxist Leninism and literature in general. And when Black Dialogue obtained his writings for publication, especially “My, Queen, I Greet You,” we suspected this was a man with the passion and writing skills of Baldwin. And of course he must have sensed this comparison and thus his need to denounce Baldwin to take a shot at the black literary crown, although he did it by a homophobic denunciation which led one to suspect his own sexual improprieties, especially after so long in prison.

But at that first meeting, we were humbled to be with the brothers, to share with them by reading our writings from Black Dialogue. At the end of the meeting we all embraced and exchanged materials in violation of the officer's request. We gave them copies of Dialogue and they gave us manuscripts of their writings which were later published in Dialogue and Journal of Black Poetry. As I said, we published “My Queen, I Greet You,” in Dialogue and Joe Goncalves published the poetry of Bunchy and others in JBP. We left Soledad and headed back up the coast to San Francisco. Thus was established a connection between the prison movement and black students, the black arts movement and eventually the Black Panther Party when I introduced Elbridge to Bobby Seale soon after his release from prison.

Chapter II

Several months passed before I met Eldridge again. Somebody called me to come over Sister Mary Anna's house. Maryanna Waddy was the daughter of painter Ruth Waddy, but more importantly, she was the student, though somewhat older at the time, who aggressively pushed for the name change from Negro Students Association to the Black Students Union. Maryanna was a strong black woman who took no jive, maybe the result of black consciousness taught by her mother. But when I entered her house, Eldridge was there trying to introduce his plans to the community.

There seemed to be some tension between him and Maryanna, a black man/black woman power battle. Maybe Maryanna knew about Eldridge's white woman lawyer, Beverley Axelrod, who had smuggled his manuscript Soul on Ice out of Soledad. We would learn that Eldridge had promised to marry her, so his blackness was suspect from the beginning—but we would handle that matter a few months down the road. Maryanna and most of those present, maybe members of the BSU, including those of us from Black Dialogue. If I recall correctly, Eldridge gave me a ride home and we agreed to meet again soon.

Things were going bad for us at Black Arts West Theatre on Fillmore Street, across the street from Tree's pool hall and around the corner from the Sun Reporter newspaper, published by the millionaire Communist Dr. Carlton Goodlett. BAW was breaking up because of egos and other psychopathic behavior in our crew which included Ed Bullins, Duncan Barber, Hillary Broadous, Carl Bossiere, and Ethna Wyatt. All of us wanted to make BAW happen but our egos got in the way, along with deeper mental problems. In spite of these problems, we did my plays and the plays of Ed Bullins. We had jazz concerts with the Bay Area's best, including Raphael Garrett, Monte Waters, Dewey Redman, Oliver Jackson, B.J., and others.
Only thing with the musicians, many had white women which we would not allow in the theatre, since we were black nationalists on the road to becoming members of the Nation of Islam. A long time criminal Muslim came to our theatre to recruit us, Alonzo Harris Batin, who became the guru and mentor of BAW. Batin was a criminal with a heart of gold. He wanted us to join the Nation even though most of the time he was not in good standing and considered a hypocrite. Soon we were indoctrinated by Batin and eventually most of us joined the Nation except Ed Bullins. Bullins was into his art and living or at least staying in the Beatnik area of North Beach.

For awhile, Ethna was the glue that held BAW together. She fed us when we were low on money to buy food. She would cook something that would be enough for the crew and she would try to stop us from killing each other as we ego-tripped. Ethna had come from Chicago, maybe during or around the time of that Summer of Love. It seemed many beautiful women fled Chicago to the West coast. Ethna's friend had come, Sandra Williams, helping out at BAW. Danny Glover acted in BAW, performing in Dorothy Ahmed's play Papa's Daughter, about incest. Actress and SFSU student Vonetta McGee performed in Bullins' play It Has No Choice and another play by Bullins that I can't remember the name.

And then one day the crew called me to the lobby of the theatre to meet a man they said spoke seven languages. After they called me several times to come to the lobby, I came from the theatre to meet a tall, jet black brother with straight hair, Ali Sharif Bey, who indeed did speak several languages, including English, Persian, Spanish, French, Arabic and Urdu. He became our on-site Islamic scholar and teacher, teaching us Arabic and his vast knowledge of Islam based on the Ahmediah sect, the great evangelists of Islam to the West. Ali Sharif Bey would surface later as the runner for the SLA when they kidnapped Patty Hearst. He is the source for my master thesis docudrama How I Met Isa.

But in spite of all this community support—none from the Black bourgeoisie until later at the Black House which Eldridge convinced me to help organize since I told him I was tired of the bs at BAW and was ready to do something different. We discussed setting up what eventually became Black House, a political/cultural center on Broderick Street off Divisadero in the Fillmore. Ed Bullins soon joined Eldridge, Ethna and myself. For a few months Black House became the cultural center of the Bay with thousands of conscious hungry black flocking there for culture. Black House participants included Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Chicago Art Ensemble, Sarah Webster Fabio, Reginald Lockett, Emory Douglas, Samuel Napier and Little Bobby Hutton. On the political side, Eldridge brought in a Communist party leader, Rosco Proctor.

Eldridge had no time for the culture, even though he couldn't help but be influenced by it since it was at the house he financed with his advance from Soul On Ice. He and Baraka had little to say to each other even though Baraka's Communication Project at San Francisco State College/now University, had its off campus base at Black House. Years later these two men would switch ideologies with Baraka turning Communist and Eldridge finding religion. Eldridge would eventually go from Communist to Christian, to Mormon to Moonie to Religious Science.

But at Black House he was strictly Communist and he pushed hard to get us to follow his path, though we resisted until Black House fell apart from ideological differences. Before it fell we had gone to Beverly Axelrod's house to literally remove Cleaver since we found it a contradiction for the chairman of Black House to be sleeping at the White House. One afternoon brother Batin and I made Eldridge move his things from the White House while Miss Ann cried. Among his belongings was that wicker chair, spear and rug made famous in that photo of Huey Newton.

Unity of Thought

Toward Unity of North American Africans
14. Unity in Thought


Our philosophical and ideological thought has been diverse and divergent, expressing a panorama of thinking since our sojourn in the wilderness of North America. As an expression of the Sisyphusian mythology, our thinking depended on how low or how high we ascended the mountain.
In our lowest moments, we wanted out of here, return to African or anywhere but here. In our more ascendant times, we strove to plant our feet on the solid ground of Americana, claiming every right due citizens in these United Snakes of America. But generally we have worn the persona of the schizoid personality, a painful balancing act between the blues songs of love and hate for our presence in Tobacco Road.

Integration, separation, migration, revolution, we have enjoyed a plethora of feelings, emotions and often the raw psychological depression derived from oppression. In our more positive times, we expressed a maniacal moment of elation before the depression set in as happened in the short lived post bellum, post emancipation period called Reconstruction.

The 19th century thinkers ranged from the militant writings of David Walker's Appeal, 1829, through the intellectuals involved in the black conferences throughout the century that included slave insurrections, back to Africa thinking, and the radical thinking of men like Henry Highland Garnett.

Some of these thinkers gave up on the American dream and tried to tell us we would never be free in Babylon. After 1827 with the publication of Freedom's Journal, the black press expressed our mood from then on. With the Civil War we envisioned a future of freedom, but virtual slavery returned after the short lived Reconstruction.

Booker T. Washington told us to cast down our buckets where we were, forget about integration and strive for economic progress, while others pleaded for full citizenship rights, among them W.E.B. DuBois, who saw race as the essential problem of America. DuBois saw a "talented tenth" leading the race to freedom.

Marcus Garvey had read the writings of Booker T. Washington in the African Times and Orient
Review, the paper edited by Duse Muhammad Ali, the man who mentored Garvey in London before he came to America to hook up with Booker T., who died before Garvey arrived.

Of course Garvey came to America indoctrinated with the Pan Africanism taught him by Duse Muhammad Ali, One God, One Aim, One Destiny, Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad.

Although DuBois became a champion of Pan Africanism and died in Ghana, Garvey implemented his black nationalist, Pan Africanist program, supposedly organizing six million people into the greatest organization of radical black thought preceding Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam.
Ironically, Negro intellectuals were Garvey's worse enemies and conspired to railroad him into prison, partly from jealousy and envy. After release from prison, he died a broken man in London, never landing on African soil.

World War I had given North American Africans a chance to see the world and again prove themselves in battle, although they returned to face race riots after fighting fascism abroad. Their thinking had expanded after the war and after they began the great migration from the Jim Crow South, aka the Cotton Curtain! In the North they encountered the thoughts of urban intellectuals, including DuBois and the NAACP civil rights thinkers. But there was also the philosophy of Noble Drew Ali, a precursor of Elijah Muhammad's brand of unorthodox Islam.
Noble Drew Ali must be listed among those mystic Negroes who originated a synthesis of thought from Islamic Sufism, Ahmedism and the new spirituality that had origins in the 19th century.

We must never forget the literature of the slave narratives, Muslim and Christian, especially the narrative of Frederick Douglas who gave us a vivid story of his path from slavery to freedom. His July 4th speech is a classic of black thought on the meaning of Independence Day to a North American African.

July 4, 1910, when Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight champion and behaved as a free man in every sense of the word, America responded with race riots of the kind never seen before or since, simply because Johnson claimed his manhood in the promised land and refused to play the role of the docile Negro. Because of Johnson's thinking and behavior, America invented a law to indict him called the Mann Act, though we call it the Black Man Act. Supposedly Johnson had crossed state lines with white prostitutes that he loved to race through the streets with in his expensive cars. What should our response be to the white man who has taken liberties with our women from day one til now.

But we should also be aware of female thought, such as the thinking and actions of Harriet Tubman, who said she could have freed more slaves if they had known they were slaves. And Ida B. Wells, who did all she could to stop lynchings throughout the land. And Queen Mother Moore, the Mother of Reparations. Angela Davis has long given her thoughts on the liberation of captives in the prisons and jails of America. We thank her because few men have addressed the topic, although Elijah Muhammad long called for the amnesty of men and women unjustly imprisoned in America. The Black Panthers followed up on this point as well.

Of course some of our greatest thinking has come from those men either in prison or released from prison, such as George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, Malcolm X and our greatest living prison philosopher , Mumia Abu Jamal.

For many black men, prison is the first time they get a chance to think. We shall be astounded to discover their thinking and writings, especially with so many of them locked down as we write.

Elijah said separation. Martin Luther King, Jr. said integration and civil rights. Malcolm said human rights, the ballot or the bullet. With Obama as President, we have obviously gone for the ballot, yet by the time he leaves office, we may be forced to consider the bullet.

For sure, our thinking has been unified around the theme of freedom and liberation. Our literature is essentially a slave narrative or how I got ova, how I survived. Amiri Baraka was asked at UC Berkeley what was his greatest accomplishment? He answered, "I survived!"

We cannot conclude this brief outline of our thought without reference to the underlying philosophy contained in the music, the spirituals, the blues, jazz, poetry and rap. For here we find the thought of common people, thus the common sense philosophic thought that made it possible for us to keep the faith, to endure the daily round. The music is thus a metaphoric comment on our general condition, sometimes personalized, sometimes politicized, but always a statement on our reality as a people in the Crazy House Called America.
--Marvin X
11/13/10

Elder Marvin X and POCC Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. in Berkeley CA, July, 2011

Elder Marvin X and POCC Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr.

photo by Kamau Amen Ra, Berkeley CA, July, 2011

Jobs for Terrorist, None fada Hood

Jobs for Terrorists Abroad, None for the Hood

American, Afghan and NATO leaders are also preparing to start an ambitious program to convince rank-and-file Taliban fighters to give up in exchange for schooling and jobs. That plan, expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, will be the focus of an international conference later this week in London. The plan aims at the bottom of the Taliban hierarchy — the foot soldiers who are widely perceived as mostly poor, illiterate, and susceptible to promises of money and jobs. In 2007 and 2008, a similar effort unfolded in Iraq, where some 30,000 members of the country’s Sunni minority — many of them former insurgents — were put on the American payroll. Partly as a result, violence there plummeted.
--Dexter Filkins, NewYork Times, January 24, 2010

It is absolutely ironic and mystifying that the United States of America pays billions to convince terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan to lay down their guns and pledge allegiance to their governments. It was the payment of billions to insurgents in Iraq, rather than the so called surge that decreased the violence in Anbar Province. Money was provided to tribal elders who in turn hired young men to secure their neighborhoods. Billions are presently being allocated in Afghanistan to convince the Taliban to stop their violence.

So the question is whether decreasing violence abroad is more important than stemming violence in the hoods of America, especially between young black men who have been killing themselves at the rate of ten to fifteen thousand per year since 2005 and decades before in a low intensity war. Parents are helpless to protect their children, especially their sons. They can't make their sons understand the hood is a war zone and the only thing that will save them is putting on the armor of God or spiritual consciousness, combined with political consciousness and common sense.

It seems that violence is the panacea for problems in the hood, especially between young men and women. There is little conflict resolution or thought beyond an emotional response to every situation. A young man told me yesterday he was going to kill his brother on sight, and in the same breath said he would kill anyone who killed his brother. He went silent when I asked him what ifsomebody killed you for killing your brother?Much of the violence in America is due to pure and simple racism? We know if black men focused their guns at the white community it would be a problem of the national security of the United States. But since it is only young black men, let them commit homicide or fratricide.

At least they are not shooting at white people or American troops and/or the national guard.Only then would the US be concerned, only then would the ghettos become totally occupied by police. Indeed, the much heralded decrease in violence of New York City is because police are deployed throughout the hood who stop young blacks at random, questioning their status in the criminal justice system, then arresting them or permitting them to continue on their way.

They also reward persons with a thousand dollars if they will turn in (snitch on) anyone (friends, co-workers) known to carry a gun.In other American cities, the violence continues unabated, with no end in sight, no solution offered except more police, in turn filling the jails and prisons with young black men who cannot find any alternative to economic deprivation other than gang membership and the resultant violence. Much of the violence is part of gang initiation rites. The cost of violence to the physical, mental and emotional health of the community exceeds any amount of money, for the trauma and unresolved grief of family members is staggering and incalculable.Yet, there is no national solution from the black bourgeoisie political, religious, or intellectual leadership.

If black bourgeoisie children were being slaughtered in the hood, something would be done about it, yet we all know the violence is directly related to economics, just as it is in Iraq and Afghanistan.Many of the insurgents are farmers who cannot til the soil at a living wage, so they join Al Queda and the Taliban. When will America offer her violent prone young men the same opportunity at home? Or does she prefer to continue the destabilization of the hood, since it employs any number of white people as police, correctional officers, judges, parole agents and probation officers. The cost of incarceration is a minimum $50,000.00 per man per year, almost double the cost of attending Harvard, Yale and Stanford.

Why not offer the boys and girls in the hood $50,000.00 per year to secure their community and other jobs, or reward them for staying in school, but only after a radical transformation of the educational system to make it inviting rather than boring to tears with white supremacy curriculum that is outdated and retarded, certainly not fit for the information age of high technology.If jobs cannot be provided, why not micro loans so the young men and women can become entrepreneurs? Micro loans are allowing people to come out of poverty throughout the world. Why do Americans have their heads in the sand on so many issues? Yet, with their white supremacy arrogance, they proclaim to know everything, as President Lula of Brazil chided the President of France recently.

With respect to violence, if America continues her present policy of do-nothingism she will sow the seeds of her destruction from within, for one day the boys and girls in the hood shall discover a revolutionary solution to their problems that involves the seizure of power, the taking over of entire communities by youth and adults radicalized by an ideology born of desperation and despair. As in the 1960s, the voices of reactionary political sycophants will be ignored. Unless America intends to incarcerate entire communities, she would do well to offer an immediate solution to economic desperation in the hood.

After his first year in office ended on a sour note with the Republican victory in Massachusetts, President Obama and his Democratic party sycophants should take note that people are disgusted with his policies that rewarded the very ones who caused the economic meltdown, while the suffering of the middle class and poor has gone unattended.Massachusetts should be a wake up call to any reasonable person. Senator Edward Kennedy is surely turning over in his grave. And yet the health plan is another concession to the rich, to the insurance companies and others who impeded the bill's passage.

Contrary to his pledge of an open administration, Obama has made back room deals that call into question his honesty and suggest an inclination to political chicanery.His administration and the Democratic party are scrambling after their disastrous defeat in Massachusetts. Politicians only respond to pressure, thus the message must be gotten out that the violence caused by economic deprivation must end immediately.

Must we have a poor people's march on Washington--a march of the unemployed and homeless, including the mothers and fathers of slain children?My friend, Dr. Cornel West says we must protect, respect and correct our president. I will add that we must check him as well by organized protest until he understands it is not only the bankers and wall street robber barons who need an infusion of funds for survival. He can no longer ignore violence at home, while rewarding violence abroad. If employment is the simple solution in Iraq and Afghanistan, why not in the ghettos of America to insure the social security of the hood?

1/21/10

Marvin X's Brief Career in Academia: UC Berkeley, A Case Study by Dr. J. Vern Cromartie of the Contra Costa College Sociology Department

Marvin X and his mentor and colleague in the BAM, Sun Ra, circa 1972, San Francisco, outside Marvin X's Black Educational Theatre on O'farrel between Fillmore and Webster.

Teaching Black Studies
at the
University Of California, Berkeley: A Case Study Of Marvin X and the Afro-American Studies Program

by Dr. J. Vern Cromartie, Contra Costa College, Richmond CA

Abstract
This paper presents a case study of Marvin X and his experiences teaching Black studies at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1970s. Using in-depth interviews and archival research, this paper focuses on the status and role of Marvin X as a member of the faculty in the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

This paper also details some of the successes and problems encountered by Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, this paper addresses some implications of Marvin X’s lecturer status at the University of California, Berkeley.

Introduction
During the 1960s, many programs and departments in Black Studies emerged within academia. Unlike the programs and departments in African Area Studies, the programs and departments , and White corporations. On the other hand, Black Studies entered the curricula primarily through the efforts of Black students, Black faculty, and concerned members of various Black communities (Cromartie, 1993).

The first Black Studies Program to emerge during the 1960s developed at Merritt College with Fritz Pointer as the first chairman. Among the students who led the struggle to establish the program at Merritt College were Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and their friend Marvin X.

The first Black Studies Department to emerge during the 1960s at a four-year college or university took place at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) with Nathan Hare as the first chairman. Marvin X also played a role in the struggle for Black Studies at San Francisco State although he was out of the state ( underground in Harlem, Chicago, Toronto as a protest against the war in Vietnam) during the landmark 1968 strike (X, 1998; Brown, 2004; Cromartie, 1993).

Marvin's role was as a visionary in the transition from the Negro Students Association to the Black Students Union, thus he helped lay the groundwork for the Black Studies Program. Alas, it was BSU President Mar-yam Wadai (Marianna Waddy who submitted an outline for the first Black Studies Curriculum. Fore more on Marianna, see Eldridge Cleaver's Post Prison Writings and Marvin X's autobiography Somethin' Proper. Revisionist historians have largely written out the critical role of Mar-yam Wadai, aka Marianna Waddy from the history of San Francisco State University. She was critical in forcing the name change from the Negro Student Association to the Black Students Union.

Eventually, Marvin X taught at a number of institutions with fledging programs or departments in Black Studies. Between 1969 and 1982, which was a crucial period in the institutionalization of Black Studies: he taught Black Studies and other courses (English, drama, journalism, technical writing, creative writing, radio and television writing) at Fresno State College (now Fresno State University); University of California, Berkeley, University of California, San Diego; San Francisco State; Mills College; University of Nevada, Reno; Merritt and Laney Colleges; and Kings River Community College (X, 1998).

Although he received a 97% student retention evaluation from Kings River College, he never sought another college position. Although he loved his multi-racial students, he knew his calling was to black students and/or the black community.

He still lectures and reads his poetry in academy from time to time,especially on his coast to coast book tours at such universities as Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, University of Arkansas,
University of Oklahoma, University of Virginia, University of Penn, Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, et al, he mainly teaches at his Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. Ishmael Reed calls him "Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland." Ishmael says, "If you want to learn about motivation and inspiration, don't spend all that money going to workshops and seminars, just go stand at 14th and Broadway and watch Marvin X at work."
His chief clientele are the down and out, the depressed, the mentally ill, dope fiends, the homeless and brokenhearted. Sometimes they line up at his classroom so he can listen to their trauma, unresolved grief and suffering. Some days the poor and oppressed bring him donations for his patience and love for the people.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of Marvin X and his experiences with teaching Black studies at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1970s. Making use of in-depth interviews and archival research, this paper will focus on the status and role of Marvin X as a member of the faculty in the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. This paper will also detail some of the successes and problems encountered by Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, this paper will address some implications of Marvin X‘s lecturer status at the University of California, Berkeley.

Status and Role of Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley

During the early 1970s, Marvin X was contracted as a lecturer in the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. At the time, the Afro-American Studies Program was one of several programs in the Ethnic Studies Department. The other programs in the Ethnic Studies Department included Asian American Studies, Chicano Studies, and Native American Studies (Wang, 1997).1

Marvin X was hired to teach a course titled Afro-American Studies 168 Black Theatre. The Supplementary Announcements to the Schedule and Directory and the General Catalogue Fall Quarter, 1971 (University of California, Berkeley, 1971) announced ―Afro-American Studies 168 Black Theatre‖ as a new course and described it as follows: Three hours lecture and two hours laboratory per week. Prerequisites–knowledge of black history, culture, and philosophy. Designed to give students practical and theoretical knowledge of black plays and rituals.

Students will study and perform the works of black playwrights, and other black drama groups to do a comparative analysis. Black playwrights, actors, and directors will be invited to class for a discussion of their work. Students with original writings will be able to have their works read and discussed in class. (p. 1)

The Supplementary Announcements to the Schedule and Directory and the General Catalogue Fall Quarter, 1971 indicated that the course would be taught by ―Mr. Muhajir, which was a non de plume of Marvin X.

As a lecturer in the Afro-American Studies Department, the role of Marvin X was to teach students who enrolled in the course. In an interview conducted with him on March 8, 2009, Marvin X informed the present writer that he taught the course partially on the campus and partially in San Francisco at a place he founded called Black Educational Theatre. Marvin X also reported to the present writer that he could not recall when he taught his first course at the University of California, Berkeley.

He expressed that his first course may have been offered in the fall 1971 quarter, winter 1972 quarter, or the spring 1972 quarter. However, on May 28, 2009, Nisa Ra, one of his former students in the course, told the present writer that she took Marvin X‘s class in the fall 1971 quarter. In addition, during the March 8, 2009 interview, Marvin X stated to the present writer that he was given a contract in the summer 1972 quarter to teach another course in the Afro-American Studies Program. According to Marvin X, he was hired to teach a philosophy course in place of Ken Moshesh. Marvin X stated that he received the contract that summer because Moshesh was not available and needed a substitute.

In his books In the Crazy House Called America and Wish I Could Tell You the Truth, Marvin X (2002, 2005) has listed 1972 as the year he taught at the University of California, Berkeley. David Hansen, a reference librarian at the Bancroft Library, informed the present writer on March 16, 2009 that the official records for the 1971 and 1972 schedules and directories for University of California, Berkeley in its Bancroft Library are incomplete.

Close examination of the University of California, Berkeley‘s (1971b, 1971c) schedules and directories for the winter 1972 quarter and the spring 1972 quarter indicates that Marvin X and his typical non de plume were not listed in either. It very well may be that the University of California, Berkeley listed his name and course on a supplementary list that could not be located by the present writer or the reference librarian. As mentioned above, the non de plume of Marvin X is mentioned in the Supplementary Announcements to the Schedule and Directory and the General Catalogue Fall Quarter, 1971.

Nevertheless, if Marvin X is correct, the summer appointment proved to be his final one at the University of California, Berkeley. Marvin X has maintained that he was let go at the University of California, Berkeley in an effort by the administrators to purge radicals from the Afro-American Studies Program and replace them with academicians deemed safer.

Successes of Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley

As mentioned above, Marvin X (1998, 2002, & 2005) has written that he taught at the University of California, Berkeley in 1972. Although his stint at the University of California, Berkeley proved to be short-lived, Marvin X touched the lives of many students on that campus, including the aforementioned Nisa Ra. Eventually, Nisa Ra changed her name from Greta Pope and married Marvin X, they produced a daughter well known in the international hip hop community, Muhammida El Muhajir, a filmmaker (Hip Hop, the New World Order) and global event planner.

While teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X also produced and staged his play titled Resurrection of the Dead. The play was actually written when he was active with the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, New York, 1968. Marvin X has described the play as a myth/ritual dance drama. But before Resurrection, Marvin had collaborated with Sun Ra to produce a musical version of Flowers for the Trashman, retitled Take Care of Business or TCB, including a non-stop five hour production at San Francisco's Harding Theatre with a cast of fifty, including the dancers of choreographer Raymond Sawyer and Ellendar Barnes, along with Marvin's actors and Sun Ra's Arkestra, cerca 1972.
Nisa Ra, former wife of Marvin X, mother of his daughter Muhammida El Muhajir. He and his former wife are close friends and supporters, especially when he is in the Philadelphia area where she lives.

Daughter Muhammida El Muhajir with hip hop diva Mary J. Blige


A youth on an east coast tour with Marvin X, asked his daughter Muhammida, how did it feel to see her mother and father talking together in peace, since he had never seen his mother and father doing such. Marvin X says, "Even if you are not with your wife or baby mama, we should demonstrate to the children that we can be civil, that we can forgive and forget the past mistakes so the children understand that love is unconditional. And for the sake of the children, we must come together in the spirit of love and unity.

In addition to Nisa Ra as a dancer, Resurrection of the Dead featured Victor Willis as lead singer. Willis later became the lead singer and writer of the Village People. Victor credits Marvin X for giving him the inspiration to hit New York City and pen such songs as I'm in the Navy, YMCA and Macho Man. The cast members in the play also included Amina Grant and Jamila Hunter. Jamilah or Charlene Hunter later danced with Shirley McClain and the Alvin Ailey Dancers.

At a ceremony during the production of Resurrection of the Dead, Nisa Ra and other cast members received Arabic names that some continue to use to this day. Thus, this was a name-changing/life changing ritual in the Eastern sense rather than a drama in the Western dramatic tradition.

After leaving the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X continued to be productive in 1972. He traveled to Mexico, Trinidad, and Guyana. Marvin X also interviewed Guyana‘s Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham, and published the interview in the Black Scholar.2 In addition, Marvin X (1972) published a book of poems, proverbs, lyrics, and parables titled Woman—Man’s Best Friend.

Problems of Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley

In 1964, Malcolm X, on the lecture circuit, gave a presentation at the University of California, Berkeley. Among the 7,000 people in Sproul Plaza that day to hear Malcolm X, there stood Marvin X. Malcolm X deeply impressed Marvin X with his articulate analysis of social conditions in the USA. Marvin X was also impressed by Malcolm X‘s advocacy of Black nationalism.

By the time he heard Malcolm X, Marvin X had already been introduced to Black nationalism as an ideology by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, and others. Marvin X (2005) has related that it was at Merritt College where ―I had the fortune or misfortune of being educated on the steps of the college by Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen and others on the merits of Black Nationalism (p. 17).

With regard to Malcolm X, Marvin X (2002) has written that, ―When Malcolm X spoke before seven thousand students at U. C. Berkeley‘s Sproul Plaza (1964), I was in the audience. When he was assassinated, we wore black armbands to express our grief San Francisco State University, actor Danny Glover among us (pp. 93-94).

Marvin X (2002) has also stated that, ―Malcolm‘s oratory influenced me to consider Elijah‘s Islamic Black Nationalism while I was a student at Oakland‘s Merritt College, along with Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen and others who became the new black intelligentsia, the direct product of Malcolm, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah and Elijah‖ (p. 93)

That same year, in 1964, Marvin X earned an AA degree in sociology at the Merritt College. Marvin X also enrolled as an undergraduate at San Francisco State. However, in 1966, he left the institution without earning a degree.

Marvin X (2005) has informed us that, ―After dropping out of San Francisco State in 1966, I was drafted. I fled to Canada (p. 17). By that time, Marvin X had worked briefly as a research assistant at the University of California, Berkeley writing life histories of Black people under the supervision of the legendary Chicago sociologist Dean Lohman.

Marvin X had also written and staged his first play, Flowers for the Trashman, produced by the drama department at San Francisco State.

In addition, Marvin X‘s essays and poems had begun to appear in such periodicals as Soulbook, Black Dialogue, and the Journal of Black Poetry. He would later publish in Black Theatre, Muhammad Speaks, Negro Digest (later Black World), and Black Scholar (X, 1998). Some eight years later, Marvin X would also be addressing students at the University of California, Berkeley. Whereas Malcolm X had addressed the students as a circuit lecturer, Marvin X addressed them as a classroom lecturer.

However, at that time, Marvin X only possessed an AA degree in sociology from Merritt College. Marvin X (1998) has recalled, ―In 1972, before I obtained additional degrees, and after being kicked out of Fresno State, I lectured in Black Studies at U C Berkeley‖ (pp. 203-204). Doubtlessly, it was the publication record and playwright experience that landed Marvin X a post as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

However, it can also be surmised that his lack of graduate degree created a problem for him. Please note there were many lecturers who possessed no degrees in the state college system.
Another problem for Marvin X was the political stances he took. Prior to becoming employed as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X had worked as a lecturer at Fresno State. Although he was relatively popular with the students, the political activities of Marvin X alienated him from the Fresno State administrators and their superiors, including Gov. Ronald Reagan who urged the State College Board of Trustees to get him off campus by any means necessary.

With regard to Ronald Reagan, Marvin X (2005) has said: ―Gov. Ronald Reagan banned me from teaching at Fresno State College, 1969, after he learned I had refused to fight in Vietnam‖ (p. 17). Marvin X added: ―Gov. Reagan had told the State College Board of Trustees to get Marvin X off campus by any means necessary‘‖ (p. 19).

Whereas Reagan launched a vigorous move to oust Eldridge Cleaver as a lecturer in 1968 at the University of California, Berkeley and Angela Davis as an acting assistant professor in 1969 at the University of California, Los Angeles, he also launched a similar move against Marvin X in 1969 at Fresno State.

The October 31, 1969 issue of the Fresno Bee quoted Reagan as beginning a meeting of the California State University System Board of Trustees with the following statement about Marvin X: ―If there is any way to get him off campus—that‘s the question I‘m going to ask today. I‘d like to find out (Quoted in ―Reagan, 1969, p. 6-A).

By the time he began to teach at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X had served five months in prison related to military draft resistance and subsequent flights to Canada, Mexico, and Belize (X, 1998, 2005).

Marvin X has explicitly stated that his radical ways caused a problem for him at the University of California, Berkeley and elsewhere. Looking back on his particular experience at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X (2005) has said that his ―lectureship was short-lived because the entire black studies faculty was purged by the administration for being too radical‖ (p. 19).

He further stated: Acceptable negro scholars were hired and UC Berkeley joined the nationwide trend of removing black radicals from black studies programs. Black studies returned to the old mission of a handful of handkerchief head negroes containing the field negroes, making sure they don‘t revolt.

This happened at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, San Jose State University and elsewhere across the country. Yes, I was angry that reactionary negro intellectuals were hired to teach black studies, negroes who cared nothing about black studies or black people—all they wanted was a job for life, tenured negroes we call them. (pp. 19-20)

He has argued that his experiences in academia reflect the plight of many Black people who sought to teach in higher education. Following Cecil Brown (2004), Marvin X has identified foreign-born Black professoriate as those who were selected to replace native-born Black professoriate.

Cecil noted that after that initial radical thrust to establish black studies in the 1960s, they were immediately removed from the student body and the faculty of colleges and universities coast to coast. I taught at UC Berkeley during the first and last radical black studies regime that was soon replaced with ―tenured negroes.‖

The system realized who and what we were and knew we had to go, after all, the system could not contain us. This happened at UCB, San Francisco State University, Fresno State University and elsewhere, coast to coast. We were immediately replaced with acceptable Negroes, the more pliant variety of military types, intelligence agents, and yes, in many cases, immigrant negroes more acceptable to the colonial college administrators.

Thus Africans and Caribbean Negroes were in many cases less radical, even though much of the African American radical tradition comes from immigrants, such as Marcus Garvey, CLR James, Dr. Walter Rodney, George Padmore, Kwame Toure, Malcolm X and Farakhan. (p. 83)

He continued: And we must ask ourselves would we rather have a radical immigrant African in black studies or a reactionary Negro only because he is a Negro. But Cecil‘s point is that the American academic system feels the immigrant Negroes/Africans are easier to control than the violent black American male.

So the truth is immigrants have replaced Negroes coast to coast, but even black American males who remain are of the passive variety, and those with a Pan African ideology or Afrocentric approach to black studies are often at odds with the original mission of black studies to focus on the plight of the so-called negro in the ghettoes of America, how to uplift him out of his morass and degradation.

The focus on Africa and Pan Africanism was secondary to this central focus, but such a focus by definition requires a radical intellectualism that the University industrial complex of necessity must avoid.

By the time he was hired as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X had developed a stance on the direction he believed the Black Studies Movement should take. Reflecting back on the Black Studies Movement, Marvin X has written: The purpose of Black Studies as we envisioned it and went to war for at San Francisco State University and elsewhere was to relate to the community, to establish institutions in the community that would educate the coming generations in community service, including politics, economics, culture and art.

But Black Studies reverted to Eurocentric patterns of ivory tower academic nonsense and pseudo research, with graduates hating the hood and happy they escaped to somewhere in the den of iniquity called Corporate America. (p. 41)

For Marvin X, the mission of the department or program in Black Studies was to serve the Black community with the provision of what Pierre Bourdieu has termed cultural capital.

He has taken the position that the Black Studies Movement has been taken over by faculty with little loyalty to Black people. Instead of community service, Marvin X has charged that many contemporary Black professors ignore their obligations to help the Black community and instead choose to engage in relatively esoteric research which will collect dust on shelves and few people will ever read. Much of their writings is in a language the people cannot understand.

In the view of Marvin X (2005), White people have too much power in Black Studies ―because we know, in truth, black studies is more or less white studies, rather than turning out activist-scholars, it recycles negroes, giving birth to new generations of colonial servants (p. 88).

He has complained: The activist scholars were long ago removed from academia as a threat to Western scholarship and community liberation. Safe, qualified negroes were brought in who would control the natives and have them chasing rocks in Egypt rather than stopping gunshots in the hood by providing alternative consciousness. . . . Rather than searching for bones in Egypt, the community would be better served giving consciousness to dry bones in the hood. (X, 2005, pp. 88-89)

Marvin X (2005) has further exclaimed that, ―The mission of black studies awaits redemption and African Americans must again crash the gates of academia or construct their own radical academic institutions (p. 85). He added: ―Black studies should institute a recruitment drive to get black males and females back on campus but only if the mission is self and community development, not esoteric journeys to the Motherland‖ (p. 85).

Marvin X has argued that if contemporary professors of Black Studies want to be acceptable to the ancestors in Africa it will be important for them to ―make peace with the trees and swamps and bayous of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana (p. 85).

Likewise, Marvin X has argued that contemporary professors of Black Studies need to connect with Black people in the ghetto. In his view, it is necessary for contemporary professors of Black Studies to ―make peace with them and ―teach them to make peace with themselves (p. 85).

During the early 1970s, Marvin X, nevertheless, saw the handwriting on the wall, as the saying goes. He realized that departments and programs in Black Studies were moving towards requiring lecturers to have graduate degrees. Within one year of his departure from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1973, Marvin X returned to San Francisco State. Consequently, he completed a BA degree in English in 1974. The following year, in 1975, Marvin X proceeded to earn a MA in English from San Francisco State.

In 1974, Marvin X began to teach at San Francisco State as a lecturer. His courses included Black literature, journalism, radio and television writing. In 1975 he was a visiting professor at the University of California, San Diego. Eventually, he left San Francisco State to become a lecturer at Mills College. He later worked at University of Nevada, Reno, Laney College, and Kings River Community College before retiring from teaching (X, 1998).7

Implications of the Lecturer Status for Marvin X in the University

Shamos (2002) has examined the use of titles within higher education institutions in the USA, including the University of California, Berkeley. He has made it clear that there are socially defined positions identified as academic rank in higher education institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley.

In terms of the professoriate at research institutions like the University of California, Berkeley, the highest to low positions include professor, associate professor, assistant professor, lecturer, and instructor. On the one hand, the tenured professor is generally the highest academic rank in the university among the professoriate. On the other hand, the instructor is generally the lowest academic rank in the university among the professoriate (Shamos, 2002). Typically, the lecturer position in a university is a non-tenured academic rank. Lecturers are often employed in a university on a year to year or semester to semester basis. In some cases, there is a written or non-written agreement to bring the lecturer back to teach year after year (Shamos, 2002).

In the case of Marvin X, he was hired on a semester to semester basis. Thus, he had to (1) face the significant consequence of not having a tenure-track position; and (2) face the significant consequence of being able to get terminated at the end of a given semester without having a tenure review board as a safety net.

Summary and Conclusion

This paper has presented a case study of Marvin X and his experiences teaching Black studies in 1972 at the University of California, Berkeley. Making use of in-depth interviews and archival research, this paper has focused on the status and role of Marvin X as a member of the faculty in the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. This paper has also detailed some of the successes and problems encountered by Marvin X at the University of California, Berkeley. Additionally, this paper has addressed some implications of Marvin X‘s lecturer status at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 2001, Cornel West, on the lecture circuit, gave a presentation at the University of California, Berkeley. During his talk, West acknowledged his mother, brother, nephew, and cousin. West also acknowledged Marvin X as a friend. As a result of writing, teaching, and political activism, Marvin X has proven to be a well known figure among Black academicians and Black political activists.
Marvin X's daughters Nefertiti and Amira with Dr. Cornel West at the Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness Concert, produced by Marvin X at San Francisco State University, April 1, 2001.
Over the years, the poems, essays, plays, and autobiography of Marvin X have painted pictures of a man committed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In 1967, he was drafted into the military of the USA. Marvin X (2002) has written that he refused induction and fled to Canada ―to preserve my life and liberty, and to pursue happiness‖ (p. 93).8 During the years he taught in higher education, Marvin X inspired his students to commit themselves to the pursuit of life, liberty, and justice. Marvin X is a testament to the teaching and learning that have taken place within the Black Studies Movement at the University of California, Berkeley and elsewhere.

Notes1.

As Wang (1997) pointed out, Afro-American Studies made the transition from program status to department status in 1974.
2. For the interview with Forbes Burnham, see Marvin X (1973). It was conducted in September 1972.
3. Marvin X (1998) has expressed that the White administrators at Fresno State raised the issue of his lack of a graduate degree. According to Marvin X, ―In my case, the college said I had minimal qualifications because I only possessed an A.A. degree at the time, although no degree is necessary to lecture at a California college or university. There were numerous lecturers at Fresno State College and other schools who possessed no degree (p. 203).
4. Ronald Reagan, the governor of California, stated, ―If Eldridge Cleaver is allowed to teach our children, they may come home one night and slit our throats (Quoted in Author, 1998). For information on his experience at Fresno State, see Marvin X (1998, 2005, 2008) and Patterson (1969a, 1969b).
5. For a photo copy of that article, see Marvin X (1998, p. 209).
6. See Bourdieu (2007) for a discussion of cultural capital as a theorem ―to explain the unequal scholastic achievement of children originating from the different social classes and class factions (p. 84).
7. In the spring 1981 semester at Laney College, the present writer was a student of Marvin X. He took a class with Marvin X titled ―Theatre Arts. As partial credit for the class, the present writer wrote a play titled ―A Day in the Life of Hughes, Langston. The play was later staged at the College of Alameda in Alameda, CA and the Egypt Theater in Oakland, CA. The present writer also wrote a review of Marvin X‘s play titled ―In the Name of Love‖ for partial credit for the class. The play featured Zahieb Mwongozi (Craig Erving) in the lead role and was directed by Ayodele Nzinga. The review was published in the Grassroots, a community newspaper based in Berkeley, CA. See Cromartie (1982).

Prior to his teaching stint at the University of California, Berkeley, Marvin X was tried and convicted of draft resistance in 1971. For his summation (Black Scholar magazine) at his trial wherein he made his relatively famous statement concerning life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, see Marvin X (1971).

References

Auther, Jennifer. (1998, May 1). ―He was a symbol: Eldridge Cleaver dies at 62. CNN. Retrieved March 16, 2009, from http://www.cnn.com/us/9805/01/cleaver.late.obit/ Bourdieu, Pierre. (2007).
The Forms of Capital. In Alan R. Sadovnik (Ed.), Sociology of Education: A Critical Reader (pp. 83-95). New York: Routledge.
Cromartie, J. Vern Cromartie. (1982, January 27-February 9). New Play by Marvin X. Grassroots: Berkeley’s Community Newspaper, 10, 10. Cromartie, J. Vern. (nee Jimmie Levern Cromartie). (1993).
Attitudes of University of California and California State University tenured Sociologists towards an Ethnic Studies General Education Requirement. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI. Patterson, William K. (1969a, October 29).
Ness: ―I Told Keyes Marvin X Not Hired.‖ Fresno Bee, 1-D, 9-D. Patterson, William K. (1969b, October 30).
Judge Ponders Marvin X Ruling. Fresno Bee, 1-A, 6-A.
Reagan Has His Say On Concern Over Marvin X. (1969, October 30). Fresno Bee, 6-A.
Shamos, Michael I. (2002). Handbook of Academic Titles. Retrieved March 14, 2009, from http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/titles/titlebook.htm University of California, Berkeley. (1971). Supplementary Announcements to the Schedule and Directory and the General Catalogue Fall Quarter, 1971. Berkeley: Author. University of California, Berkeley. (1972a).
Schedule and Directory Winter Quarter, 1972. Berkeley: Author. University of California, Berkeley. (1972b).
Schedule and Directory Spring Quarter, 1972. Berkeley: Author.
Wang, Ling-chi. (1997, Spring). Chronology of Ethnic Studies at U. C. Berkeley.
Rap Sheet: A Newsletter of the Department of Ethnic Studies at U. C. Berkeley, 2, 1, 12-16. X, Marvin. (1971, April-May).
Black Justice Must Be Done. Black Scholar, 2, 8-11. X, Marvin. (1972).
Woman—Man’s Best Friend. San Francisco: Black Bird Press. X, Marvin. (1973, February).
A Conversation with Forbes Burnham: Interview by Marvin X. Black Scholar, 4, 24-31. X, Marvin. (1998).
Somethin’ Proper. Castro Valley, CA: Black Bird Press. X, Marvin. (2002).
In the Crazy House Called America. Castro Valley, CA: Black Bird Press. X, Marvin. (2005). Wish I Could Tell You the Truth. Cherokee, CA: Black Bird Press

Marvin X and Muslim American Literature

Teaching Diaspora Literature: Muslim American Literature as an Emerging Field
by Dr. Mohja Kahf

Is there such a thing as Muslim American literature (MAL)? I argue that there is: It begins with the Muslims of the Black Arts Movement (1965-75). The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of its iconic texts; it includes American Sufi writing, secular ethnic novels, writing by immigrant and second-generation Muslims, and religious American Muslim literature. Many of the works I would put into this category can and do also get read in other categories, such as African
American, Arab American, and South Asian literature, "Third World" women's writing, diasporic Muslim literature in English, and so forth. While the place of these works in other categories cannot be denied, something is gained in reading them together as part of an American Muslim cultural landscape. Like Jewish American literature by the 1930s, Muslim American literature is in a formative stage. It will be interesting to see how it develops (and who will be its Philip Roth!)

I suggest the following typology of MAL only as a foothold, a means of bringing a tentative order to the many texts, one that should be challenged, and maybe ultimately dropped altogether. My first grouping, the "Prophets of Dissent," suggests that Muslim works in the Black Arts Movement (BAM) are the first set of writings in American literature to voice a cultural position identifiable as Muslim. Contemporary Muslim writing that takes the achievements of the BAM as an important literary influence also belongs here, and is characterized similarly by its "outsider" status, moral critique of mainstream American values, and often prophetic, visionary tone. In contrast, the writers of what I call "the Multi-Ethnic Multitudes" tend to enjoy "insider" status in American letters, often entering through MFA programs and the literary establishment, getting
published through trade and university book industries, garnering reviews in the mainstream press. They do not share an overall aesthetic but are individual writers of various ethnicities and a wide range of secularisms and spiritualities, and indeed I question my placing them all in one group, and do so temporarily only for the sake of convenience.

On the other hand, my third group, the "New American Transcendentalists," appears to cohere, in aesthetic terms, as writers who share a broad Sufi cultural foundation undergirding their literary work. Their writings often show familiarity with the Sufi poets of several classical Muslim literatures (e.g., in Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu), as well as with American Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century, and that which tends toward the spiritual and the ecstatic in modern
American poetry. Finally, the "New Pilgrims" is my term for a loose grouping of writers for whom Islam is not merely a mode of dissent, cultural background, or spiritual foundation for their writing, but its aim and explicit topic. Of the four groups, the New Pilgrims are the ones who write in an overtly religious mode and motivation, like Ann Bradstreet, Cotton Mather, and the Puritans of early American history. This does not prevent them from being capable of producing
great literature, any more than it prevented the great Puritan writers. Here is an example of just a few writers in each category, by no means a comprehensive list:
Prophets of Dissent
From the Black Arts Movement:
• Marvin X, whose Fly to Allah (1969) is possibly the first book of poems published in English by a Muslim American author.
• Sonia Sanchez, whose A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1974) is the work of her Muslim period.
• Amiri Baraka, whose A Black Mass (2002) renders the Nation of Islam's Yacoub genesis theology into drama. As with Sanchez, the author was Muslim only briefly but the influence of the Islamic period stretches over a significant part of his overall production.
Later Prophets of Dissent include:
• Calligraphy of Thought, the Bay area poetry venue for young "Generation M" Muslim American spoken word artists who today continue in the visionary and dissenting mode of the BAM.
• Suheir Hammad, Palestinian New Yorker, diva of Def Poetry Jam (on Broadway and HBO), whose tribute to June Jordan in her first book of poetry, Born Palestinian, Born Black (1996), establishes her line of descent from the BAM, at least as one (major) influence on her work.
• El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) is an iconic figure for this mode of Muslim American writing and, indeed, for many writers in all four categories.

Multi-Ethnic Multitudes
• Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali, an influential figure in the mainstream American poetry scene, with a literary prize named after him at the University of Utah, brought the ghazal into fashion in English so that it is now taught among other forms in MFA programs.
• Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian American, likewise a "crossover" poet whose work enjoys
prominence in American letters, takes on Muslim content in a significant amount of her
work.
• Sam Hamod, an Arab midwesterner who was publishing poetry in journals at the same time as Marvin X.
• Nahid Rachlin's fiction has been published since well before the recent wave of literature by
others who, like her, are Iranian immigrants.
• Mustafa Mutabaruka, an African American Muslim, debut novel Seed (2002).
• Samina Ali, midwesterner of Indian parentage, debut novel Madras on Rainy Days (2004),
was featured on the June 2004 cover of Poets & Writers.
• Khaled Hosseini, debut novel The Kite Runner (2003).
• Michael Muhammad Knight, a Muslim of New York Irish Catholic background, whose punk rock novel The Taqwacores (2004) delves deeply into Muslim identity issues.
• There are a number of journals where Muslim American literature of various ethnicities can
be found today, among them Chowrangi, a Pakistani American magazine out of New
Jersey, and Mizna, an Arab American poetry magazine out of Minneapolis.

New American Transcendentalists

• Daniel (Abd al-Hayy) Moore is an excellent example of this mode of Muslim American writing. California-born, he published as a Beat poet in the early sixties, became a Sufi Muslim, renounced poetry for a decade, then renounced his renouncement and began publishing again, prolifically and with a rare talent. His Ramadan Sonnets (City Lights, 1986) is a marriage of content and form that exemplifies the "Muslim/American" simultaneity of Muslim American art.
• The Rumi phenomenon: apparently the most read poet in America is a Muslim. He merits mention for that, although technically I am not including literature in translation. Then again, why not? As with so many other of my limits, this is arbitrary and only awaits someone to make a case against it.
• Journals publishing poetry in this mode include The American Muslim, Sufi, Qalbi, and others.

New American Pilgrims

• Pamela Taylor writes Muslim American science fiction. Iman Yusuf writes "Islamic
romance." This group of writers is not limited to genre writers, however.
Dasham Brookins writes and performs poetry and maintains a website, MuslimPoet.com, where poets such as Samantha Sanchez post. Umm Zakiyya (pseud.) has written a novel, If I Should Speak (2001), about a young Muslim American and her roommates in college. Writers in this group also come from many ethnicities but, unlike those in my second category, come together around a more or less coherent, more or less conservative Muslim identity.

Websites tend to ban erotica and blasphemy, for example. The Islamic Writers Alliance, a group formed by Muslim American women, has just put out its first anthology. Major published authors have yet to emerge in this grouping, but there is no reason to think they will not eventually do so. My criteria for Muslim American literature are a flexible combination of three factors: Muslim authorship. Including this factor, however vague or tenuous, prevents widening the scope to the point of meaninglessness, rather than simply including any work about Muslims by an author with no biographical connection to the slightest sliver of Muslim identity (such as Robert Ferrigno with his recent dystopian novel about a fanatical Muslim takeover of America). It is a cultural, not religious, notion of Muslim that is relevant. A "lapsed Muslim" author, as one poet on my roster called himself, is still a Muslim author for my purposes. I am not interested in levels of commitment or practice, but in literary Muslimness.

Language and aesthetic of the writing.

In a few cases, there is a deliberate espousal of an aesthetic that has Islamic roots, such as the Afrocentric Islamic aesthetic of the Muslim authors
in the Black Arts Movement.

Relevance of themes or content.

If the Muslim identity of the author is vague or not explicitly professed, which is often the case with authors in the "Multi-Ethnic Multitudes," but the content itself is relevant to Muslim American experience, I take that as a signal that the text is choosing to enter the conversation of Muslim American literature and ought to be included.In defining boundaries for research that could become impossibly diffuse, I choose to look mainly at fiction and poetry, with autobiography and memoir writings selectively included. I have not included writings in languages other than English, although there are Muslims in America who write in Arabic, Urdu, and other languages. I have looked at the twentieth century onward,
and there is archival digging to be done in earlier periods: the Spanish colonial era may yield Muslim writing, and we already know that some enslaved Muslims in the nineteenth century have left narratives. More research is needed. If one expands the field from "literature" to "Muslim American culture," one can also include Motown, rap, and hip-hop lyrics by Muslim artists, screenplays such as the Muslim American classic The Message by the late Syrian American producer Mustapha Aqqad, books written for children, sermons, essays, and other genres.There are pleasures and patterns that emerge from reading this profusion of disparate texts under the rubric of Muslim American cultural narrative. It is time! I hope, as this field emerges, that others will do work in areas I have left aside in this brief initial exploration.


Love And War
poems
by Marvin X
preface byLorenzo Thomas
1995

Review
by Mohja Kahf

Have spent the last few days (when not mourning with friends and family the passing of my family friend and mentor in Muslim feminism and Islamic work, Sharifa AlKhateeb, (may she dwell in Rahma), immersed in the work of Marvin X and amazed at his brilliance.

This poet has been prolific since his first book of poems, Fly to Allah, (1969), right up to his most recent Love and War Poems (1995) and Land of My Daughters, 2005, not to mention his plays, which were produced (without royalties) in Black community theatres from the 1960s to the present, and essay collections such as In the Crazy House Called America, 2002, and Wish I Could Tell You The Truth, 2005.

Marvin X was a prime shaper of the Black Arts Movement (1964-1970s) which is, among other things, the birthplace of modern Muslim American literature, and it begins with him.

Well, Malik Shabazz and him. But while the Autobiography of Malcolm X is a touchstone of Muslim American culture, Marvin X and other Muslims in BAM were the emergence of a cultural expression of Black Power and Muslim thought inspired by Malcolm, who was, of course, ignited by the teachings and writings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

And that, taken all together, is what I see as the starting point of Muslim American literature. Then there are others, immigrant Muslims and white American Muslims and so forth, that follow.There are also antecedents, such as the letters of Africans enslaved in America. Maybe there is writing by Muslims in the Spanish and Portuguese era or earlier, but that requires archival research of a sort I am not going to be able to do.

My interest is contemporary literature, and by literature I am more interested in poetry and fiction than memoir and non-fiction, although that is a flexible thing.I argue that it is time to call Muslim American literature a field, even though many of these writings can be and have been classified in other ways-studied under African American literature or to take the writings of immigrant Muslims, studied under South Asian ethnic literature or Arab American literature.

With respect to Marvin X, I wonder why I am just now hearing about him-I read Malcolm when I was 12, I read Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez and others from the BAM in college and graduate school-why is attention not given to his work in the same places I encountered these other authors?

Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because recontextualizing it will add another layer of attention to his incredibly rich body of work.He deserves to be WAY better known than he is among Muslim Americans and generally, in the world of writing and the world at large.

By we who are younger Muslim American poets, in particular, Marvin should be honored as our elder, one who is still kickin, still true to the word!

Love and War Poems is wrenching and powerful, combining a powerful critique of America ("America downsizes like a cripple whore/won't retire/too greedy to sleep/too fat to rest") but also a critique of deadbeat dads and drug addicts (not sparing himself) and men who hate.

"For the Men" is so Quranic poem it gave me chills with verses such as:
for the men who honor wives
and the men who abuse them
for the men who win
and the men who sin
for the men who love God
and the men who hate
for the men who are brothers
and the men who are beasts
"O Men, listen to the wise," the poet pleads:
there is no escapefor the men of this world
or the men of the next

He is sexist as all get out, in the way that is common for men of his generation and his radicalism, but he is refreshingly aware of that and working on it. It's just that the work isn't done and if that offends you to see a man in process and still using the 'b' word, look out. Speaking of the easily offended, he warns in his introduction that "life is often profane and obscene, such as the present condition of African American people."

If you want pure and holy, he says, read the Quran and the Bible, because Marvin is talking about "the low down dirty truth." For all that, the poetry of Marvin X is like prayer, beauty-full of reverence and honor for Truth. "It is. it is. it is."

A poem to his daughter Muhammida is a sweet mix of parental love and pride and fatherly freak-out at her sexuality and independence, ending humbly with:

peace Mu
it's on you
yo world
sister-girl

Other people don't get off so easy, including a certain "black joint chief of staff ass nigguh (kill 200,000 Muslims in Iraq)" in the sharply aimed poem "Free Me from My Freedom." (Mmm hmm, the 'n' word is all over the place in Marvin too.)

Nature poem, wedding poem, depression poem, wake-up call poems, it's all here. Haiti, Rwanda, the Million Man March, Betsy Ross's maid, OJ, Rabin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and other topics make it into this prophetically voiced collection of dissent poetry, so Islamic and so African American in its language and its themes, a book that will stand in its beauty long after the people mentioned in it pass. READ MARVIN X for RAMADAN!--

Mohja Kahf Associate Professor / Dept. of English, Middle East & Islamic Studies, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Marvin_X_the_Father_of_Muslim_American_Literature#ixzz1Tyw34nV1

Somethin' Proper, the Autobiography of Marvin X, from the introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare

Marvin X
photo Kamau Amen Ra





Somethin' Proper, the Autobiography of Marvin X, Black Bird Press, 1998

from the Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare, the Black Think Tank

In SOMETHIN' PROPER, we quickly see that we are inside the pages not only of Marvin's private political papers, comprising a lyrical diary shaped to be read and enjoyed like a novel by the masterful hands of an internationally noted black poet, but we are being escorted to the cutting edge of a fascinating postmodern black literary genre in the making, the notes of an undying black warrior who refuses to give up, give out or give in!

Although easy to read by almost anybody wishing to do so, SOMETHIN' PROPER (apparently a phrase from the drug subculture, i.e., BREAK ME OFF SOMETHIN' PROPER), presents us at once with an opportunity for a deeper understanding of a panorama of participants in the often poignant but sometimes hilarious inner workings of the black male psyche, from the middle class bourgeois pretenders such as "tenured Negroes" on the academic plantation and their "negrocity," to "coconuts" in the corporations, and across the spectrum to brothers in the hood, particularly the way in which utility and haughty demeanor conceal and mask the panoramic and pervasive depression of the black male.

Before his death at the early age of 36, Frantz Fanon, the black psychiatrist who lived and wrote about the relations between the oppressor and oppressed in the battle of Algiers (Wretched of the Earth; Black Skin, White Masks, and A Dying Colonialism), presented us with clear psychiatric paradigms for the struggles Marvin deftly captures for us.

Marvin is able to give us insights into himself and his affiliates (Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Little Bobby Hutton, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis, et.al., that are original but reminiscent of Fanon, because Marvin is bearing the covers on his life and the life of others.

Of all the many disorders and distortions that plague the black male, each and every day, perhaps the ones that take the heaviest tool on his ravished brain are those that—if not contained by armed resistance—revolve around the painful difficulty of gaining control over his individual and collective destiny, around what is known in mental health circles as "the locus of control," the dilemma of resistance to the enemy from without and the enemy from within (including the self, if we consider that there can be no master without those who, for whatever reason, are willing to be a slave). Might makes right but not for long.

If we honor the likes of Patrick Henry for saying "give me liberty or give me death," it is no matter that when the Negro says give him liberty or death the white man tries to give him death! The so-called Negro is confronted with a choice Patrick Henry had not reckoned with, something Fanon called "reactional disorders" or "psychosomatic pathology" that is the direct product of oppression.

But out of a last ditch desperation in self-medication and the management of his pulverized and thwarted emotions, in a mindless effort to soothe his psychological and social wounds, the black male is introduced unwarily if discreetly to the vicious cycle of self-mutilation and induced addiction, which takes hold and spreads like an epidemic virus as part of the psycho-technology, historically, of the white man's oppression of the North American African and others around the world.

In his powerlessness and victimization, with nothing left to lean on, the black man is likely to mount the seesaw, if not the roller coaster of racial psycho-social dependency and messianic religiosity (becoming the mad-dog religious fanatic, believing in a savior other than himself) on the one hand and the individual chemical dependent on the other, i.e. the dope fiend.

Marvin decontructs both. In the bottomless caverns of addiction in any form, there seems no amount of religiosity, coke, crack, alcohol or sex sufficient to sedate the social angst and shattered cultural strivings.

The more the black man tempts to medicate his anxiety and to mask his depression and self doubts with pretense and hostility, the more he finds himself in trouble with the persons he must love and be loved by than with the alien representatives of the society that would control and castrate his manhood.

Novelist Richard Wright, addressing these paradoxes and dilemmas in his own autobiography BLACK BOY, explained that, "Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning."

The catch is in the way these things turn out after the boy has been taken through the meat grinder of growing up within the machinery of white social control. In response, the strategy or road most taken by both Marvin X and Richard Wright, to put it simply, is FLIGHT (what Wright as a matter of fact names the middle passage of his novel, Native Son, book 2 of 3).

As surely as the individual who accepts oppression is constantly in flight from his racial identity, the black man who rejects it is constantly on the run from the agency of white supremacy that must control him and wishes to annihilate him outright. And here is where Marvin's story is most valuable to us , helping us to grasp the meaning of the tradition of escape within our race, literature and history, stretching back to the slave trade and slave ships of the middle passage, down to the demanding requirements of escape from coercion, incarceration and surveillance in the modern era: he takes us through a childhood of continual efforts to avoid juvenile hall, to the flights of his father (despite punishing ambiguities, Marvin X dedicates his book to both his parents in memorial), calling upon pure personal honesty and the deepest levels of understanding to appreciate the parental struggles of his own and the resulting psycho-sexual and social conflicts.

Without professing to do so, Marvin X speaks here most effectively of all black men, exposing their triumphs and follies, telling all he knows about everybody, including himself, always seeming to exact the hardest toll of all on himself, inviting us openly and unashamedly into the intricacies of his youthful endeavors to love too many women, including more than one try at the practice of polygamy (at one point he had four wives, in the Islamic tradition), until he realizes that if monogamy is the love and marriage of one woman, polygamy is the love or marriage of one woman too many!

I predict that SOMETHIN' PROPER (the life and times of a North American African Poet) will readily emerge as an underground classic as well as a classic of the black consciousness movement and the world of the troubled inner city, a manual of value to any brother who has lost his way and the sister who would help him to understand or know how to find it, to find it within himself, in the intriguing story of Marvin X, who has been there and the women and political fellow-travelers in the black movement who were there with him in his often daring escapades, his secret flights and open confrontations with white supremacy.

In the end, is he bitter? Or is he happy as a negro eating watermelon on massa's plantation? Well, in the beginning white people are devils—but by the end, all people are devils—in Marvin's world. After all, this is his story. Nevertheless, by the end we are convinced Marvin has regained faith in himself, his God and his people.

And it is gratifying in an era of the sellout, the faint hearted and the fallen, to see that Marvin X was one black man who met the white man in the center of the ring and walked with him to the corners of psycho-social inequity, grappling with him through the bowels of the earth, yet remained one black man the white man couldn't get.

I'm glad I stopped that day on Market Street and bought a pair of Marvin's sunglasses, but I wish I knew where to find those sunglasses now, because I could feel so proud to wear them, or, better yet, I could lend them to some other brother who was trying to find his way to SOMETHIN' PROPER while moving in the direction of the sun.
--Dr. Nathan Hare

Millions March in Harlem, Saturday, August 13, 2011

by Amadi Ajamu

The Millions March in Harlem buzz is in the streets around the country. Posters and flyers are everywhere and people are excitedly talking about the need for unified action and change. The Millions March in Harlem will be held on Saturday, August 13, assembling on Malcolm X Blvd at 110th Street at 10 AM. It will focus on the attack on African people on the Continent and in the United States.

The heinous bombing of Libya by the US and NATO, illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe by the West, and the Bloomberg administration’s destruction of housing, jobs, education, health care and police abuse, are all a systematic assault on African communities.

Special guest speakers include: Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam; Father Miguel d'Escoto, former President of the UN General Assembly and former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua; Dr. Molefi Asante of Afrocentricity International; Viola Plummer of the December 12th Movement; NOI Minister Akbar Muhammad, and many others.

In a press conference at the United Nations Plaza Hotel on June 15, Minister Farrakhan stated, “NATO and America are trying to recolonize Africa through AFRICOM (African Command). My question to African leaders is, will you allow it? Out of fear of the so-called power of the West. Will you bow down and act against the interest of African people world wide?” Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been a principal advocate and organizer for a United States of Africa which threatens the international power structure.

The organizers of the Millions March in Harlem held a press conference on June 22nd and Minister Akbar Muhammad reported, “Minister Farrakhan will definitely be speaking at the march on August 13. The Nation of Islam is fully behind this march, it is extremely important, and we will do all that we can to make this happen.”

Viola Plummer of the December 12th Movement International Secretariat stated, “There comes a time when people have no alternative but resistance. This march will revitalize the Pan African movement. It will broaden our peoples' world view and demonstrate the need for Africans to unite in our own political and economic interests internationally. We must expose the United Nations Security Council machinations, western imperialism, the attack on Black people in the US, and all collaborators at every turn.”

The march has garnered international attention with the participation of Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockman, who flew in from Nicaragua and attended the Harlem press conference. Father d'Escoto spoke against the “war of aggression on Libya.” Further stating “There is no people in the whole planet who know less about what the United States does abroad than Americans. They are systematically deceived. This is the very foundation of what they call democracy in this country.” Father d'Escoto went on to outline the need for reform in the United Nations, emphasizing the domination of the voting members of the UN Security Council over all other countries.

On the ground, “Millions March In Harlem” organizing teams, which are saturating the streets with bright green posters, report on the grassroots response. “We never underestimate our people's ability to analyze a situation. The vast majority of folk are clear about the attack on African people and want to do something to fight back. Mainstream media propaganda about strong African leaders like Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and President Robert Mugabe is just like what they say about Black people here who do not bow down to the status quo,” said Gregory Perry of Queens.

Bronx Coordinator Kamau Brown stated, “Colonel Gaddafi and the people of Libya have built their country from the poorest to the richest country in Africa. He is the key person in the organizing effort to build a United States of Africa. President Mugabe has dared to take back the land stolen by European settlers and give it back to the people of Zimbabwe.”

“The attack on us here is insidious. Police brutality and harassment, gentrification of our communities, housing foreclosures, destruction of public education, closing hospitals, the prison industry, the list goes on and on. They all destroy lives. The NATO bombs in Libya and the illegal sanctions in Zimbabwe kill people. Black people understand that it's time for Pan African Unity.” Brown concluded.

For more information on the upcoming Millions March in Harlem call (347) 737-3272 or Email: info@MillionsMarchHarlem.com