Black Panthers Celebrate in Santa Rosa

Black Panthers celebrate history, legacy

Friday, October 11th, 2013 | Posted by jessica | one response

By JESSICA ZIMMER /Santa Rosa Correspondent

Opening day of the Huey Newton trial in Oakland, 1969. (Rox Paynes Archives, courtesy itsabouttimebpp.com)

As with any reunion, when Elbert “Big Man” Howard and his friends come together in Santa Rosa this week, they plan to reminisce about old times.

But as they grow older, they also have a more pressing goal. They want to pass the torch to a new generation, sharing the lessons learned during a period of militant social activism.

Howard, 75, has organized the Black Panther Party’s 47th anniversary celebration in his own backyard, choosing “Myths and Realities” as the theme for the symposium that runs Thursday through Sunday, Oct. 17-19, at the Arlene Francis Center.

He hopes it will allow former members of the activist organization to pass along their legacy to a generation of younger activists.

“When you say ‘power to the people,’ that’s what we’re going to talk about,” said Howard, 75. “It’s not a frivolous slogan. If people don’t govern the institutions that control their lives, they can’t look to have anything fruitful come of it.”

Elbert “Big Man” Howard is the event’s primary organizer. (Photo by Billy “X” Jennings)

Howard was one of six men who founded the Panthers in Oakland in 1966. He served alongside Huey Newton and Bobby Seale for nearly eight years before returning to a life in Tennessee that was relatively mainstream. In 2000 he wrote “Panther on the Prowl,” a memoir about his early activism, and later that decade moved to Sonoma County. He now lives in Santa Rosa.

In the past decade, Howard has become an elder statesman, lecturing about social activism and lobbying for the rights of the poor and the incarcerated. In 2003 he became the coordinator of an ex-offender re-entry program and in Forestville founded the Police Accountability Clinic and Helpline.

“We have many political prisoners who were involved in the movement who are still locked up and will not be let out due to their beliefs,” Howard said. “We have to do something to garner some support for them.”

In addition to highlighting needs that still exist, Howard hopes the event will explain the political environment of the times and showcase the group’s successes during the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“We developed programs such as the free breakfast program, free medical clinics and housing and education assistance. We wanted to solve problems in (our) communities,” he said.

Panther historian Billy “X” Jennings describes the party as the starting point for all social movements that followed, including the White Panthers and the Grey Panthers.

“The most prominent issue it faced was rampant police brutality,” said Rickey Vincent, a musicologist who will speak at the celebration. “People read books, educated themselves and recognized they had the legal right to police the police.”

Vincent will talk about his book, “Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers’ Band and How Black Power Revolutionized Soul Music,” and also sign it.

“In 1970, the central offices of the Black Panther Party had four members who, when they did their work, were known to sing a lot,” he said. “Emory (Douglas) and (David) Hilliard said, ‘You guys need to make a band so we can recruit more people.’

“That’s what happened. Those four members (started to) play R&B music with the Black Panther Party line (in the lyrics). What they did was so well-done, they made a name for themselves.”

The band was called “The Lumpen,” after Karl Marx’s lumpen proletariat, the lowest level of the working class, composed of the individuals least likely to achieve class consciousness.

“They  took the refrains from the Panther chants: ‘We want freedom to determine the destiny of our community!’ and put them right into the verses of R&B songs (by) James Brown, The Temptations and Curtis Mayfield,” said Vincent. It helped potential recruits see that the Panthers spoke in a tone, a style, a swagger they understood.

Black Panthers in Formation During Drill (far right) Elbert ‘Big Man’ Howard, De Fremery Park Oakland. (Pirkle Jones)

Panthers also organized their communities to help themselves, at one time supporting 13 free medical clinics between New York and California. Two still exist, in Seattle and Portland.

Dr. R. Tolbert Small, also a speaker at the event, was part of that effort. He coordinated the free health clinics and was part of the Panthers’ efforts to prevent sickle cell anemia, a blood disorder that disproportionately affects African Americans.

“We set up a foundation and dramatized the treatment of sickle cell anemia,” Small said. “(The U.S. government) wasn’t going to get any money into sickle cell anemia until the Panthers lit a fire under it.”

Jennings, who joined the Panthers when he was 17, said speakers at the reunion will try to educate people about the group’s legacy.

“What’s important is for young people to learn what came before them,” he said. “There are many things you can do in your own neighborhood. Start taking baby steps where you work at or where you help at.”

Jennings will also encourage activists to work together. “It’s important to let young people know you can’t do this by yourself,” he said. “You have to join with others.

“We joined with other groups, such as the Young Lords (a Puerto Rican social organization that began as a gang), Students for a Democratic Society and the Rainbow Coalition. We were all working together as a community.”

Black Panther Party reunions have been held in the East Bay and throughout the country, but this will be Sonoma County’s first. Howard describes it as a regional meeting targeted to residents of northern California.

“There are people all over the world emulating what the Black Panther Party does, so why not Sonoma County,” said Howard.

“The Black Panther Party challenged the most powerful government in the world,” he said. “It offers a whole history and legacy to be proud of.”

The Black Panther Party’s 47th anniversary celebration runs 1 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17, to 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, at the Arlene Francis Center, 99 Sixth St. The program includes speakers and films about political prisoners and fallen comrades.

Tickets are $12 per day, $30-$35 for all three. Info: 528-3009, bigman0138@aol.com,brownpapertickets.com. For a full schedule of events, visit bigmanbpp.com.

Elbert Big Man Howard will be a guest on Pat Thurston’s KGO radio show at 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 13. Listen to it at 810 AM.

Hapi B Day Askia Toure, Godfather of BAM

Professor and poet Askia M. Touré was born on October 13, 1938, in Raleigh, North Carolina, to Clifford Roland Snellings, Jr. and Nannie Lynette Bullock. Growing up, Touré attended Willard and Wogaman elementary schools. In 1952, Touré won a Motion Poetry Association Award while attending Roosevelt High School. Two years later, he participated in a successful sit-in at Roosevelt. Touré graduated from high school in 1956, and joined the United States Air Force. While serving alongside Robert Green of the Flamingos and Little Willie John, Touré wrote a letter to Congressman Adam Clayton Powell that resulted in a government investigation of racism at Wordsmith Air Force Base in Michigan.

After being discharged in 1959, Touré took art classes at the Dayton Art Institute. He then moved to New York City and joined the Art Student League and the Umbra Poets. He and his associates Tom Feelings, Tom Dent, David Henderson, and Calvin Herndon were mentored by Langston Hughes. Touré participated in the Fulton (Street) Art Fair in Brooklyn in 1961 and 1962, and the Black Arts Academy. Influenced by artists and writers such as Ernest Crichlow, Jacob Lawrence, Leo Carty, Elombe Brathe, Ronnie Braithwaite, Bob and Jean Gumbs, and Rose Nelmes of the Grandessa Models, Touré became a poet who championed a black aesthetic.

In 1961, Touré joined Max Roach, Abby Lincoln, Alex Prempe, May Mallory, and Maya Angelou at the United Nations to protest the assassination of Congo’s Patrice Lumumba in 1961. In 1962, Touré became an illustrator for Umbra magazine, a staff member with The Liberator magazine, and a contributor to Freedomways. Touré was a part of the Atlanta staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and joined the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) in Mississippi in the Spring of 1964. In 1965, Touré founded Afro World and organized the Harlem Uptown Youth Conference. Touré also participated in the rise of the Black Panther Party and co-wrote SNCC’s 1966 “Black Power Position Paper.”

In 1967, Touré joined the staff of Nathan Hare at San Francisco State University and taught African history in the first Africana Studies Program. Touré organized the 1984 Nile Valley Conference in Atlanta and co-founded the Atlanta chapter of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC) in 1986. Touré authored multiple books and received the 1989 American Book Award for Literature (From the Pyramids to the Projects) and the 2000 Stephen E. Henderson Poetry Award (Dawnsong); other works include films and plays. In 1996, Touré was honored with the Gwendolyn Brooks Lifetime Achievement Award from the Gwendolyn Brooks Institute in Chicago, Illinois.

Baba Toure will participate in the UC Merced Black Arts Movement conference, March 1-2, 2014.

Marvin X Now available for speaking and reading nationwide

 Marvin X was a founding member of the Black Student Union at San Francisco State University, 1964. He fought to teach Black Studies at Fresno State University until removed on orders from Gov. Ronald Reagan, 1969, the same year Reagan removed Angela Davis from UCLA. Gov. Reagan hated Marvin X because he was a Black Muslim who refused to fight in Vietnam. He attempted to ban Angela Davis because she was a Black Communist.

Marvin X, Black Studies poet/lecturer at Fresno State College/now University, 1969. He was twenty-five years old when he was hired to teach three courses, Journalism, Drama and African American literature. Gov. Reagan had him removed by court order!

Ironically, in 1972, he was hired to teach similar courses at the University of California, Berkeley. He later taught at San Francisco State University, University of California, San Diego, Mills College, University of Nevada, Reno, Laney and Merritt Colleges, Kings River College. After Kings River College,, 1982,  Marvin X retired from teaching with a 97% student retention evaluation.

Today, he lectures and reads coast to coast at colleges and universities such as Univ. of Penn, Univ. of Virginia, University of Arkansas, University of Houston, Texas Southern University, Moorehouse, Spelman, Howard University, San Francisco State, Fresno City College, and elsewhere.

But Academy of da Corner is his home base, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, which he calls the most dangerous classroom in the world. The Oscar Grant and Occupy Oakland protests were literally in his classroom, along with several homicides on the nearby streets. Writer Ishmael Reeds 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, downtown Oakland, and watch Marvin X at work. He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland."

On October 3, 1969, The Fresno Bee reported in an article titled "Reagan has his say on concern over Marvin X": Governor Ronald Reagan's concern about Marvin X teaching courses at Fresno State College was apparently satisfied at yesterday's State College Board of Trustees meeting in Los Angeles. On his arrival at the meeting, Reagan said he intended to ask trustees what could be done about the controversial lecturer in Black Studies Program. "If there is any way to get him off campus--that is the question I'm going to ask today" Reagan said at the start of the meeting.... "I'd like to find out."....

 Marvin X speaking at the University of Houston, Texas, Africana Studies Department.

 The poet performs with his favorite musician, violinist Tarika Lewis, first female member of the Black Panther Party.

A rare photo of Eldridge Cleaver and Marvin X. Marvin introduced Eldridge to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Eldridge immediately joined the Black Panther Party. See Marvin's memoir: Eldridge Cleaver, my friend the devil, Black Bird Press, 2009, introduction by Amiri Baraka.

photo Kareem Muhammad

 Fly to Allah, 1968, is the seminal work in Muslim American literature, according to Dr. Mohja Kahf, professor of English and Islamic literature at the University of Arkansas.
photo Doug Harris

Dr. Mohja Kahf and Marvin X

Marvin and his mentor and comrade in the Black Arts Movement, Master Teacher Sun Ra. Sun Ra arranged the musical version of Flowers for the Trashman, entitled Take Care of Business, 1972.

Marvin performed on the east coast with Sun during 1968-69, while the poet worked underground in Harlem at the New Lafayette Theatre, serving as associate editor of Black Theatre Magazine. 

 Marvin X praises both Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X as vital to his manhood training.

 Ancestor Dr. Khalid Muhammad studied the writings of Marvin X in college. He told Marvin X often how much he loved the poet's writings, especially from his Nation of Islam period.

Marvin X is one of the outstanding African writers and teachers in America. He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the innovators and founders of the new revolutionary school of African writing.--Amiri Baraka

 Playwright Ed Bullins co-founded Black Arts West Theatre with Marvin X, 1966. Marvin X joined Ed at the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, serving as associate editor of Black Theatre magazine, 1968.

 The poet has written 30 books. He's one of the most prolific writers in America if not the world. The Last Poets say he writes a book per month. He penned his memoir of Eldridge Cleaver in three weeks, posting chapters daily on the internet.

 The poet and San Francisco's controversial Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, holding Marvin's even more controversial pamphlet The Mythology of Pussy and Dick. "Every 15 year old boy must be required to read this, "says Rashid Easley. A 16 year old female said, "I wished I'd read it when I was eight!"

 Art by ancestor Elizabeth Catlett Mora, who gave the poet refuge during his exile in Mexico City, 1970.



Marvin X, one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement, is now available for speaking and reading engagements coast to coast. Marvin X began his career in Black or African consciousness almost from birth as a result of having social activist parents. His father and mother published a Black newspaper in the central valley of California, the Fresno Voice. His parents were called a Race Man and Race woman, meaning they were dedicated to the advancement of Black people first and foremost, i.e. Black nationalism.

When Marvin attended Oakland's Merritt College, 1962-64, his Black consciousness was expanded after peer group study with fellow students Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, Ken and Carol Freeman, Richard Thorne, Maurice Dawson, Isaac Moore and Ann Williams.

In 1964 he transferred to San Francisco State College/now University and became a member of the Negro Students Association. The name was soon changed to the Black Student Union. While an undergraduate in the English department, his first play, Flowers for the Trashman, was produced by the Drama department.  Marvin X dropped out to establish the Black Arts West Theatre on Fillmore Street in San Francisco, along with playwright Ed Bullins, Duncan Barber, Ethna Wyatt, Hillary Broadous and Carl Bossiere. Danny Glover was a frequent actor at BAW.

Upon his release from prison, Soul on Ice essayist Eldridge Cleaver and Marvin hooked up to establish the Black House, a political/cultural center on Broderick Street. Marvin soon introduced Eldridge to his friends, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, who were establishing the Black Panther Party in Oakland. Eldridge joined and became Minister of Information. For more on Marvin X, see his autobiography Somethin' Proper, Black Bird Press, 1998, introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare.

For Booking, call 510-200-4164 or send a letter of invitation to jmarvinx@yahoo.com.

Marvin X and his comrades from the Black Arts/Black Liberation Movement will gather at the University of California, Merced, March 1-2, 2014. Be There!

From the archives: Black History--Oakland's Shame!

BLACK HISTORY-- OAKLAND’S SHAME

Part One

The purpose of history is to give people a memory of their past in order that they may endure the present and propel themselves into the future. When they are disconnected from their myths and history, the present can be chaotic and the future problematic. Such is the present condition Oakland’s citizens: they have allowed their grass roots heroes and sheroes to languish in obscurity and infamy. Oakland heroes from the 1960s, namely radicals such as the Black Panthers have no streets named after them for their valiant struggle against oppression. There are no statues or other monuments to the Black Panther leadership or the thousands of rank and file grass roots people who sacrificed their sweat and blood to make Oakland and America a better place. There’s a Federal building named after Ron Dellums, a state building named after Elihu Harris, a psychiatric hospital named after John George, but nothing to honor the common people who fought in the streets of Oakland and across America to make this nation live up to constitution, by creating a society of , for and by the people.

There are no statues of Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Hutton, Panther leaders who have joined the ancestors. What is the excuse for not officially naming Defermery Park after Little Bobby Hutton, the 16 year old youth murdered by the Oakland Police in a shootout after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Little Bobby was the third member of the BPP and its secretary. Today he should be an example much needed by youth to show them the path to freedom rather than the rode to self destruction they are presently following. After three black mayors, there is yet no official name change of the West Oakland park where so many Panthers and other radicals grew up on the basketball courts and picnic grounds.

As one who grew up in West Oakland and familiar with Oakland’s radical tradition, I am embarrassed when people ask me where are the monuments to the great radicals Oakland produced, especially during the 60s. People from out of town who visit Oakland are dumbfounded that they cannot visit any sites where Black Panthers and other radicals are honored.

Oakland’s old Merritt College on Grove or MLK street, was the hotbed of radical Oakland during the early 60s. It is where I attended college and obtained my radical education, not in the classroom, but on the steps at the main entrance, listening to young radicals such as Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Richard Thorne, Ernie Allen, Isaac Moore, Ann Williams, Ken and Carol Freedom, Donald Warden, Maurice Dawson. With all due respect to Martin Luther King, the site should not have been named in honor of MLK but to those Oakland radicals who helped change America and the world from the hallowed steps at the front of the college. The world should know that Oakland’s 60s revolution was spearheaded by students who would extend their struggle for freedom to UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University, which had the longest and most violent student strike in American history. And many of the students at SFSU had transferred from Merritt College, taking their desire for equal education, including black studies, across the bay and eventually across America when the call for black studies became a priority of the freedom struggle. Well, Merritt College, now located up in the Oakland hills, far from the flatlands and the population who made the college historic, has belatedly named a room after its most controversial student, Dr. Huey P. Newton.

But the real significance of the BPP is that they gave a voice to the voiceless masses of youth and adults suffering oppression in Oakland, the US and the world. And these brothers and sisters must be honored for their sweat, blood and tears on the streets of this city. The tragic shame is that today’s youth have little or no knowledge of what happened in Oakland, for there are no monuments at 14th and  Broadway or anywhere to remind them of their roots, of the struggle and sacrifice  of their parents and grandparents.
Part Two

We call upon Mayor Ron Dellums, himself a part of Oakland’s radical history, to make it a priority of his tenure to establish monuments to Oakland’s Black Radical Past. If streets can be named after African and European radicals, how long will local heroes be neglected, especially when youth need knowledge and symbols of progressive social activists so they can see there are alternative lifestyles other than the self destructive American gansta genre of psycho-socialpaths.

And more important than symbolic gestures, we call upon the mayor and city  council, in coordination with other Bay Area governments, to establish a special fund to award and reward the still surviving freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives, educations, jobs, and families to make a better world for Bay Area citizens in particular and Americans in general. After all, these liberation fighters in the Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, Black Student Unions and other social activist organizations, suffered the blows of fascist America. These valiant men and women endured police surveillance, family intimidation, jail, prison, torture, murder, exile, black listing and other forms of obstruction in the battles they waged to make things better for all Americans. They are thus entitled to just compensation as are veterans from any war,  for their battle was in fact the Second Civil War, far more important than the racist war in Vietnam and the present unprovoked war in Iraq.

One result of the Black Panther Party was the US government’s adoption of their free breakfast program for all children. Black Student Union members fought for diversity in education, and with the establishment of Black Studies, it was soon followed by Asian Studies, Native American Studies, Chicano Studies, Gender Studies, and American academia was forever changed for the better, for the racist Eurocentric education suffered a death blow.
Let us not fail to acknowledge and reward the cultural workers who established the West coast arm of the Black Arts Movement or BAM, which revolutionized the esthetics of the arts, replacing the art for art sake of the European paradigm with a functional approach that stated art is indeed didactic, i.e., for education and elevation of consciousness, not merely for entertainment. Cultural workers such as Ed Bullins, Marvin X, Danny Glover, Jimmy Garrett, Vonetta McGee, Sarah Webster Fabio, Adam David Miller, Ntozake Shange, Reginald Lockett, Avotjca, and others, raised the standard of the black arts that had been initiated by the Harlem Renaissance, but BAM was more political and directed to the masses rather than to the whites seeking exotica and erotica. It was a revolutionary artistic movement, working in tandem with the political liberation movement. Not only was BAM the sister of the Black Power movement, but in a very real since, it was the mother since many of the politicos were nurtured in the womb of BAM, then advanced to the political revolution. We think of Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Benny Stewart, George Murray, Emory Douglass, Samuel Napier and others who came through BAM.

And finally, BAM, by the very nature of the literature, forced inclusion of its material in academia, thus upsetting the status quo, altering  it forever when ethnic literature was forced into the Eurocentric curriculum. Other ethnic groups followed suit with demands their literature become apart of the general curriculum. The Asian poet Janice Mirikini (wife of Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Church) will tell people, “It was the poetry of Marvin X that awakened me to my ethnicity.” So yes, BAM awakened other ethnicities to the power of their indigenous literature and artistic expression, freeing them of Eurocentric domination or white supremacy/lunacy.

Unfortunately, opportunists took advantage of the situation created by the liberation fighters to simply obtain tenure, thus the original mission was aborted with the resultant disintegration of community. If black consciousness had been properly spread to the community, there would be children today carrying on the tradition rather than engaged in self destructive behavior. The present situation is indeed a shame, but perhaps if the veteran liberation fighters are honored, it will inspire the children of today to engage in the protracted struggle to liberate themselves from the last vestiges of white supremacy/lunacy.

--Dr. M
1/30/08

Marvin X. Jackmon (Dr. M) grew up in West Oakland on Seventh and Campbell, the son of a florist who had published the first black newspaper in the central valley, The Fresno Voice. Dr. M’s first writings were published in the children’s section of the Oakland Tribune. 

 Invite Dr. M to speak at your church, mosque, college, organization. For booking information or information on the next meeting of his Pan African Mental Health Peer Group to recover from the addiction to white supremacy/lunacy, please call 510-200-4164, email: jmarvinx@yahoo.com