Marvin X 2009 Tentative Tour Schedule


March 11 Amiri Baraka interviewed by Marvin X, Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico

March 15, Houston, Texas, Texas Southern University

April 1, Beaufort, South Carolina, University of South Carolina

May 1, Sonia Sanchez Host, Philadelphia

May1-3 Black Studies Conference, Temple University, Philly, Muhammad Ahmed contact

May 19 Malcom X Birthday at the Shomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harlem, New York


May 29 Marvin X 65th Birthday Celebration,
Frank White’s Café and Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
Hue-man Book Store, Harlem
Medger Evers College, Brooklyn



October 7 Amiri Baraka’s 75th Birthday Celebration, Newark, New Jersey

November Hartford, Conn, Perform with novelist Dana Randel

Boston, Reading with playwright Ed Bullins ( Northeastern University) and Askia Toure, (University of Mass.)




Wake Up, America!


We are not the only Americans. There are North Americans in Canada and Mexico. In Canada they call United States of America citizens Southerners. During my exile in Toronto, Canada, 1967, they referred to me as a Southerner. During my seconed exile in Mexico City, 1970, they called me a Gringo, even though I was black, meaning I was supposed to be rich. When I wasn't called Gringo, they called me Pele after the Brazilian soccer champion. They called me Pele because I was black, since the Mexicans are ignorant of the fact they have Mexicans in their country blacker than I. They wanted to rub my hair and the hair of my sons, for we North American Africans were known to have magical powers.

The Mexicans would be dumbfounded to learn they have citizens south of Mexico City darker than Pele, the Brazilian. And if they ever wandered down to Rio for a weekend, they would discover themesevles in a country of at least one hundred million Peles, the largest concentration of Africans outside of Nigeria, yes, these Portuguese speaking Africans are Americans as well. The most painful experience of my life was meeting our American brothers in Mexico City but unable to communicate with them, especially my brother, Jorge, from Choco, Columbia, blacker than night. I felt the same when I met Enrique La Fontaine from Venezuela, a mulato. While I was in exile in Mexico City, we became Black Arts Mexico City (see the Journal of Black Poetry on Black Arts in Mexico, JBP, circa 1970).

We must respect Mexico for giving refuse to revolutionaries from throughout the Americans, from Fidel to Marvin X. During my exile there, I had the pleasure to meet young brothers from throughout the Americas, Columbia, Venezuela, Cuba, Dominican Republic, USA (Elijah and Sultan Muhammad, grandsons of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad).

In Mexico City I met the USA ex-patriot community, North American Africans whose consensus was they would never return to the USA, and any African who wanted to endure the racism of America deserved it.

I befriended African and African Caribbean diplomats who were banned from taking black power literature home, even under diplomatic protection.

But let us come to the North American African, now President of the United States of America, a journey of four hundred years. Yet let us recognize our brother Morales in Bolivia—it took five hundred years for him to rise from the indigenous people to become president.

In short, throughout the Americas, the Caribbean, revolution is in the spirit of the people.
Let North American Africans join in the celebration of radical democracy, for the masses, the ignorant, the poor and diseased. Let us declare ourselves one with the oppressed throughout the Americas.

--El Muhajir (Marvin X)