Dr. William Leo Hansberry
Great North American African Historian
24 February 2009
Greetings Family,
How are you? February 25 is the birthday of William Leo Hansberry. He was one of our greatest scholars. He was uncle to Lorraine Hansberry--the great African-American writer. Professor Hansberry taught at Howard University, a historically Black university, for a long time and and was a constant victim of abuse and neglect there. History has shown us that sometimes our own people can be as cruel as white folks. But Hansberry persevered and managed to shine in spite of everything. Indeed, I have heard stories of how the great Marcus Garvey himself would sometimes take the train from New York to Washington, DC and spend the day in Hansberry's office at Howard U. talking about ancient Egypt! How I would have liked to have been in on those conversations!
Anyway, here is a brief birthday tribute to the great William Leo Hansberry. The first section is written by brother Runoko. The second section is from the great Chancellor James Williams.
In love of Africa,
Runoko Rashidi
THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY
H I S T O R Y N O T E S
WILLIAM LEO HANSBERRY:
PIONEER AFRICANIST SCHOLAR (1894-1965)
By RUNOKO RASHIDI
Professor William Leo Hansberry-- one of the most distinguished and determined Africanist scholars of the twentieth century, was born in Gloster, Mississippi on 25 February 1894. He attended Atlanta University in 1916 where he came under the Influence of Dr. William Edward Burghardt DuBois (1868-1963). In 1917, Hansberry transferred to Harvard University, where he received his BA degree in 1921 and MA degree in 1932. Hansberry conducted research at the University of Chicago in 1936, Oxford University In 1937 and 1938 and the University of Cairo in 1953 and 1954.
After teaching for a year at Straight College in New Orleans, in September 1922, Hansberry joined the faculty of Howard University where he taught courses on African civilizations and cultures until his retirement in June 1959. In 1922, Professor Hansberry Initiated the African Civilization Section of the Howard University History Department. In June 1925, he organized and coordinated a major symposium and exhibition held at Howard, where twenty-eight scholarly papers were presented by his students--sixteen of which were women.
In August 1927, Hansberry spoke at the Fourth Pan-African Conference in New York on the topic of archaeological research in Africa and its significance for African people. In 1934, he helped organize the Ethiopian Research Council. The aims of this council were to "Stimulate interest in Ethiopia's efforts to resist the Italian invasion, and to disseminate information on Ethiopian history, ancient and modern. Correspondents were located in London, Paris, Rome and Addis Ababa; affiliates were listed in Ethiopia, France, and Panama, in addition to Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia."
During the mid-1950's, Hansberry engaged in field research in Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zaire, Ghana, and Nigeria. He also visited Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and Liberia. In 1955, for the Journal of Negro Education, he reviewed George G.M. James' classic--Stolen Legacy. In 1955 and 1956, for the Washington Post and Africa Today, he reviewed Ghanaian scholar J.C. deGraft-Johnson's African Glory: The Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations. Although, Hansberry produced a number of Impressive written works, It is highly unfortunate that his own magnum opus, The Rise and Decline of the Ethiopian Empire, was never published, although, both Kwame Nkrumah and Noamdi Azikiwe invited him to publish the work in Africa.
Hansberry was slighted and snubbed for much of his life, not only by white academia, but by many of his Black academic colleagues, as well. One of his greatest consolations though, was the love, admiration and respect of his students. Besides Dr. Chancellor Williams, one of Hansberry's most prominent pupils, there was Noamdi Azikiwe, who became the first President of the, Federal Republic of Nigeria. Lorraine Hansberry, the brilliant African American playwright, was Hansberry's niece.
On 22 September 1963, Hansberry delivered the inaugural address at the formal opening of the Hanaberry College of African Studies at Nsukka, University of Nigeria. In 1964, he became the first recipient of the African Research Award from the Haile Selassie I Prize Trust. On 3 November, 1965, at the age of 71, William Leo Hansberry died of a cerebral hemorrhage. His contributions, however, live on.
THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY
H I S T O R Y N O T E S
WILLIAM LEO HANSBERRY, TEACHER: AS SEEN BY A FORMER STUDENT*
By CHANCELLOR JAMES WILLIAMS
Posted by RUNOKO RASHIDI
I think of Professor Hansberry as a personal friend first, and as a master teacher second. That he was a distinguished scholar even when we were his students was well established. Bur for many of us who studied with him (he would never say "under" him) the atmosphere of that at-ease, friendly classroom created the primary condition for both teaching and learning. For what happened was that his almost passionate love for the race included its sons and daughters--a fact never spoken and indeed, did not need to be spoken. It was reflected in his attitude. We returned it in full, and our affection continued during all the passing years since we left his classroom.
Reference to "we" here is to a core group of us who were deeply interested in learning about our own history as well as the history of the whites. This meant that we were all a small minority, for at that time the attitude of the great majority of both faculty and students was one of contempt even for the term "Africa," or cold indifference. This means that William Leo Hansberry, with his non-prestigious African history courses, calmly endured the belittling remarks and supercilious smiles of many of his colleagues throughout the many years as he stood courageously and almost alone as a teacher of Black history in the United States. And the same academic attitudes that caused his work to be regarded as just so much "wishful thinking" or Romantic fiction, also held him firmly in the lower ranks until near the end of his career. In short, throughout his career he paid dearly for teaching Black history.
But one of the tragic consequences of all this--and the only reason I am discussing it all--was that he would not publish a single volume from what was doubtless the most detailed and massive body of research on the Black race that had ever been assembled by one man. We knew that, had he wished to do so, at least one volume could have been published over twenty years ago. We knew this because, since there were no adequate textbooks on African history available (and still are not), he prepared for the class scores of documents from his research, with sources listed. And while these were directly relevant to the courses, these alone were enough for a book. When some of us who were closest to him urged publication, we always received the same friendly smile, but with the firm reply: "I am not ready yet." Even when we asked about publication we not only knew what the answer would be, but we knew the reason for it, because we ourselves were a part of his
ordeal.
The life and work of this remarkable man influenced mine directly. For while I resolved to take up the work where he left off, I took it up defiantly and with the high resolve that, having slowly and painstakingly carried on the research on the highest level of scholarship as he did, I would not care a snap about what either white or Negro critics think or say about my works.
The final and lasting Hansberry influence was how to proceed without any show of bitterness and even act as though you were totally unaware of the covert criticisms of "friends." It was as though he foresaw the Black youth revolution that was to justify and honor his pioneering labors. And I like to think that if from afar he is looking on the Department of History he loved to the end, he will say "Well done!"
Chancellor Williams Senior Professor of African History Department of History Howard University
SOURCE:
* Published in A Tribute to the Memory of Professor William Leo Hansberry. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Department of History, 1972: 17-18.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
From: Nathan Hare
To: Marvin X Jackmon; Dana Rondel ; Darian ; deedrahs@fhlbsea.com; doriseasley@att.net; drjuliahare@pacbell.net; DR. LEO CASINO ; D12M@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 12:50:11 AM
Subject: RE: notes to amiri baraka
Bear with them. They remind us racism is for real in a “post-racial” society. Let them keep on monkeying around till we get a class action suit or a race action suit together against their pitiful attempt to slander a black man’s reputation. Mess around and make me mad. The Post is more pitiful than McCain, trying to go up against Barack Obama. Let them take a worldwide poll of the relative approval rates of themselves and Obama. Meanwhile let the New York Post diminish itself. Someday soon I’m going to be coming after them anyway. They’re going to be crying for Obama or somebody to save them. They just trying to get some stimulation. The Post is an embarrassment to itself, taking its place in the gallery of racists. I wouldn’t even look at a cartoon of theirs. If the Post could be funny it would be a cartoon. Now run and tell that. And you can tell them I said it.
.
Nathan Hare, Ph.D., Ph.D.
Cofounder and CEO
The Black Think Tank
1801 Bush Street, Suite 118
San Francisco, CA 94109
Phone: 415-929-0204
Fax: 415-771-3485
www.blackthinktank.com
www.nathanharetherapy.com
Author of The Black Anglo Saxons
From: Marvin X Jackmon [mailto:jmarvinx@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 20:35
To: Dana Rondel; Darian; deedrahs@fhlbsea.com; doriseasley@att.net; Nathan Hare; drjuliahare@pacbell.net; DR. LEO CASINO; D12M@aol.com
Subject: notes to amiri baraka
Man, I know we got some deeper shit to discuss, not to say what did we do to be so black and blue ain't profound. I will make up a list of questions such as the following:
1. What about your use of Western myth in the Dutchman as opposed to African myth in A Black Mass and Slave Ship?
2. How do you accept and function in the English language as opposed to making sounds in your African mother tongue, which you can only approach with moans, scats, wails, etc?
3. How do we as writers deal with the colonizers tongue as Wa Thiango has discussed in speaking of the need to return to our native language--are we helpless and hapless victims of the English language. I ask myself how can I write in a language I hate, and yet I am forced to do so because I know no other language--at least I can pray in Arabic which means a lot to me, maybe it is the best I can do.
4. Back to myth--discuss the Sisyphus myth, especially in terms of your Opera.
5. Discuss your role as historian in your poetry, especially how it relates to music.
6. What about black and blue. What do you think about the connection between African Music and the blues, does it require a total reconsideration of Blues People, as per Ali Farki and others. I have been totally disconcerted (if that's the right word) by the Kora sound. I am disgusted this is part of my musical heritage that I have been denied, except in the bastardized form of Blues music--this is a crime against humanity.
7. Political questions without end.
8. If this is the end of white power, what follows--which you asked this question in a 1968 interview for Black Theatre? What do we do if and when white power falls?
9. How do you see your connection to Richard Wright, James Baldwin, et al?
10. What is your connection to hip hop?
These are a few questions off my fingertips, as Martin Reynolds, editor of the Oakland Tribune, said I write from. Let me know if the above questions are corny or whatever.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Amirib@aol.com"
To: jmarvinx@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 7:34:06 PM
Subject: Re: Santa Fe
What did we do to be so black and blue. ? And about the ny post cartoon. AB
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Up from Ignut
Or
Pull Yo Pants Up Fa da Black President
The Soulful Musings of a North American African
MARVIN X
Black Bird Press
1222 Dwight Way
Berkeley CA 94702
Pre-publication price: $10.00
__._,_.___
To: Marvin X Jackmon
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 12:50:11 AM
Subject: RE: notes to amiri baraka
Bear with them. They remind us racism is for real in a “post-racial” society. Let them keep on monkeying around till we get a class action suit or a race action suit together against their pitiful attempt to slander a black man’s reputation. Mess around and make me mad. The Post is more pitiful than McCain, trying to go up against Barack Obama. Let them take a worldwide poll of the relative approval rates of themselves and Obama. Meanwhile let the New York Post diminish itself. Someday soon I’m going to be coming after them anyway. They’re going to be crying for Obama or somebody to save them. They just trying to get some stimulation. The Post is an embarrassment to itself, taking its place in the gallery of racists. I wouldn’t even look at a cartoon of theirs. If the Post could be funny it would be a cartoon. Now run and tell that. And you can tell them I said it.
.
Nathan Hare, Ph.D., Ph.D.
Cofounder and CEO
The Black Think Tank
1801 Bush Street, Suite 118
San Francisco, CA 94109
Phone: 415-929-0204
Fax: 415-771-3485
www.blackthinktank.com
www.nathanharetherapy.com
Author of The Black Anglo Saxons
From: Marvin X Jackmon [mailto:jmarvinx@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 20:35
To: Dana Rondel; Darian; deedrahs@fhlbsea.com; doriseasley@att.net; Nathan Hare; drjuliahare@pacbell.net; DR. LEO CASINO; D12M@aol.com
Subject: notes to amiri baraka
Man, I know we got some deeper shit to discuss, not to say what did we do to be so black and blue ain't profound. I will make up a list of questions such as the following:
1. What about your use of Western myth in the Dutchman as opposed to African myth in A Black Mass and Slave Ship?
2. How do you accept and function in the English language as opposed to making sounds in your African mother tongue, which you can only approach with moans, scats, wails, etc?
3. How do we as writers deal with the colonizers tongue as Wa Thiango has discussed in speaking of the need to return to our native language--are we helpless and hapless victims of the English language. I ask myself how can I write in a language I hate, and yet I am forced to do so because I know no other language--at least I can pray in Arabic which means a lot to me, maybe it is the best I can do.
4. Back to myth--discuss the Sisyphus myth, especially in terms of your Opera.
5. Discuss your role as historian in your poetry, especially how it relates to music.
6. What about black and blue. What do you think about the connection between African Music and the blues, does it require a total reconsideration of Blues People, as per Ali Farki and others. I have been totally disconcerted (if that's the right word) by the Kora sound. I am disgusted this is part of my musical heritage that I have been denied, except in the bastardized form of Blues music--this is a crime against humanity.
7. Political questions without end.
8. If this is the end of white power, what follows--which you asked this question in a 1968 interview for Black Theatre? What do we do if and when white power falls?
9. How do you see your connection to Richard Wright, James Baldwin, et al?
10. What is your connection to hip hop?
These are a few questions off my fingertips, as Martin Reynolds, editor of the Oakland Tribune, said I write from. Let me know if the above questions are corny or whatever.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Amirib@aol.com"
To: jmarvinx@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 7:34:06 PM
Subject: Re: Santa Fe
What did we do to be so black and blue. ? And about the ny post cartoon. AB
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Up from Ignut
Or
Pull Yo Pants Up Fa da Black President
The Soulful Musings of a North American African
MARVIN X
Black Bird Press
1222 Dwight Way
Berkeley CA 94702
Pre-publication price: $10.00
__._,_.___
Sunday, February 22, 2009
From: "Amirib@aol.com"
To: jmarvinx@yahoo.com
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2009 10:43:36 PM
Subject: Re: Santa Fe
These are some interesting, (tho skewed to the cultural nationalist perspective, like yrself. But they'll do plus whatever else you can ferret out. sont forget the Monkey Question*NY Post AB
In a message dated 2/20/2009 11:03:45 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, jmarvinx@yahoo.com writes:
Man, I know we got some deeper shit to discuss, not to say what did we do to be so black and blue ain't profound. I will make up a list of questions such as the following:
1. What about your use of Western myth in the Dutchman as opposed to African myth in A Black Mass and Slave Ship?
2. How do you accept and function in the English language as opposed to making sounds in your African mother tongue, which you can only approach with moans, scats, wails, etc?
3. How do we as writers deal with the colonizers tongue as Wa Thiango has discussed in speaking of the need to return to our native language--are we helpless and hapless victims of the English language. I ask myself how can I write in a language I hate, and yet I am forced to do so because I know no other language--at least I can pray in Arabic which means a lot to me, maybe it is the best I can do.
4. Back to myth--discuss the sisyphus myth, especially in terms of your Opera.
5. Discuss your role as historian in your poetry, especially how it relates to music.
6. What about black and blue. What do you think about the connection between African Music and the blues, does it require a total reconsideration of Blues People, as per Ali Farki and others. I have been totally disconcerted (if that's the right word) by the Kora sound. I am disgusted this is part of my musical heritige that I have been denied, except in thebastardized form of Blues music--this is a crime against humanity.
7. Political questions without end.
8. If this is the end of white power, what follows--which you asked this question in a 1968 interview for Black Theatre. What do we do if and when white power falls?
9. How do you see your connection to Richard Wright, James Baldwin, et al.
10. What is your connection to hip hop?
These are a few questions off the tip of my fingertips, as Martin Reynolds, editor of the Oakland Tribune, said I write from. Let me know if the above questions are corney or whatever.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Amirib@aol.com"
To: jmarvinx@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 7:34:06 PM
Subject: Re: Santa Fe
What did we do to be so black and blue. ? And about the ny post cartoon. AB
To: jmarvinx@yahoo.com
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2009 10:43:36 PM
Subject: Re: Santa Fe
These are some interesting, (tho skewed to the cultural nationalist perspective, like yrself. But they'll do plus whatever else you can ferret out. sont forget the Monkey Question*NY Post AB
In a message dated 2/20/2009 11:03:45 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, jmarvinx@yahoo.com writes:
Man, I know we got some deeper shit to discuss, not to say what did we do to be so black and blue ain't profound. I will make up a list of questions such as the following:
1. What about your use of Western myth in the Dutchman as opposed to African myth in A Black Mass and Slave Ship?
2. How do you accept and function in the English language as opposed to making sounds in your African mother tongue, which you can only approach with moans, scats, wails, etc?
3. How do we as writers deal with the colonizers tongue as Wa Thiango has discussed in speaking of the need to return to our native language--are we helpless and hapless victims of the English language. I ask myself how can I write in a language I hate, and yet I am forced to do so because I know no other language--at least I can pray in Arabic which means a lot to me, maybe it is the best I can do.
4. Back to myth--discuss the sisyphus myth, especially in terms of your Opera.
5. Discuss your role as historian in your poetry, especially how it relates to music.
6. What about black and blue. What do you think about the connection between African Music and the blues, does it require a total reconsideration of Blues People, as per Ali Farki and others. I have been totally disconcerted (if that's the right word) by the Kora sound. I am disgusted this is part of my musical heritige that I have been denied, except in thebastardized form of Blues music--this is a crime against humanity.
7. Political questions without end.
8. If this is the end of white power, what follows--which you asked this question in a 1968 interview for Black Theatre. What do we do if and when white power falls?
9. How do you see your connection to Richard Wright, James Baldwin, et al.
10. What is your connection to hip hop?
These are a few questions off the tip of my fingertips, as Martin Reynolds, editor of the Oakland Tribune, said I write from. Let me know if the above questions are corney or whatever.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Amirib@aol.com"
To: jmarvinx@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 7:34:06 PM
Subject: Re: Santa Fe
What did we do to be so black and blue. ? And about the ny post cartoon. AB
Ayodele Nzinga to Marvin X:
Yo X,
Praises to you Baba, and to Paul Cobb and all the brothers who have reached the grand young age of maturity; a cool six five. I love seasoned warriors. I hearby acknowledge my adopted Baba as a living legend and the source of my overstanding. Baba you are living history. You are the shoulders on which many of us stand. I recognize the honor it is to pay homage to the air I breathe.
I am because we are.
Marvin,
I pledge the requisite $65.00 plus the rounding of the sum to a Big Face (100) in recognition of the space you have helped to create for me to struggle on to embody the legacy you have painstaking maintained and propagated. Flowers for you while you can smell the scent of your legacy living; are you due.
Now Baba, let the folk honor you. Don't talk too much trash. Be patient with those slow to re-member they are the breath of creation and the only hope for salvation as they pause to thank you for the flowers you have given us all for over half a century.
I see you shining. Thank you for hearing but not listening to your Mama who told you to leave us sorry niggers alone.
We see you Baba. And for some of us your shine has been among the few sources of light on a dark planet. We all we got; blessing to you and those who see the unquiet desperation, the eternal optimism and the relentless determination in us.
Happy early solar return Baba. Shine on.
Your humble student,
WordSlanger
Yo X,
Praises to you Baba, and to Paul Cobb and all the brothers who have reached the grand young age of maturity; a cool six five. I love seasoned warriors. I hearby acknowledge my adopted Baba as a living legend and the source of my overstanding. Baba you are living history. You are the shoulders on which many of us stand. I recognize the honor it is to pay homage to the air I breathe.
I am because we are.
Marvin,
I pledge the requisite $65.00 plus the rounding of the sum to a Big Face (100) in recognition of the space you have helped to create for me to struggle on to embody the legacy you have painstaking maintained and propagated. Flowers for you while you can smell the scent of your legacy living; are you due.
Now Baba, let the folk honor you. Don't talk too much trash. Be patient with those slow to re-member they are the breath of creation and the only hope for salvation as they pause to thank you for the flowers you have given us all for over half a century.
I see you shining. Thank you for hearing but not listening to your Mama who told you to leave us sorry niggers alone.
We see you Baba. And for some of us your shine has been among the few sources of light on a dark planet. We all we got; blessing to you and those who see the unquiet desperation, the eternal optimism and the relentless determination in us.
Happy early solar return Baba. Shine on.
Your humble student,
WordSlanger
Marvin X Replies to Paul Cobb, Oakland Post Editor
Paul, thank you for you kind letter of support. I've never had a birthday party that I recall, so I hope I will know how to act. I just want you to know this afternoon I had an earthshaking experience on our old turf, West Oakland. Ayodele Nzingha's Lower Bottom Players presented my first play Flowers for the Trashman at their theatre, 10th and Peralta, across the street from Prescott Elementary and the former St. Patrick's, both of which I attended. As I told the audience, I can still feel the pain of the Nuns beating me across the top of my hands because I wouldn't pay attention. But it was mind blowing to see the young men performing my play that was written about our old hood. Of course I wanted to be a writer even then. I used to write in the Children's section of the Oakland Tribune. Did you think you would be publisher of the Oakland Post? I told the young actors how proud I was to see them on stage doing something positive. And a young man in the audience told how inspired he was at seeing the performance. Writer Wanda Sabir was there also. Someone said they could see the young brothers knew their lines. This play must be part of my birthday celebration, along with Ayodele's Death by Love and Geoffrey Grier's The Spot. These writers came out of my Recovery Theatre and have gone on to establish their own. Geoffery is director of San Francisco Recovery Theatre. These plays are about healing and love, a much needed subject for discussion. As I told the audience, African drama and for that matter, World drama, began in Egypt with the Osirian drama of Resurrection, ten thousand years ago. And we are yet today continuing the myth-ritual drama of resurrection. As my student/colleague, Ptah Allah El says,"We have gone from Warrior to Trashman (Flowers for the Trashman). We consider ourselves trash, we eat trash and think trashy thoughts. We live in a trashy society. Yet we must arise from Trashman to Warrior man and woman." Thank you again for your support and lifelong friendship. Any donations should be sent to Amira Jackmon, Esq., 1220 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702.
--Marvin X Jackmon (El Muhajir)
Paul Cobb reply regarding Marvin X:.
Marvin Jackmon:
Since we started in kindergarten together,
I will be happy to serve on your surprise birthday committee and will donate some space, time and money=====at least $65.00, that is. I will also find a way to present you and your accomplishments on at least one whole page in all 7 editions of the Post and maybe a brief mention in El Mundo.
We do not, nor never will, have sufficient space to acknowledge all of your prolific flourishes and prodigious writings.
We marvel at you Marvin for your marvelous ability to focus your energies on your masterful musings.
You have fought the good fight.
You have kept the faith.
And, in the face of blistering pessimism, you kept us all focused on getting Barack Hussein Obama in the White House. I must say that when most of us doubted that event would occur in our lifetime, you never did. Most of all you seemed to will us all into its acceptance. You saw and felt it coming.
What a picture! You and Imamu Baraka, at the corner of 14th and Broadway, boldly and coldly pushing Barackphernalia and your books , banners and buttons on brothers who hadn't read since high school as well as to curious whites who dared not pass you by without purchasing your FANONical Black&White skins and masks covered books-------the "Black Man's Ice was finally colder."-----What a coup!
Both of you, progenitors of the Black Arts Movement, artfully dealing still!
Since we are all at least 65 and alive, now maybe we can create a social security blanket of mutual support. I hope everyone on the committee will pop for $65 each to buy your books to be sent to juvenile hall and/or the "correctional?" institutions---now that's a sitmulus package to stimulate us. And, since I shined shoes and sold watermelons with my cousin Roy Overall, in front of your family's floral shop on seventh street, 55 years ago, just as boldly as you still do too, I will present you your flowers and a" letter from home" on May 29.
Happy Birthday to ya!
Paul Cobb
In a message dated 2/22/2009 1:31:17 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, jmarvinx@yahoo.com writes:
Marvin X Birthday Committee
On May 29, Marvin X, one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement and the father of Muslim American literature, will celebrate his 65th birthday. His students, comrades and friends are organizing a celebration in Oakland. The following are hereby drafted to the committee.
Please contact Dr. J. Vern Cromartie ASAP:
Bernard Stringer
Alona Clifton
Dr. Julia Hare
Tarika Lewis
Abdul Sabri
Aubrey Labrie
Peter Labrie
Bakari
Ayodele Nzinga
Nathan and Julia Hare
Paul Cobb
Destiny and Chris Muhammad
Ptah Allah El
Elliot Bey
Ramal Lamar and Hajr
Amira Jackmon
Terry Collins
Ron Bentley
Jerry Vernado
Benny Stewart
Danny Glover
Michael Lange
Jerri Lange
Walter Riley
Wilson Riles
Geoffrey Grier
Margot Dashiel
Sister Sukura
Fahizah Alim
Zahieb Wongozi
Amina Grant
Earl Davis
Rashid Easley
Bernard Stringer
Carolyn Mixon
Veda Silva
Ron Dellums
Cecil Brown
Ishmael Reed
Wanda Sabir
Lil Joe
If you would like to help organize this event, contact Dr. Cromartie:
j_vern_cromartie@yahoo.com.
Black Arts Movement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Black Arts Movement or BAM is the artistic branch of the Black Power movement. It was started in Harlem by writer and activist Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoy Jones).[1] Time Magazine describes the Black Arts Movement as the "single most controversial moment in the history of African-American literature-- possibly in American literature as a whole."[2] The Black Arts Repertory Theatre is a key institution of the Black Arts Movement.
[edit] Overview
The movement was one of the most important times in the African American literature. It inspired black people to establish their own publishing houses, magazines, journals and art institutions. It led to the creation of African American Studies programs within universities. The movement was triggered by the assassination of Malcolm X.[citation needed] Other well-known writers that were involved with this movement included Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, and Rosa Grey. Although not strictly involved with the Movement, other notable African American writers such as novelists Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed share some of its artistic and thematic concerns. Although Ishmael Reed is neither a movement apologist nor advocate, he said:
I think what Black Arts did was inspire a whole lot of Black people to write. Moreover, there would be no multiculturalism movement without Black Arts. Latinos, Asian Americans, and others all say they began writing as a result of the example of the 1960s. Blacks gave the example that you don't have to assimilate. You could do your own thing, get into your own background, your own history, your own tradition and your own culture. I think the challenge is for cultural sovereignty and Black Arts struck a blow for that.[3]
BAM influenced the world of literature, portraying different ethnic voices. Before the movement, the literary canon lacked diversity, and the ability to express ideas from the point of view of racial and ethnic minorities was not valued by the mainstream.
Theatre groups, poetry performances, music and dance were centered around this movement, and therefore African Americans were becoming recognized in the area of literature and arts. African Americans were also able to educate others through different types of expressions and media about cultural differences. The most common form of teaching was through poetry reading. African American performances were used for their own political advertisement, organization, and community issues. The Black Arts Movement was spread by the use of newspaper advertisements. The first major arts movement publication was in 1964.
[edit] History
The Black Arts movement, usually referred to as a "sixties" movement, came together in 1965 and broke apart around 1975/1976. In March 1965 following the 21 February assassination of Malcolm X, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) moved from Manhattan's Lower East Side uptown to Harlem, an exodus considered the symbolic birth of the Black Arts movement. Jones was a highly visible publisher (Yugen and Floating Bear magazines, Totem Press), a celebrated poet (Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, 1961, and The Dead Lecturer, 1964), a major music critic (Blues People, 1963), and an Obie Award-winning playwright (Dutchman, 1964) who, up until that fateful split, had functioned in an integrated world. Other than James Baldwin, who at that time had been closely associated with the civil rights movement, Jones was the most respected and most widely published Black writer of his generation.
Although Jones's 1965 move uptown to establish the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS) is considered the formal beginning (it was Jones who came up with the name "Black Arts"), Black Arts, as a literary movement, had its roots in groups such as the Umbra Workshop. Umbra (1962) was a collective of young Black writers based in Manhattan's Lower East Side; major members were writers Steve Cannon, Tom Dent, Al Haynes, David Henderson, Calvin C. Hernton, Joe Johnson, Norman Pritchard, Lenox Raphael, Ishmael Reed, Lorenzo Thomas, James Thompson, Askia M. Touré (Roland Snellings; also a visual artist), Brenda Walcott, and musician-writer Archie Shepp. Touré, a major shaper of "cultural nationalism," directly influenced Jones. Along with Umbra writer Charles Patterson and Charles's brother, William Patterson, Touré joined Jones, Steve Young, and others at BARTS.
Umbra, which produced Umbra Magazine, was the first post-civil rights Black literary group to make an impact as radical in the sense of establishing their own voice distinct from, and sometimes at odds with, the prevailing white literary establishment. The attempt to merge a Black-oriented activist thrust with a primarily artistic orientation produced a classic split in Umbra between those who wanted to be activists and those who thought of themselves as primarily writers, though to some extent all members shared both views. Black writers have always had to face the issue of whether their work was primarily political or aesthetic. Moreover, Umbra itself had evolved out of similar circumstances: In 1960 a Black nationalist literary organization, On Guard for Freedom, had been founded on the Lower East Side by Calvin Hicks. Its members included Nannie and Walter Bowe, Harold Cruse (who was then working on Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 1967), Tom Dent, Rosa Guy, Joe Johnson, LeRoi Jones, and Sarah Wright, among others. On Guard was active in a famous protest at the United Nations of the American-sponsored Bay of Pigs Cuban invasion and was active in support of the Congolese liberation leader Patrice Lumumba. From On Guard, Dent, Johnson, and Walcott along with Hernton, Henderson, and Touré established Umbra.
Another formation of Black writers at that time was the Harlem Writers Guild, led by John O. Killens, which included Maya Angelou, Jean Carey Bond, Rosa Guy, and Sarah Wright among others. But the Harlem Writers Guild focused on prose, primarily fiction, which did not have the mass appeal of poetry performed in the dynamic vernacular of the time. Poems could be built around anthems, chants, and political slogans, and thereby used in organizing work, which was not generally the case with novels and short stories. Moreover, the poets could and did publish themselves, whereas greater resources were needed to publish fiction. That Umbra was primarily poetry- and performance-oriented established a significant and classic characteristic of the movement's aesthetics. When Umbra split up, some members, led by Askia Touré and Al Haynes, moved to Harlem in late 1964 and formed the nationalist-oriented "Uptown Writers Movement," which included poets Yusef Rahman, Keorapetse "Willie" Kgositsile from South Africa, and Larry Neal. Accompanied by young "New Music" musicians, they performed poetry all over Harlem. Members of this group joined LeRoi Jones in founding BARTS.
Jones's move to Harlem was short-lived. In December 1965 he returned to his home, Newark (N.J.), and left BARTS in serious disarray. BARTS failed but the Black Arts center concept was irrepressible mainly because the Black Arts movement was so closely aligned with the then-burgeoning Black Power movement. The mid- to late 1960s was a period of intense revolutionary ferment. Beginning in 1964, rebellions in Harlem and Rochester, New York, initiated four years of long hot summers. Watts, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, and many other cities went up in flames, culminating in nationwide explosions of resentment and anger following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s April 1968 assassination.
In his seminal 1965 poem "Black Art," which quickly became the major poetic manifesto of the Black Arts literary movement, Jones declaimed "we want poems that kill." He was not simply speaking metaphorically. During that period armed self-defense and slogans such as "Arm yourself or harm yourself' established a social climate that promoted confrontation with the white power structure, especially the police (e.g., "Off the pigs"). Indeed, Amiri Baraka (Jones changed his name in 1967) had been arrested and convicted (later overturned on appeal) on a gun possession charge during the 1967 Newark rebellion. Additionally, armed struggle was widely viewed as not only a legitimate, but often as the only effective means of liberation. Black Arts' dynamism, impact, and effectiveness are a direct result of its partisan nature and advocacy of artistic and political freedom "by any means necessary." America had never experienced such a militant artistic movement.
Nathan Hare, the author of The Black Anglo-Saxons (1965), was the founder of 1960s Black Studies. Expelled from Howard University, Hare moved to San Francisco State University where the battle to establish a Black Studies department was waged during a five-month strike during the 1968-1969 school year. As with the establishment of Black Arts, which included a range of forces, there was broad activity in the Bay Area around Black Studies, including efforts led by poet and professor Sarah Webster Fabio at Merrit College.
The initial thrust of Black Arts ideological development came from the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a national organization with a strong presence in New York City. Both Touré and Neal were members of RAM. After RAM, the major ideological force shaping the Black Arts movement was the US (as opposed to "them') organization led by Maulana Karenga. Also ideologically important was Elijah Muhammad's Chicago-based Nation of Islam. These three formations provided both style and ideological direction for Black Arts artists, including those who were not members of these or any other political organization. Although the Black Arts movement is often considered a New York-based movement, two of its three major forces were located outside New York City.
As the movement matured, the two major locations of Black Arts' ideological leadership, particularly for literary work, were California's Bay Area because of the Journal of Black Poetry and the Black Scholar, and the Chicago-Detroit axis because of Negro Digest/Black World and Third World Press in Chicago, and Broadside Press and Naomi Long Madgett's Lotus Press in Detroit. The only major Black Arts literary publications to come out of New York were the short-lived (six issues between 1969 and 1972) Black Theatre magazine published by the New Lafayette Theatre and Black Dialogue, which had actually started in San Francisco (1964-1968) and relocated to New York (1969-1972).
In 1967 LeRoi Jones visited Karenga in Los Angeles and became an advocate of Karenga's philosophy of Kawaida. Kawaida, which produced the "Nguzo Saba" (seven principles), Kwanzaa, and an emphasis on African names, was a multifaceted, categorized activist philosophy. Jones also met Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver and worked with a number of the founding members of the Black Panthers. Additionally, Askia Touré was a visiting professor at San Francisco State and was to become a leading (and longlasting) poet as well as, arguably, the most influential poet-professor in the Black Arts movement. Playwright Ed Bullins and poet Marvin X had established Black Arts West, and Dingane Joe Goncalves had founded the Journal of Black Poetry (1966). This grouping of Ed Bullins, Dingane Joe Goncalves, LeRoi Jones, Sonia Sanchez, Askia M. Touré, and Marvin X became a major nucleus of Black Arts leadership. [4]
[edit] Effects on society
The movement lasted for about a decade, through the mid 1960s and into 1970s. This was a period of controversy and change in the world of literature. One major change came through the portrayal of new ethnic voices in the United States. English language literature, prior to the Black Arts Movement, was dominated by white authors.
African Americans became a greater presence not only in the field of literature, but in all areas of the arts. Theater groups, poetry performances, music and dance were central to the movement. Through different forms of media, African Americans were able to educate others about the expression of cultural differences and viewpoints. In particular, black poetry readings allowed African Americans to use vernacular dialogues. This was shown in the Harlem Writers Guild which included black writers such as Maya Angelou and Rosa Guy. These performances were used to express political slogans and as a tool for organization. Theater performances also were used to convey community issues and organizations. The theaters, as well as cultural centers, were based throughout America and were used for community meetings, study groups and film screenings. Newspapers were a major tool in spreading the Black Arts Movement. In 1964, Black Dialogue was published making it the first major Arts movement publication.
The Black Arts Movement, although short, is essential to the history of the United States. It spurred political activism and use of speech throughout every African American community. It allowed African Americans the chance to express their voices in the mass media as well as becoming involved in communities.
[edit] Key writers and thinkers of this movement
Nikki Giovanni.
Maya Angelou
Amiri Baraka (Born Everett LeRoy Jones.)
Jean Carey Bond
Walter Bowe
Gwendolyn Brooks
Ed Bullins
Steve Cannon
Harold Cruse
Tom Dent
Ray Durem
Addison Gayle
Nikki Giovanni
Rosa Guy
Lorraine Hansberry
Al Haynes
David Henderson
Calvin Hicks
Marvin X (known as Marvin Jackmon)
Ron Karenga
Adrienne Kennedy
Keorapetse
John O. Killens
Robert MacBeth
Haki Madhubuti
"Willie" Kgositsile Nannie
Larry Neal
Yusef Rahman
Sonia Sanchez
Barbara Ann Teer
Lorenzo Thomas
Askia Touré
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:19:36 -0800
From: jmarvinx@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Marvin X as Distinguished lecturer
To: alona3649@hotmail.com
COMING SOON FROM BLACK BIRD PRESS
Up from Ignut
Or
Pull Yo Pants Up
Fa da Black President
The Soulful Musings of a North American African Thinker
MARVIN X
Black Bird Press
1222 Dwight Way
Berkeley CA 94702
pre-publication price: $10.00
Marvin X: " Poet, Playwright & The Undisputed King of Black Consciousness"
Email
Written by RBGStreetScholar on Apr-26-07 8:34pm
From: rbg-street-scholar-multi-media-e-zine.blogspot.com
Marvin X in Harlem, 1968
Marvin X—born Marvin Ellis Jackmon on May 29, 1944 in Fowler, California—attended Fresno at Edison High, Oakland City College (now Merritt College) receiving an associate degree in 1964. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panther Party, were fellow students at Oakland City College. Marvin also received a BA and MA in English at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University).
Marvin X has taught at such colleges and universities as Fresno State University, San Francisco State University, University of California -- Berkeley and San Diego, University of Nevada, Reno, Mills College, Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland.
As part of Black Arts Movement (BAM), Marvin, along with playwright Ed Bullins in 1967, established The Black House and Black Arts / West, a theatre in San Francisco's Fillmore district.
Marvin X's first play is titled Flowers for the Trashman (also produced with an alternate title, Taking Care of Business. The play's protagonist, Joe Simmons, an African American college student, finds himself in jail with Wes, whom the playwright describes as "his hoodlum friend."
Marvin X spoke from a Muslim perspective on race relations in America in his play The Black Bird (Al Tair Aswad
Marvin X's most recent production, One Day in the Life, performed by his Recovery Theatre, provides a comprehensive view into his own life as a black man using crack cocaine as well as the devastating sphere of hurt, death, and destruction that came to many loved ones in his life.
More On Marvin X:
Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi…He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English—the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi….
—Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City
Still the undisputed king of black consciousness!
—Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Think Tank
Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because by re-contextualizing it will add another layer of attention to Marvin X’s incredibly rich body of work. Muslim American literature begins with Marvin X. (Note: The University of California , Berkeley , Bancroft Library, recently acquired the archives of Marvin X.)
—Dr. Mohja Kahf, Dept. of English & Middle East & Islamic Studies,University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
In terms of modernist and innovative, he’s centuries ahead of anybody I know.
—Dennis Leroy Moore, Brecht Forum, New York
Marvelous Marvin X!
—Dr. Cornel West, Princeton University
Courageous and outrageous! He walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal.
—James W. Sweeney, Oakland CA
His writing is orgasmic!
—Fahizah Alim, Sacramento Bee
Jeremiah, I presume.
—Rudolph Lewis, www.nathanielturner.com
He’s Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. His play One Day In the Life is the most powerful drama I’ve seen.
—Ishmael Reed
One of the founders and innovators of the revolutionary school of African writing.
—Amiri Baraka
He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experiences in a lyrical way.
—James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer
An outspoken critic of American economic, social and cultural discrimination of African Americans at home and Third World peoples abroad.
—Dr. Julius E. Thompson, African American Review
Although Marvin X emerged from an extremely politicized era and enthusiastically confronted the issues of the day, his work is basically personal and religious and remains most effective on that level. It should remain relevant long after issues are resolved, if ever, and long after slogans and polemics are forgotten.
—Lorenzo Thomas, Dept. of English, University of Houston, Texas
Source: ChickenBones: A Journal
posted 29 October 2006
Marvin X Table @ ChickenBones
Marvin X is available for lecture/readings. Write to him at jmarvinx@yahoo..com , or 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702.
Flowers for the Trashman, A One-Act Play
Author: Marvin X
Director's Notes
Author's first produced (Drama Department, San Francisco State University, 1965) and published play. Included in the Black Fire anthology, 1968. An example of Black Arts Movement work that seeks to render issues of immediate importance to the Black Community. It is a performative work that has a sharp relevance to the relationships that shape and plague manhood in North American African communities today. As in all good art the theme, while applied specifically, has universal implications that manage to break even the imposed strictures of gender within the piece to speak elegantly about separation within intimates spaces.
Director: Ayodele " WordSlanger" Nzinga, MFA
Artistic Director of the Sister Thea Bowman Theater, The Lower Bottom Playaz, Associate Director Recovery Theater and student of Marvin X.
Marvin X wrote Flower's for the Trashman in the turbulent 1960's. It is his first produced and published play. When asked permission to stage the piece he asked, "Why?" Why is a piece of work over 40 years old relevant at this time.
The answer lies in part in the enigmatic timelessness of the piece. Something becomes a classic because of its ability to endure by translating itself across time. This is a trait inherent in fine art. It is so because the best art seats itself in the basic foundation of the human story. Significant art seeks to know something essential to human nature, it worries itself and us with the making of the human condition. This art can be cathartic, it can disturb, remind or simply call into view from the shadows of unconsciousness; elephants on universal tables.
Created in the historical context of the Black Arts Movement, (BAM), Flowers for the Trashman, is an example of work consciously intended to be preformative, created for and about subjects/issues paramount to the formation/sustaining of independent black communities concerned with self articulation/reflection that intends to provoke action. I submit Marvin X's work also passes the litmus for fine art. In it's reflection of intimate estrangement it probes familial relations on the very personal and universal /archetypal level. The work is aligned with an issue of humanness that will be dated only by a shift in the human condition itself. Thus the work satisfies the specific requirements of its lens: black male relationships, while working beyond this specificity/boundary as well.
The reflection of Blacks in America mirrors the societal dilemmas of American society writ large. While essentially an introspection of father/son communication, Flowers for the Trashman is also a vehicle to examine intimacy, isolation in company, and boundaries on a much larger level. The very specific gender of the piece is also fluid; it is the situation itself that is compelling and larger than the beautifully simple text.
The main character asks, "How can we be so far apart...? So far apart, yet so close---so close together?" This is the interrogation the work attempts. It is voiced in the final quarter of the piece and sums its query emphatically. This question should be of interest to us as a nation as we cry for change. If we knew the answer perhaps the illusive unity we seek could manifest. If we asked this in our houses, our churches, our academic spaces, halls of government, in our communities, out on the turfs of the world where we all breathe the same air; what could we learn about appreciation of difference, each other and the path to unity?
We are in the information age. We hyper communicate in multi modes yet in the midst of this explosion of ways in which to communicate; the art of intimate human exchange goes unattended. We get our news from the corporate media and other secondary sources, we miss the primacy of getting our news from each other. We travel together though the event of our lives with earphones, cell phones, and laptops. We socially network with people we will never meet and who may not be the people they claim to be. Yet our co-workers, neighbors, partners, children, parents go unknown in large and significant ways. The way we are is easy to see, the how we got there, often dies with us. The average child can tell you more about his favorite artist than he can his own family. The everyday adult knows how to talk at children but spends little time talking to them as equal humans with viable information about themselves and their environment to offer. We are alone, traveling together on a blue ball spinning in space, more connected than ever before, and yet we are alone, isolated in our individual stories of self, without an appreciation of how the individual stories inform each other we suffer in isolation.
There is space in Marvin's transparent working of the very personal for us to consciously consider the lack of intimate communication on a variety of levels. All these levels serve the function in BAM directives and serve as a space for introspection on unity and its possibility from the personal to the universal.
I am choosing to direct the piece out of my own passion for communication, my appreciation for the artistry of my mentor and appreciation of the classics. An active love of the classic demands the work be kept alive and allowed to do its work. By mounting classic art we enable its longevity by gifting it to new generations.
"If I don't know the folks on the page; I won’t direct the work."
WordSlanger
Ayodele Nzinga , MA , MFA
Prescott Joseph Center For Community Enhancement
presents
A tribute to Black History Month
A preview of the 2009 season at The Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater
FLOWERS FOR THE TRASHMAN
A one act play
By
Marvin X
Directed by WordSlanger
&
An excerpt from
MAMA AT TWILIGHT:
Love by Death
Written and Directed by
Ayodele “WordSlanger” Nzinga
February 22, 2009- Only
2Pm Matinee: $10:00 at the door
5Pm Show: $10:00 at the door
$5.00 in Advance
Reservations encouraged.
Author discussion follows each production.
920 Peralta St. Oakland CA
510-457-8999/510-208-1912 tickets-information-reservations.
A We Inhale Production
Paul, thank you for you kind letter of support. I've never had a birthday party that I recall, so I hope I will know how to act. I just want you to know this afternoon I had an earthshaking experience on our old turf, West Oakland. Ayodele Nzingha's Lower Bottom Players presented my first play Flowers for the Trashman at their theatre, 10th and Peralta, across the street from Prescott Elementary and the former St. Patrick's, both of which I attended. As I told the audience, I can still feel the pain of the Nuns beating me across the top of my hands because I wouldn't pay attention. But it was mind blowing to see the young men performing my play that was written about our old hood. Of course I wanted to be a writer even then. I used to write in the Children's section of the Oakland Tribune. Did you think you would be publisher of the Oakland Post? I told the young actors how proud I was to see them on stage doing something positive. And a young man in the audience told how inspired he was at seeing the performance. Writer Wanda Sabir was there also. Someone said they could see the young brothers knew their lines. This play must be part of my birthday celebration, along with Ayodele's Death by Love and Geoffrey Grier's The Spot. These writers came out of my Recovery Theatre and have gone on to establish their own. Geoffery is director of San Francisco Recovery Theatre. These plays are about healing and love, a much needed subject for discussion. As I told the audience, African drama and for that matter, World drama, began in Egypt with the Osirian drama of Resurrection, ten thousand years ago. And we are yet today continuing the myth-ritual drama of resurrection. As my student/colleague, Ptah Allah El says,"We have gone from Warrior to Trashman (Flowers for the Trashman). We consider ourselves trash, we eat trash and think trashy thoughts. We live in a trashy society. Yet we must arise from Trashman to Warrior man and woman." Thank you again for your support and lifelong friendship. Any donations should be sent to Amira Jackmon, Esq., 1220 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702.
--Marvin X Jackmon (El Muhajir)
Paul Cobb reply regarding Marvin X:.
Marvin Jackmon:
Since we started in kindergarten together,
I will be happy to serve on your surprise birthday committee and will donate some space, time and money=====at least $65.00, that is. I will also find a way to present you and your accomplishments on at least one whole page in all 7 editions of the Post and maybe a brief mention in El Mundo.
We do not, nor never will, have sufficient space to acknowledge all of your prolific flourishes and prodigious writings.
We marvel at you Marvin for your marvelous ability to focus your energies on your masterful musings.
You have fought the good fight.
You have kept the faith.
And, in the face of blistering pessimism, you kept us all focused on getting Barack Hussein Obama in the White House. I must say that when most of us doubted that event would occur in our lifetime, you never did. Most of all you seemed to will us all into its acceptance. You saw and felt it coming.
What a picture! You and Imamu Baraka, at the corner of 14th and Broadway, boldly and coldly pushing Barackphernalia and your books , banners and buttons on brothers who hadn't read since high school as well as to curious whites who dared not pass you by without purchasing your FANONical Black&White skins and masks covered books-------the "Black Man's Ice was finally colder."-----What a coup!
Both of you, progenitors of the Black Arts Movement, artfully dealing still!
Since we are all at least 65 and alive, now maybe we can create a social security blanket of mutual support. I hope everyone on the committee will pop for $65 each to buy your books to be sent to juvenile hall and/or the "correctional?" institutions---now that's a sitmulus package to stimulate us. And, since I shined shoes and sold watermelons with my cousin Roy Overall, in front of your family's floral shop on seventh street, 55 years ago, just as boldly as you still do too, I will present you your flowers and a" letter from home" on May 29.
Happy Birthday to ya!
Paul Cobb
In a message dated 2/22/2009 1:31:17 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, jmarvinx@yahoo.com writes:
Marvin X Birthday Committee
On May 29, Marvin X, one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement and the father of Muslim American literature, will celebrate his 65th birthday. His students, comrades and friends are organizing a celebration in Oakland. The following are hereby drafted to the committee.
Please contact Dr. J. Vern Cromartie ASAP:
Bernard Stringer
Alona Clifton
Dr. Julia Hare
Tarika Lewis
Abdul Sabri
Aubrey Labrie
Peter Labrie
Bakari
Ayodele Nzinga
Nathan and Julia Hare
Paul Cobb
Destiny and Chris Muhammad
Ptah Allah El
Elliot Bey
Ramal Lamar and Hajr
Amira Jackmon
Terry Collins
Ron Bentley
Jerry Vernado
Benny Stewart
Danny Glover
Michael Lange
Jerri Lange
Walter Riley
Wilson Riles
Geoffrey Grier
Margot Dashiel
Sister Sukura
Fahizah Alim
Zahieb Wongozi
Amina Grant
Earl Davis
Rashid Easley
Bernard Stringer
Carolyn Mixon
Veda Silva
Ron Dellums
Cecil Brown
Ishmael Reed
Wanda Sabir
Lil Joe
If you would like to help organize this event, contact Dr. Cromartie:
j_vern_cromartie@yahoo.com.
Black Arts Movement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Black Arts Movement or BAM is the artistic branch of the Black Power movement. It was started in Harlem by writer and activist Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoy Jones).[1] Time Magazine describes the Black Arts Movement as the "single most controversial moment in the history of African-American literature-- possibly in American literature as a whole."[2] The Black Arts Repertory Theatre is a key institution of the Black Arts Movement.
[edit] Overview
The movement was one of the most important times in the African American literature. It inspired black people to establish their own publishing houses, magazines, journals and art institutions. It led to the creation of African American Studies programs within universities. The movement was triggered by the assassination of Malcolm X.[citation needed] Other well-known writers that were involved with this movement included Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, and Rosa Grey. Although not strictly involved with the Movement, other notable African American writers such as novelists Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed share some of its artistic and thematic concerns. Although Ishmael Reed is neither a movement apologist nor advocate, he said:
I think what Black Arts did was inspire a whole lot of Black people to write. Moreover, there would be no multiculturalism movement without Black Arts. Latinos, Asian Americans, and others all say they began writing as a result of the example of the 1960s. Blacks gave the example that you don't have to assimilate. You could do your own thing, get into your own background, your own history, your own tradition and your own culture. I think the challenge is for cultural sovereignty and Black Arts struck a blow for that.[3]
BAM influenced the world of literature, portraying different ethnic voices. Before the movement, the literary canon lacked diversity, and the ability to express ideas from the point of view of racial and ethnic minorities was not valued by the mainstream.
Theatre groups, poetry performances, music and dance were centered around this movement, and therefore African Americans were becoming recognized in the area of literature and arts. African Americans were also able to educate others through different types of expressions and media about cultural differences. The most common form of teaching was through poetry reading. African American performances were used for their own political advertisement, organization, and community issues. The Black Arts Movement was spread by the use of newspaper advertisements. The first major arts movement publication was in 1964.
[edit] History
The Black Arts movement, usually referred to as a "sixties" movement, came together in 1965 and broke apart around 1975/1976. In March 1965 following the 21 February assassination of Malcolm X, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) moved from Manhattan's Lower East Side uptown to Harlem, an exodus considered the symbolic birth of the Black Arts movement. Jones was a highly visible publisher (Yugen and Floating Bear magazines, Totem Press), a celebrated poet (Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, 1961, and The Dead Lecturer, 1964), a major music critic (Blues People, 1963), and an Obie Award-winning playwright (Dutchman, 1964) who, up until that fateful split, had functioned in an integrated world. Other than James Baldwin, who at that time had been closely associated with the civil rights movement, Jones was the most respected and most widely published Black writer of his generation.
Although Jones's 1965 move uptown to establish the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS) is considered the formal beginning (it was Jones who came up with the name "Black Arts"), Black Arts, as a literary movement, had its roots in groups such as the Umbra Workshop. Umbra (1962) was a collective of young Black writers based in Manhattan's Lower East Side; major members were writers Steve Cannon, Tom Dent, Al Haynes, David Henderson, Calvin C. Hernton, Joe Johnson, Norman Pritchard, Lenox Raphael, Ishmael Reed, Lorenzo Thomas, James Thompson, Askia M. Touré (Roland Snellings; also a visual artist), Brenda Walcott, and musician-writer Archie Shepp. Touré, a major shaper of "cultural nationalism," directly influenced Jones. Along with Umbra writer Charles Patterson and Charles's brother, William Patterson, Touré joined Jones, Steve Young, and others at BARTS.
Umbra, which produced Umbra Magazine, was the first post-civil rights Black literary group to make an impact as radical in the sense of establishing their own voice distinct from, and sometimes at odds with, the prevailing white literary establishment. The attempt to merge a Black-oriented activist thrust with a primarily artistic orientation produced a classic split in Umbra between those who wanted to be activists and those who thought of themselves as primarily writers, though to some extent all members shared both views. Black writers have always had to face the issue of whether their work was primarily political or aesthetic. Moreover, Umbra itself had evolved out of similar circumstances: In 1960 a Black nationalist literary organization, On Guard for Freedom, had been founded on the Lower East Side by Calvin Hicks. Its members included Nannie and Walter Bowe, Harold Cruse (who was then working on Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 1967), Tom Dent, Rosa Guy, Joe Johnson, LeRoi Jones, and Sarah Wright, among others. On Guard was active in a famous protest at the United Nations of the American-sponsored Bay of Pigs Cuban invasion and was active in support of the Congolese liberation leader Patrice Lumumba. From On Guard, Dent, Johnson, and Walcott along with Hernton, Henderson, and Touré established Umbra.
Another formation of Black writers at that time was the Harlem Writers Guild, led by John O. Killens, which included Maya Angelou, Jean Carey Bond, Rosa Guy, and Sarah Wright among others. But the Harlem Writers Guild focused on prose, primarily fiction, which did not have the mass appeal of poetry performed in the dynamic vernacular of the time. Poems could be built around anthems, chants, and political slogans, and thereby used in organizing work, which was not generally the case with novels and short stories. Moreover, the poets could and did publish themselves, whereas greater resources were needed to publish fiction. That Umbra was primarily poetry- and performance-oriented established a significant and classic characteristic of the movement's aesthetics. When Umbra split up, some members, led by Askia Touré and Al Haynes, moved to Harlem in late 1964 and formed the nationalist-oriented "Uptown Writers Movement," which included poets Yusef Rahman, Keorapetse "Willie" Kgositsile from South Africa, and Larry Neal. Accompanied by young "New Music" musicians, they performed poetry all over Harlem. Members of this group joined LeRoi Jones in founding BARTS.
Jones's move to Harlem was short-lived. In December 1965 he returned to his home, Newark (N.J.), and left BARTS in serious disarray. BARTS failed but the Black Arts center concept was irrepressible mainly because the Black Arts movement was so closely aligned with the then-burgeoning Black Power movement. The mid- to late 1960s was a period of intense revolutionary ferment. Beginning in 1964, rebellions in Harlem and Rochester, New York, initiated four years of long hot summers. Watts, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, and many other cities went up in flames, culminating in nationwide explosions of resentment and anger following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s April 1968 assassination.
In his seminal 1965 poem "Black Art," which quickly became the major poetic manifesto of the Black Arts literary movement, Jones declaimed "we want poems that kill." He was not simply speaking metaphorically. During that period armed self-defense and slogans such as "Arm yourself or harm yourself' established a social climate that promoted confrontation with the white power structure, especially the police (e.g., "Off the pigs"). Indeed, Amiri Baraka (Jones changed his name in 1967) had been arrested and convicted (later overturned on appeal) on a gun possession charge during the 1967 Newark rebellion. Additionally, armed struggle was widely viewed as not only a legitimate, but often as the only effective means of liberation. Black Arts' dynamism, impact, and effectiveness are a direct result of its partisan nature and advocacy of artistic and political freedom "by any means necessary." America had never experienced such a militant artistic movement.
Nathan Hare, the author of The Black Anglo-Saxons (1965), was the founder of 1960s Black Studies. Expelled from Howard University, Hare moved to San Francisco State University where the battle to establish a Black Studies department was waged during a five-month strike during the 1968-1969 school year. As with the establishment of Black Arts, which included a range of forces, there was broad activity in the Bay Area around Black Studies, including efforts led by poet and professor Sarah Webster Fabio at Merrit College.
The initial thrust of Black Arts ideological development came from the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a national organization with a strong presence in New York City. Both Touré and Neal were members of RAM. After RAM, the major ideological force shaping the Black Arts movement was the US (as opposed to "them') organization led by Maulana Karenga. Also ideologically important was Elijah Muhammad's Chicago-based Nation of Islam. These three formations provided both style and ideological direction for Black Arts artists, including those who were not members of these or any other political organization. Although the Black Arts movement is often considered a New York-based movement, two of its three major forces were located outside New York City.
As the movement matured, the two major locations of Black Arts' ideological leadership, particularly for literary work, were California's Bay Area because of the Journal of Black Poetry and the Black Scholar, and the Chicago-Detroit axis because of Negro Digest/Black World and Third World Press in Chicago, and Broadside Press and Naomi Long Madgett's Lotus Press in Detroit. The only major Black Arts literary publications to come out of New York were the short-lived (six issues between 1969 and 1972) Black Theatre magazine published by the New Lafayette Theatre and Black Dialogue, which had actually started in San Francisco (1964-1968) and relocated to New York (1969-1972).
In 1967 LeRoi Jones visited Karenga in Los Angeles and became an advocate of Karenga's philosophy of Kawaida. Kawaida, which produced the "Nguzo Saba" (seven principles), Kwanzaa, and an emphasis on African names, was a multifaceted, categorized activist philosophy. Jones also met Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver and worked with a number of the founding members of the Black Panthers. Additionally, Askia Touré was a visiting professor at San Francisco State and was to become a leading (and longlasting) poet as well as, arguably, the most influential poet-professor in the Black Arts movement. Playwright Ed Bullins and poet Marvin X had established Black Arts West, and Dingane Joe Goncalves had founded the Journal of Black Poetry (1966). This grouping of Ed Bullins, Dingane Joe Goncalves, LeRoi Jones, Sonia Sanchez, Askia M. Touré, and Marvin X became a major nucleus of Black Arts leadership. [4]
[edit] Effects on society
The movement lasted for about a decade, through the mid 1960s and into 1970s. This was a period of controversy and change in the world of literature. One major change came through the portrayal of new ethnic voices in the United States. English language literature, prior to the Black Arts Movement, was dominated by white authors.
African Americans became a greater presence not only in the field of literature, but in all areas of the arts. Theater groups, poetry performances, music and dance were central to the movement. Through different forms of media, African Americans were able to educate others about the expression of cultural differences and viewpoints. In particular, black poetry readings allowed African Americans to use vernacular dialogues. This was shown in the Harlem Writers Guild which included black writers such as Maya Angelou and Rosa Guy. These performances were used to express political slogans and as a tool for organization. Theater performances also were used to convey community issues and organizations. The theaters, as well as cultural centers, were based throughout America and were used for community meetings, study groups and film screenings. Newspapers were a major tool in spreading the Black Arts Movement. In 1964, Black Dialogue was published making it the first major Arts movement publication.
The Black Arts Movement, although short, is essential to the history of the United States. It spurred political activism and use of speech throughout every African American community. It allowed African Americans the chance to express their voices in the mass media as well as becoming involved in communities.
[edit] Key writers and thinkers of this movement
Nikki Giovanni.
Maya Angelou
Amiri Baraka (Born Everett LeRoy Jones.)
Jean Carey Bond
Walter Bowe
Gwendolyn Brooks
Ed Bullins
Steve Cannon
Harold Cruse
Tom Dent
Ray Durem
Addison Gayle
Nikki Giovanni
Rosa Guy
Lorraine Hansberry
Al Haynes
David Henderson
Calvin Hicks
Marvin X (known as Marvin Jackmon)
Ron Karenga
Adrienne Kennedy
Keorapetse
John O. Killens
Robert MacBeth
Haki Madhubuti
"Willie" Kgositsile Nannie
Larry Neal
Yusef Rahman
Sonia Sanchez
Barbara Ann Teer
Lorenzo Thomas
Askia Touré
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:19:36 -0800
From: jmarvinx@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Marvin X as Distinguished lecturer
To: alona3649@hotmail.com
COMING SOON FROM BLACK BIRD PRESS
Up from Ignut
Or
Pull Yo Pants Up
Fa da Black President
The Soulful Musings of a North American African Thinker
MARVIN X
Black Bird Press
1222 Dwight Way
Berkeley CA 94702
pre-publication price: $10.00
Marvin X: " Poet, Playwright & The Undisputed King of Black Consciousness"
Written by RBGStreetScholar on Apr-26-07 8:34pm
From: rbg-street-scholar-multi-media-e-zine.blogspot.com
Marvin X in Harlem, 1968
Marvin X—born Marvin Ellis Jackmon on May 29, 1944 in Fowler, California—attended Fresno at Edison High, Oakland City College (now Merritt College) receiving an associate degree in 1964. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panther Party, were fellow students at Oakland City College. Marvin also received a BA and MA in English at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University).
Marvin X has taught at such colleges and universities as Fresno State University, San Francisco State University, University of California -- Berkeley and San Diego, University of Nevada, Reno, Mills College, Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland.
As part of Black Arts Movement (BAM), Marvin, along with playwright Ed Bullins in 1967, established The Black House and Black Arts / West, a theatre in San Francisco's Fillmore district.
Marvin X's first play is titled Flowers for the Trashman (also produced with an alternate title, Taking Care of Business. The play's protagonist, Joe Simmons, an African American college student, finds himself in jail with Wes, whom the playwright describes as "his hoodlum friend."
Marvin X spoke from a Muslim perspective on race relations in America in his play The Black Bird (Al Tair Aswad
Marvin X's most recent production, One Day in the Life, performed by his Recovery Theatre, provides a comprehensive view into his own life as a black man using crack cocaine as well as the devastating sphere of hurt, death, and destruction that came to many loved ones in his life.
More On Marvin X:
Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi…He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English—the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi….
—Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City
Still the undisputed king of black consciousness!
—Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Think Tank
Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because by re-contextualizing it will add another layer of attention to Marvin X’s incredibly rich body of work. Muslim American literature begins with Marvin X. (Note: The University of California , Berkeley , Bancroft Library, recently acquired the archives of Marvin X.)
—Dr. Mohja Kahf, Dept. of English & Middle East & Islamic Studies,University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
In terms of modernist and innovative, he’s centuries ahead of anybody I know.
—Dennis Leroy Moore, Brecht Forum, New York
Marvelous Marvin X!
—Dr. Cornel West, Princeton University
Courageous and outrageous! He walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal.
—James W. Sweeney, Oakland CA
His writing is orgasmic!
—Fahizah Alim, Sacramento Bee
Jeremiah, I presume.
—Rudolph Lewis, www.nathanielturner.com
He’s Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. His play One Day In the Life is the most powerful drama I’ve seen.
—Ishmael Reed
One of the founders and innovators of the revolutionary school of African writing.
—Amiri Baraka
He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experiences in a lyrical way.
—James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer
An outspoken critic of American economic, social and cultural discrimination of African Americans at home and Third World peoples abroad.
—Dr. Julius E. Thompson, African American Review
Although Marvin X emerged from an extremely politicized era and enthusiastically confronted the issues of the day, his work is basically personal and religious and remains most effective on that level. It should remain relevant long after issues are resolved, if ever, and long after slogans and polemics are forgotten.
—Lorenzo Thomas, Dept. of English, University of Houston, Texas
Source: ChickenBones: A Journal
posted 29 October 2006
Marvin X Table @ ChickenBones
Marvin X is available for lecture/readings. Write to him at jmarvinx@yahoo..com , or 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702.
Flowers for the Trashman, A One-Act Play
Author: Marvin X
Director's Notes
Author's first produced (Drama Department, San Francisco State University, 1965) and published play. Included in the Black Fire anthology, 1968. An example of Black Arts Movement work that seeks to render issues of immediate importance to the Black Community. It is a performative work that has a sharp relevance to the relationships that shape and plague manhood in North American African communities today. As in all good art the theme, while applied specifically, has universal implications that manage to break even the imposed strictures of gender within the piece to speak elegantly about separation within intimates spaces.
Director: Ayodele " WordSlanger" Nzinga, MFA
Artistic Director of the Sister Thea Bowman Theater, The Lower Bottom Playaz, Associate Director Recovery Theater and student of Marvin X.
Marvin X wrote Flower's for the Trashman in the turbulent 1960's. It is his first produced and published play. When asked permission to stage the piece he asked, "Why?" Why is a piece of work over 40 years old relevant at this time.
The answer lies in part in the enigmatic timelessness of the piece. Something becomes a classic because of its ability to endure by translating itself across time. This is a trait inherent in fine art. It is so because the best art seats itself in the basic foundation of the human story. Significant art seeks to know something essential to human nature, it worries itself and us with the making of the human condition. This art can be cathartic, it can disturb, remind or simply call into view from the shadows of unconsciousness; elephants on universal tables.
Created in the historical context of the Black Arts Movement, (BAM), Flowers for the Trashman, is an example of work consciously intended to be preformative, created for and about subjects/issues paramount to the formation/sustaining of independent black communities concerned with self articulation/reflection that intends to provoke action. I submit Marvin X's work also passes the litmus for fine art. In it's reflection of intimate estrangement it probes familial relations on the very personal and universal /archetypal level. The work is aligned with an issue of humanness that will be dated only by a shift in the human condition itself. Thus the work satisfies the specific requirements of its lens: black male relationships, while working beyond this specificity/boundary as well.
The reflection of Blacks in America mirrors the societal dilemmas of American society writ large. While essentially an introspection of father/son communication, Flowers for the Trashman is also a vehicle to examine intimacy, isolation in company, and boundaries on a much larger level. The very specific gender of the piece is also fluid; it is the situation itself that is compelling and larger than the beautifully simple text.
The main character asks, "How can we be so far apart...? So far apart, yet so close---so close together?" This is the interrogation the work attempts. It is voiced in the final quarter of the piece and sums its query emphatically. This question should be of interest to us as a nation as we cry for change. If we knew the answer perhaps the illusive unity we seek could manifest. If we asked this in our houses, our churches, our academic spaces, halls of government, in our communities, out on the turfs of the world where we all breathe the same air; what could we learn about appreciation of difference, each other and the path to unity?
We are in the information age. We hyper communicate in multi modes yet in the midst of this explosion of ways in which to communicate; the art of intimate human exchange goes unattended. We get our news from the corporate media and other secondary sources, we miss the primacy of getting our news from each other. We travel together though the event of our lives with earphones, cell phones, and laptops. We socially network with people we will never meet and who may not be the people they claim to be. Yet our co-workers, neighbors, partners, children, parents go unknown in large and significant ways. The way we are is easy to see, the how we got there, often dies with us. The average child can tell you more about his favorite artist than he can his own family. The everyday adult knows how to talk at children but spends little time talking to them as equal humans with viable information about themselves and their environment to offer. We are alone, traveling together on a blue ball spinning in space, more connected than ever before, and yet we are alone, isolated in our individual stories of self, without an appreciation of how the individual stories inform each other we suffer in isolation.
There is space in Marvin's transparent working of the very personal for us to consciously consider the lack of intimate communication on a variety of levels. All these levels serve the function in BAM directives and serve as a space for introspection on unity and its possibility from the personal to the universal.
I am choosing to direct the piece out of my own passion for communication, my appreciation for the artistry of my mentor and appreciation of the classics. An active love of the classic demands the work be kept alive and allowed to do its work. By mounting classic art we enable its longevity by gifting it to new generations.
"If I don't know the folks on the page; I won’t direct the work."
WordSlanger
Ayodele Nzinga , MA , MFA
Prescott Joseph Center For Community Enhancement
presents
A tribute to Black History Month
A preview of the 2009 season at The Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater
FLOWERS FOR THE TRASHMAN
A one act play
By
Marvin X
Directed by WordSlanger
&
An excerpt from
MAMA AT TWILIGHT:
Love by Death
Written and Directed by
Ayodele “WordSlanger” Nzinga
February 22, 2009- Only
2Pm Matinee: $10:00 at the door
5Pm Show: $10:00 at the door
$5.00 in Advance
Reservations encouraged.
Author discussion follows each production.
920 Peralta St. Oakland CA
510-457-8999/510-208-1912 tickets-information-reservations.
A We Inhale Production
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Up from Ignut
Or
Pull Yo Pants Up
Fa da Black President
The Soulful Musings of a North American African Thinker
MARVIN X
Black Bird Press, Berkeley
Marvin X: " Poet, Playwright & The Undisputed King of Black Consciousness"
Email
Written by RBGStreetScholar on Apr-26-07 8:34pm
From: rbg-street-scholar-multi-media-e-zine.blogspot.com
Marvin X in Harlem, 1968
Marvin X—born Marvin Ellis Jackmon on May 29, 1944 in Fowler, California—attended Fresno at Edison High, Oakland City College (now Merritt College) receiving an associate degree in 1964. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panther Party, were fellow students at Oakland City College. Marvin also received a BA and MA in English at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University).
Marvin X has taught at such colleges and universities as Fresno State University, San Francisco State University, University of California -- Berkeley and San Diego, University of Nevada, Reno, Mills College, Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland.
As part of Black Arts Movement (BAM), Marvin, along with playwright Ed Bullins in 1967, established The Black House and Black Arts / West, a theatre in San Francisco's Fillmore district.
Marvin X's first play is titled Flowers for the Trashman (also produced with an alternate title, Taking Care of Business. The play's protagonist, Joe Simmons, an African American college student, finds himself in jail with Wes, whom the playwright describes as "his hoodlum friend."
Marvin X spoke from a Muslim perspective on race relations in America in his play The Black Bird (Al Tair Aswad
Marvin X's most recent production, One Day in the Life, performed by his Recovery Theatre, provides a comprehensive view into his own life as a black man using crack cocaine as well as the devastating sphere of hurt, death, and destruction that came to many loved ones in his life.
More On Marvin X:
Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi…He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English—the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi….
—Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City
Still the undisputed king of black consciousness!
—Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Think Tank
Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because by re-contextualizing it will add another layer of attention to Marvin X’s incredibly rich body of work. Muslim American literature begins with Marvin X. (Note: The University of California , Berkeley , Bancroft Library, recently acquired the archives of Marvin X.)
—Dr. Mohja Kahf, Dept. of English & Middle East & Islamic Studies,University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
In terms of modernist and innovative, he’s centuries ahead of anybody I know.
—Dennis Leroy Moore, Brecht Forum, New York
Marvelous Marvin X!
—Dr. Cornel West, Princeton University
Courageous and outrageous! He walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal.
—James W. Sweeney, Oakland CA
His writing is orgasmic!
—Fahizah Alim, Sacramento Bee
Jeremiah, I presume.
—Rudolph Lewis, www.nathanielturner.com
He’s Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. His play One Day In the Life is the most powerful drama I’ve seen.
—Ishmael Reed
One of the founders and innovators of the revolutionary school of African writing.
—Amiri Baraka
He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experiences in a lyrical way.
—James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer
An outspoken critic of American economic, social and cultural discrimination of African Americans at home and Third World peoples abroad.
—Dr. Julius E. Thompson, African American Review
Although Marvin X emerged from an extremely politicized era and enthusiastically confronted the issues of the day, his work is basically personal and religious and remains most effective on that level. It should remain relevant long after issues are resolved, if ever, and long after slogans and polemics are forgotten.
—Lorenzo Thomas, Dept. of English, University of Houston, Texas
Source: ChickenBones: A Journal
posted 29 October 2006
Marvin X Table @ ChickenBones
Marvin X is available for lecture/readings. Write to him at jmarvinx@yahoo.com , or 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702.
Flowers for the Trashman, A One-Act Play
Author: Marvin X
Director's Notes
Author's first produced (Drama Department, San Francisco State University, 1965) and published play. Included in the Black Fire anthology, 1968. An example of Black Arts Movement work that seeks to render issues of immediate importance to the Black Community. It is a performative work that has a sharp relevance to the relationships that shape and plague manhood in North American African communities today. As in all good art the theme, while applied specifically, has universal implications that manage to break even the imposed strictures of gender within the piece to speak elegantly about separation within intimates spaces.
Director: Ayodele " WordSlanger" Nzinga, MFA
Artistic Director of the Sister Thea Bowman Theater, The Lower Bottom Playaz, Associate Director Recovery Theater and student of Marvin X.
Marvin X wrote Flower's for the Trashman in the turbulent 1960's. It is his first produced and published play. When asked permission to stage the piece he asked, "Why?" Why is a piece of work over 40 years old relevant at this time.
The answer lies in part in the enigmatic timelessness of the piece. Something becomes a classic because of its ability to endure by translating itself across time. This is a trait inherent in fine art. It is so because the best art seats itself in the basic foundation of the human story. Significant art seeks to know something essential to human nature, it worries itself and us with the making of the human condition. This art can be cathartic, it can disturb, remind or simply call into view from the shadows of unconsciousness; elephants on universal tables.
Created in the historical context of the Black Arts Movement, (BAM), Flowers for the Trashman, is an example of work consciously intended to be preformative, created for and about subjects/issues paramount to the formation/sustaining of independent black communities concerned with self articulation/reflection that intends to provoke action. I submit Marvin X's work also passes the litmus for fine art. In it's reflection of intimate estrangement it probes familial relations on the very personal and universal /archetypal level. The work is aligned with an issue of humanness that will be dated only by a shift in the human condition itself. Thus the work satisfies the specific requirements of its lens: black male relationships, while working beyond this specificity/boundary as well.
The reflection of Blacks in America mirrors the societal dilemmas of American society writ large. While essentially an introspection of father/son communication, Flowers for the Trashman is also a vehicle to examine intimacy, isolation in company, and boundaries on a much larger level. The very specific gender of the piece is also fluid; it is the situation itself that is compelling and larger than the beautifully simple text.
The main character asks, "How can we be so far apart...? So far apart, yet so close---so close together?" This is the interrogation the work attempts. It is voiced in the final quarter of the piece and sums its query emphatically. This question should be of interest to us as a nation as we cry for change. If we knew the answer perhaps the illusive unity we seek could manifest. If we asked this in our houses, our churches, our academic spaces, halls of government, in our communities, out on the turfs of the world where we all breathe the same air; what could we learn about appreciation of difference, each other and the path to unity?
We are in the information age. We hyper communicate in multi modes yet in the midst of this explosion of ways in which to communicate; the art of intimate human exchange goes unattended. We get our news from the corporate media and other secondary sources, we miss the primacy of getting our news from each other. We travel together though the event of our lives with earphones, cell phones, and laptops. We socially network with people we will never meet and who may not be the people they claim to be. Yet our co-workers, neighbors, partners, children, parents go unknown in large and significant ways. The way we are is easy to see, the how we got there, often dies with us. The average child can tell you more about his favorite artist than he can his own family. The everyday adult knows how to talk at children but spends little time talking to them as equal humans with viable information about themselves and their environment to offer. We are alone, traveling together on a blue ball spinning in space, more connected than ever before, and yet we are alone, isolated in our individual stories of self, without an appreciation of how the individual stories inform each other we suffer in isolation.
There is space in Marvin's transparent working of the very personal for us to consciously consider the lack of intimate communication on a variety of levels. All these levels serve the function in BAM directives and serve as a space for introspection on unity and its possibility from the personal to the universal.
I am choosing to direct the piece out of my own passion for communication, my appreciation for the artistry of my mentor and appreciation of the classics. An active love of the classic demands the work be kept alive and allowed to do its work. By mounting classic art we enable its longevity by gifting it to new generations.
"If I don't know the folks on the page; I won’t direct the work."
WordSlanger
Ayodele Nzinga , MA , MFA
Prescott Joseph Center For Community Enhancement
presents
A tribute to Black History Month
A preview of the 2009 season at The Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater
FLOWERS FOR THE TRASHMAN
A one act play
By
Marvin X
Directed by WordSlanger
&
An excerpt from
MAMA AT TWILIGHT:
Love by Death
Written and Directed by
Ayodele “WordSlanger” Nzinga
February 22, 2009- Only
2Pm Matinee: $10:00 at the door
5Pm Show: $10:00 at the door
$5.00 in Advance
Reservations encouraged.
Author discussion follows each production.
920 Peralta St. Oakland CA
510-457-8999/510-208-1912 tickets-information-reservations.
A We Inhale Production
Or
Pull Yo Pants Up
Fa da Black President
The Soulful Musings of a North American African Thinker
MARVIN X
Black Bird Press, Berkeley
Marvin X: " Poet, Playwright & The Undisputed King of Black Consciousness"
Written by RBGStreetScholar on Apr-26-07 8:34pm
From: rbg-street-scholar-multi-media-e-zine.blogspot.com
Marvin X in Harlem, 1968
Marvin X—born Marvin Ellis Jackmon on May 29, 1944 in Fowler, California—attended Fresno at Edison High, Oakland City College (now Merritt College) receiving an associate degree in 1964. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panther Party, were fellow students at Oakland City College. Marvin also received a BA and MA in English at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University).
Marvin X has taught at such colleges and universities as Fresno State University, San Francisco State University, University of California -- Berkeley and San Diego, University of Nevada, Reno, Mills College, Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland.
As part of Black Arts Movement (BAM), Marvin, along with playwright Ed Bullins in 1967, established The Black House and Black Arts / West, a theatre in San Francisco's Fillmore district.
Marvin X's first play is titled Flowers for the Trashman (also produced with an alternate title, Taking Care of Business. The play's protagonist, Joe Simmons, an African American college student, finds himself in jail with Wes, whom the playwright describes as "his hoodlum friend."
Marvin X spoke from a Muslim perspective on race relations in America in his play The Black Bird (Al Tair Aswad
Marvin X's most recent production, One Day in the Life, performed by his Recovery Theatre, provides a comprehensive view into his own life as a black man using crack cocaine as well as the devastating sphere of hurt, death, and destruction that came to many loved ones in his life.
More On Marvin X:
Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi…He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English—the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi….
—Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City
Still the undisputed king of black consciousness!
—Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Think Tank
Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because by re-contextualizing it will add another layer of attention to Marvin X’s incredibly rich body of work. Muslim American literature begins with Marvin X. (Note: The University of California , Berkeley , Bancroft Library, recently acquired the archives of Marvin X.)
—Dr. Mohja Kahf, Dept. of English & Middle East & Islamic Studies,University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
In terms of modernist and innovative, he’s centuries ahead of anybody I know.
—Dennis Leroy Moore, Brecht Forum, New York
Marvelous Marvin X!
—Dr. Cornel West, Princeton University
Courageous and outrageous! He walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal.
—James W. Sweeney, Oakland CA
His writing is orgasmic!
—Fahizah Alim, Sacramento Bee
Jeremiah, I presume.
—Rudolph Lewis, www.nathanielturner.com
He’s Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. His play One Day In the Life is the most powerful drama I’ve seen.
—Ishmael Reed
One of the founders and innovators of the revolutionary school of African writing.
—Amiri Baraka
He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experiences in a lyrical way.
—James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer
An outspoken critic of American economic, social and cultural discrimination of African Americans at home and Third World peoples abroad.
—Dr. Julius E. Thompson, African American Review
Although Marvin X emerged from an extremely politicized era and enthusiastically confronted the issues of the day, his work is basically personal and religious and remains most effective on that level. It should remain relevant long after issues are resolved, if ever, and long after slogans and polemics are forgotten.
—Lorenzo Thomas, Dept. of English, University of Houston, Texas
Source: ChickenBones: A Journal
posted 29 October 2006
Marvin X Table @ ChickenBones
Marvin X is available for lecture/readings. Write to him at jmarvinx@yahoo.com , or 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702.
Flowers for the Trashman, A One-Act Play
Author: Marvin X
Director's Notes
Author's first produced (Drama Department, San Francisco State University, 1965) and published play. Included in the Black Fire anthology, 1968. An example of Black Arts Movement work that seeks to render issues of immediate importance to the Black Community. It is a performative work that has a sharp relevance to the relationships that shape and plague manhood in North American African communities today. As in all good art the theme, while applied specifically, has universal implications that manage to break even the imposed strictures of gender within the piece to speak elegantly about separation within intimates spaces.
Director: Ayodele " WordSlanger" Nzinga, MFA
Artistic Director of the Sister Thea Bowman Theater, The Lower Bottom Playaz, Associate Director Recovery Theater and student of Marvin X.
Marvin X wrote Flower's for the Trashman in the turbulent 1960's. It is his first produced and published play. When asked permission to stage the piece he asked, "Why?" Why is a piece of work over 40 years old relevant at this time.
The answer lies in part in the enigmatic timelessness of the piece. Something becomes a classic because of its ability to endure by translating itself across time. This is a trait inherent in fine art. It is so because the best art seats itself in the basic foundation of the human story. Significant art seeks to know something essential to human nature, it worries itself and us with the making of the human condition. This art can be cathartic, it can disturb, remind or simply call into view from the shadows of unconsciousness; elephants on universal tables.
Created in the historical context of the Black Arts Movement, (BAM), Flowers for the Trashman, is an example of work consciously intended to be preformative, created for and about subjects/issues paramount to the formation/sustaining of independent black communities concerned with self articulation/reflection that intends to provoke action. I submit Marvin X's work also passes the litmus for fine art. In it's reflection of intimate estrangement it probes familial relations on the very personal and universal /archetypal level. The work is aligned with an issue of humanness that will be dated only by a shift in the human condition itself. Thus the work satisfies the specific requirements of its lens: black male relationships, while working beyond this specificity/boundary as well.
The reflection of Blacks in America mirrors the societal dilemmas of American society writ large. While essentially an introspection of father/son communication, Flowers for the Trashman is also a vehicle to examine intimacy, isolation in company, and boundaries on a much larger level. The very specific gender of the piece is also fluid; it is the situation itself that is compelling and larger than the beautifully simple text.
The main character asks, "How can we be so far apart...? So far apart, yet so close---so close together?" This is the interrogation the work attempts. It is voiced in the final quarter of the piece and sums its query emphatically. This question should be of interest to us as a nation as we cry for change. If we knew the answer perhaps the illusive unity we seek could manifest. If we asked this in our houses, our churches, our academic spaces, halls of government, in our communities, out on the turfs of the world where we all breathe the same air; what could we learn about appreciation of difference, each other and the path to unity?
We are in the information age. We hyper communicate in multi modes yet in the midst of this explosion of ways in which to communicate; the art of intimate human exchange goes unattended. We get our news from the corporate media and other secondary sources, we miss the primacy of getting our news from each other. We travel together though the event of our lives with earphones, cell phones, and laptops. We socially network with people we will never meet and who may not be the people they claim to be. Yet our co-workers, neighbors, partners, children, parents go unknown in large and significant ways. The way we are is easy to see, the how we got there, often dies with us. The average child can tell you more about his favorite artist than he can his own family. The everyday adult knows how to talk at children but spends little time talking to them as equal humans with viable information about themselves and their environment to offer. We are alone, traveling together on a blue ball spinning in space, more connected than ever before, and yet we are alone, isolated in our individual stories of self, without an appreciation of how the individual stories inform each other we suffer in isolation.
There is space in Marvin's transparent working of the very personal for us to consciously consider the lack of intimate communication on a variety of levels. All these levels serve the function in BAM directives and serve as a space for introspection on unity and its possibility from the personal to the universal.
I am choosing to direct the piece out of my own passion for communication, my appreciation for the artistry of my mentor and appreciation of the classics. An active love of the classic demands the work be kept alive and allowed to do its work. By mounting classic art we enable its longevity by gifting it to new generations.
"If I don't know the folks on the page; I won’t direct the work."
WordSlanger
Ayodele Nzinga , MA , MFA
Prescott Joseph Center For Community Enhancement
presents
A tribute to Black History Month
A preview of the 2009 season at The Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater
FLOWERS FOR THE TRASHMAN
A one act play
By
Marvin X
Directed by WordSlanger
&
An excerpt from
MAMA AT TWILIGHT:
Love by Death
Written and Directed by
Ayodele “WordSlanger” Nzinga
February 22, 2009- Only
2Pm Matinee: $10:00 at the door
5Pm Show: $10:00 at the door
$5.00 in Advance
Reservations encouraged.
Author discussion follows each production.
920 Peralta St. Oakland CA
510-457-8999/510-208-1912 tickets-information-reservations.
A We Inhale Production
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2009 9:34:43 AM
Subject: Black History at the Prescott Center
Press Release: Mama at Twilight: Death by Love
Flowers for the Trashman by Marvin X
For Immediate Release
Kill February 23, 2009
Contact: Ayodele Nzinga
510-457-8999
wordslanger@gmail.com
www.myspace.com/yardtheater
Mama at Twilight: Death by Love, is an intimate expose' of a black family dealing with AIDS in the middle of their struggle to be a family. The Lower Bottom Playaz, open their 9th season at the Sister Thea Bowman Theater with this play by troupe founder/director, Ayodele WordSlanger Nzinga, MA, MFA.
This play debuted in limited engagement last season at the Sr. Thea, it played to sold out audiences that continue to discuss an evening of theater crafted to provoke thought and action in the audience.
This leanly crafted chronicle of a family implosion promises to be one of the best talking points of the summer as WordSlanger pokes into firmly closed closets to suggest conversations we have neglected. The topic is timely, the language breathtaking, the acting stellar; this is The Lower Bottom Playaz and WordSlanger at
their best.
The Lower Bottom Playaz offer a preview of the first shows of the season in a one day tribute to Black History Month hosted at the Prescott Joseph Center For Community Enhancement, 920 Peralta St February 22, 2009. They will offer a One Act, Flowers for the Trashman by Marvin X and an excerpt of, Mama at Twilight: Love by Death. There will be a 2: 00PM and a 5:00PM showing with an author discussion to follow. The excerpt of Love by Death, features Lower Bottom Playaz; Adimu, Wolf Hawk Jaguar, Madyun, (Hairdoo), Stan Doe Boy Hunt, (Turf Starz) reprising their original roles.
Flowers for the Trashman is a Black Arts Movement classic that is the West coast production of a Marvin X play. His short play Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam, was produced late last year at Woody King's New Federal Theatre in New York.
These plays deal with critical issues North American Africans must grapple with now rather than later, AIDS and parent/child relationships. The plays offer an opportunity for dialogue and healing.
This is an indoor showing. Call 510-208-1912/510-457-8999 to make phone reservations or information. Limited seating: $10 at door, $5 in advance, no one turned away.
Subject: Black History at the Prescott Center
Press Release: Mama at Twilight: Death by Love
Flowers for the Trashman by Marvin X
For Immediate Release
Kill February 23, 2009
Contact: Ayodele Nzinga
510-457-8999
wordslanger@gmail.com
www.myspace.com/yardtheater
Mama at Twilight: Death by Love, is an intimate expose' of a black family dealing with AIDS in the middle of their struggle to be a family. The Lower Bottom Playaz, open their 9th season at the Sister Thea Bowman Theater with this play by troupe founder/director, Ayodele WordSlanger Nzinga, MA, MFA.
This play debuted in limited engagement last season at the Sr. Thea, it played to sold out audiences that continue to discuss an evening of theater crafted to provoke thought and action in the audience.
This leanly crafted chronicle of a family implosion promises to be one of the best talking points of the summer as WordSlanger pokes into firmly closed closets to suggest conversations we have neglected. The topic is timely, the language breathtaking, the acting stellar; this is The Lower Bottom Playaz and WordSlanger at
their best.
The Lower Bottom Playaz offer a preview of the first shows of the season in a one day tribute to Black History Month hosted at the Prescott Joseph Center For Community Enhancement, 920 Peralta St February 22, 2009. They will offer a One Act, Flowers for the Trashman by Marvin X and an excerpt of, Mama at Twilight: Love by Death. There will be a 2: 00PM and a 5:00PM showing with an author discussion to follow. The excerpt of Love by Death, features Lower Bottom Playaz; Adimu, Wolf Hawk Jaguar, Madyun, (Hairdoo), Stan Doe Boy Hunt, (Turf Starz) reprising their original roles.
Flowers for the Trashman is a Black Arts Movement classic that is the West coast production of a Marvin X play. His short play Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam, was produced late last year at Woody King's New Federal Theatre in New York.
These plays deal with critical issues North American Africans must grapple with now rather than later, AIDS and parent/child relationships. The plays offer an opportunity for dialogue and healing.
This is an indoor showing. Call 510-208-1912/510-457-8999 to make phone reservations or information. Limited seating: $10 at door, $5 in advance, no one turned away.
Friday, February 13, 2009
In Celebration
Of
The Honorable John Douimbia
Teacher of Black Men
Sunrise December 12, 1924
Sunset December 12, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Duggans Funeral Service
3434 17th Street
San Francisco CA
11AM
Minister Marvin X, Officiating
John Turner Douimbia
John Douimbia, founder of the 1980 Black Men's Conference at the Oakland Auditorium, was born December 12, 1924, Dallas, Texas. He was educated in Texas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. He was also a merchant seaman who traveled the world.
He was affectionately known as John D or The Count because of his immaculate manner of dress. For a time he lived in Harlem and was a hustling friend of Malcolm X. After his release from prison and joining the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X came to Los Angeles and reconnected with John. John invited Malcolm to a meeting packed with white socialists. Malcolm was impressed with John's organizing and asked if he would help organize the temple in San Francisco.. John told Malcolm when he returned from overseas he would look into the matter, which he did. He is one of the pioneers of Mosque 26.
John had a long held dream of a secular organization of Black Men. For over twenty years he discussed his dream with various Bay Area brothers, but nothing happened until he ran into Marvin X, and together they planned and organized the Black Men's Conference, 1980. Participants included Oba T's Shaka, Dr. Wade Nobles, Paul Cobb, Dr. Yusef Bey, Dr.. Lige Dailey, Michael Lange, Abdul Sabri, Charlie Walker, Norman Brown, Kermit Scott, Leroy James and others. Dezzie Woods-Jones, Betty King and Edith Austin also helped organize the event.
The idea went coast to coast with brothers organizing similar meetings in Philadelphia and New York. Fifteen years later, Minister Farakhan organized the Million Man March.
John Douimbia dressed immaculately every day as he walked the streets of San Francisco. The only man who out dressed John was his friend, Mayor Willie Brown.
His prophetic last words were told to Marvin X and Rashid Easley, "Watch that guy Obama." "When John told us to watch Obama we didn't know who he was, had never heard of him," says Marvin X. John was a perennial figure in San Francisco politics and a long-time member and officer of the NAACP. The Black men and women of the Bay Area shall miss him dearly but shall never forget his wisdom and guidance.
Order of Service
Processional Musical Prelude
Prayer Minister Marvin X
Scripture Reading
Holy Qur'an Abdul Sabri
The Obituary Ptah Allah El
Musical Selection Earl Davis
Remarks
Eulogy Minister Marvin X
Recessional
Of
The Honorable John Douimbia
Teacher of Black Men
Sunrise December 12, 1924
Sunset December 12, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Duggans Funeral Service
3434 17th Street
San Francisco CA
11AM
Minister Marvin X, Officiating
John Turner Douimbia
John Douimbia, founder of the 1980 Black Men's Conference at the Oakland Auditorium, was born December 12, 1924, Dallas, Texas. He was educated in Texas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. He was also a merchant seaman who traveled the world.
He was affectionately known as John D or The Count because of his immaculate manner of dress. For a time he lived in Harlem and was a hustling friend of Malcolm X. After his release from prison and joining the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X came to Los Angeles and reconnected with John. John invited Malcolm to a meeting packed with white socialists. Malcolm was impressed with John's organizing and asked if he would help organize the temple in San Francisco.. John told Malcolm when he returned from overseas he would look into the matter, which he did. He is one of the pioneers of Mosque 26.
John had a long held dream of a secular organization of Black Men. For over twenty years he discussed his dream with various Bay Area brothers, but nothing happened until he ran into Marvin X, and together they planned and organized the Black Men's Conference, 1980. Participants included Oba T's Shaka, Dr. Wade Nobles, Paul Cobb, Dr. Yusef Bey, Dr.. Lige Dailey, Michael Lange, Abdul Sabri, Charlie Walker, Norman Brown, Kermit Scott, Leroy James and others. Dezzie Woods-Jones, Betty King and Edith Austin also helped organize the event.
The idea went coast to coast with brothers organizing similar meetings in Philadelphia and New York. Fifteen years later, Minister Farakhan organized the Million Man March.
John Douimbia dressed immaculately every day as he walked the streets of San Francisco. The only man who out dressed John was his friend, Mayor Willie Brown.
His prophetic last words were told to Marvin X and Rashid Easley, "Watch that guy Obama." "When John told us to watch Obama we didn't know who he was, had never heard of him," says Marvin X. John was a perennial figure in San Francisco politics and a long-time member and officer of the NAACP. The Black men and women of the Bay Area shall miss him dearly but shall never forget his wisdom and guidance.
Order of Service
Processional Musical Prelude
Prayer Minister Marvin X
Scripture Reading
Holy Qur'an Abdul Sabri
The Obituary Ptah Allah El
Musical Selection Earl Davis
Remarks
Eulogy Minister Marvin X
Recessional
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Flowers for the Trashman by Marvin X
Prescott Joseph Center For Community Enhancement
presents
A tribute to Black History Month
A preview of the 2009 season at The Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater
FLOWERS FOR THE TRASHMAN
A one act play
By
Marvin X
Directed by WordSlanger
&
An excerpt from
MAMA AT TWILIGHT:
Love by Death
Written and Directed by
Ayodele “WordSlanger” Nzinga
February 22, 2009- Only
2Pm Matinee: $10:00 at the door
5Pm Show: $10:00 at the door
$5.00 in Advance
Reservations encouraged.
Author discussion follows each production.
920 Peralta St. Oakland CA
510-457-8999/ 510-208-1912 tickets-information -reservations.
A We Inhale Production
Flowers for the Trashman, A One-Act Play
Author: Marvin X
Director's Notes
Author's first produced (Drama Department, San Francisco State University, 1965) and published play. Included in the Black Fire anthology, 1968. An example of Black Arts Movement work that seeks to render issues of immediate importance to the Black Community. It is a performative work that has a sharp relevance to the relationships that shape and plague manhood in North American African communities today. As in all good art the theme, while applied specifically, has universal implications that manage to break even the imposed strictures of gender within the piece to speak elegantly about separation within intimates spaces.
Director: Ayodele " WordSlanger" Nzinga, MFA
Artistic Director of the Sister Thea Bowman Theater, The Lower Bottom Playaz, Associate Director Recovery Theater and student of Marvin X.
Marvin X wrote Flower's for the Trashman in the turbulent 1960's. It is his first produced and published play. When asked permission to stage the piece he asked, "Why?" Why is a piece of work over 40 years old relevant at this time.
The answer lies in part in the enigmatic timelessness of the piece. Something becomes a classic because of its ability to endure by translating itself across time. This is a trait inherent in fine art. It is so because the best art seats itself in the basic foundation of the human story. Significant art seeks to know something essential to human nature, it worries itself and us with the making of the human condition. This art can be cathartic, it can disturb, remind or simply call into view from the shadows of unconsciousness; elephants on universal tables.
Created in the historical context of the Black Arts Movement, (BAM), Flowers for the Trashman, is an example of work consciously intended to be preformative, created for and about subjects/issues paramount to the formation/sustainin g of independent black communities concerned with self articulation/ reflection that intends to provoke action. I submit Marvin X's work also passes the litmus for fine art. In it's reflection of intimate estrangement it probes familial relations on the very personal and universal /archetypal level. The work is aligned with an issue of humanness that will be dated only by a shift in the human condition itself. Thus the work satisfies the specific requirements of its lens: black male relationships, while working beyond this specificity/ boundary as well.
The reflection of Blacks in America mirrors the societal dilemmas of American society writ large. While essentially an introspection of father/son communication, Flowers for the Trashman is also a vehicle to examine intimacy, isolation in company, and boundaries on a much larger level. The very specific gender of the piece is also fluid; it is the situation itself that is compelling and larger than the beautifully simple text.
The main character asks, "How can we be so far apart...? So far apart, yet so close---so close together?" This is the interrogation the work attempts. It is voiced in the final quarter of the piece and sums its query emphatically. This question should be of interest to us as a nation as we cry for change. If we knew the answer perhaps the illusive unity we seek could manifest. If we asked this in our houses, our churches, our academic spaces, halls of government, in our communities, out on the turfs of the world where we all breathe the same air; what could we learn about appreciation of difference, each other and the path to unity?
We are in the information age. We hyper communicate in multi modes yet in the midst of this explosion of ways in which to communicate; the art of intimate human exchange goes unattended. We get our news from the corporate media and other secondary sources, we miss the primacy of getting our news from each other. We travel together though the event of our lives with earphones, cell phones, and laptops. We socially network with people we will never meet and who may not be the people they claim to be. Yet our co-workers, neighbors, partners, children, parents go unknown in large and significant ways. The way we are is easy to see, the how we got there, often dies with us. The average child can tell you more about his favorite artist than he can his own family. The everyday adult knows how to talk at children but spends little time talking to them as equal humans with viable information about themselves and their environment to offer. We are alone, traveling together on a blue ball spinning in space, more connected than ever before, and yet we are alone, isolated in our individual stories of self, without an appreciation of how the individual stories inform each other we suffer in isolation.
There is space in Marvin's transparent working of the very personal for us to consciously consider the lack of intimate communication on a variety of levels. All these levels serve the function in BAM directives and serve as a space for introspection on unity and its possibility from the personal to the universal.
I am choosing to direct the piece out of my own passion for communication, my appreciation for the artistry of my mentor and appreciation of the classics. An active love of the classic demands the work be kept alive and allowed to do its work. By mounting classic art we enable its longevity by gifting it to new generations.
"If I don't know the folks on the page; I won’t direct the work."
WordSlanger
Ayodele Nzinga , MA , MFA
Black Arts West Tonight
San Francisco's Recovery Theatre opened last night in the Tenderloin district with plays by Geoffrey Grier, The Spot, Ayodele Nzingha, Death by Love and Marvin X's BAM classic Flowers for the Trashman. Nzingha and Grier are students and co-workers of Marvin X, Nzingha since 1981 when she directed the Laney College production of his play In The Name of Love, a poetic drama that Eldridge Cleaver said returned theatre to the Shakespeare tradition. Grier has been associated with Dr. M since 1998 when he performed the role of Huey Newton in One Day in the Life, X's docudrama of his Crack addiction and recovery. Grier now heads San Francisco's Recovery Theatre, an offshoot of X's Recovery Theatre. He is the producer of Night at the Black hawk as the three play production is called, in honor of the famous jazz club which was a few doors down the street from the theatre at 134 Golden Gate between Leavenworth and Jones.
Grier and Nzingha present selections from their full length dramas while X's Flowers is a one-act first produced by the Drama department at San Francisco State University, 1965. Flowers, along with Ed Bullins' How Do You Do and It Has No Choice became repertory works when Bullins and X founded Black Arts West in the Fillmore district, 1966, the west coast counter-part of Baraka's Harlem Black Arts Repertory Theatre.
Nzingha's Death by Love is a touching drama about how HIV/AIDS affects the family. Grier's the Spot is a ritual drama of life on the corner and the impact of prison on the family. Flowers grapples with the father and son relationship. The plays are a painful celebration of Black culture. There is irony in Flowers since the actors are fatherless young men. They are no doubt touched by the play. Since they are brothers in real life, there is a natural unity between them, along with skilled acting learned from their mother, director Ayodele Nzingha. They do not rush their lines and we feel the silences. Ayo's daughter Ayo is the daughter in Death by Love, making this production a family affair.
In the Spot, Stefon Williams is outstanding as father and former street corner hood. His voice reminds one of actors Sonny Jim and James Earl Jones. Stefon opens the Spot with the Sam Cooke classic A Change is Gonna Come.
Bay Area folks should not miss this Night At The Black Hawk which runs tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m. Call 519-355-6339 for information.
Prescott Joseph Center For Community Enhancement
presents
A tribute to Black History Month
A preview of the 2009 season at The Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater
FLOWERS FOR THE TRASHMAN
A one act play
By
Marvin X
Directed by WordSlanger
&
An excerpt from
MAMA AT TWILIGHT:
Love by Death
Written and Directed by
Ayodele “WordSlanger” Nzinga
February 22, 2009- Only
2Pm Matinee: $10:00 at the door
5Pm Show: $10:00 at the door
$5.00 in Advance
Reservations encouraged.
Author discussion follows each production.
920 Peralta St. Oakland CA
510-457-8999/ 510-208-1912 tickets-information -reservations.
A We Inhale Production
Flowers for the Trashman, A One-Act Play
Author: Marvin X
Director's Notes
Author's first produced (Drama Department, San Francisco State University, 1965) and published play. Included in the Black Fire anthology, 1968. An example of Black Arts Movement work that seeks to render issues of immediate importance to the Black Community. It is a performative work that has a sharp relevance to the relationships that shape and plague manhood in North American African communities today. As in all good art the theme, while applied specifically, has universal implications that manage to break even the imposed strictures of gender within the piece to speak elegantly about separation within intimates spaces.
Director: Ayodele " WordSlanger" Nzinga, MFA
Artistic Director of the Sister Thea Bowman Theater, The Lower Bottom Playaz, Associate Director Recovery Theater and student of Marvin X.
Marvin X wrote Flower's for the Trashman in the turbulent 1960's. It is his first produced and published play. When asked permission to stage the piece he asked, "Why?" Why is a piece of work over 40 years old relevant at this time.
The answer lies in part in the enigmatic timelessness of the piece. Something becomes a classic because of its ability to endure by translating itself across time. This is a trait inherent in fine art. It is so because the best art seats itself in the basic foundation of the human story. Significant art seeks to know something essential to human nature, it worries itself and us with the making of the human condition. This art can be cathartic, it can disturb, remind or simply call into view from the shadows of unconsciousness; elephants on universal tables.
Created in the historical context of the Black Arts Movement, (BAM), Flowers for the Trashman, is an example of work consciously intended to be preformative, created for and about subjects/issues paramount to the formation/sustainin g of independent black communities concerned with self articulation/ reflection that intends to provoke action. I submit Marvin X's work also passes the litmus for fine art. In it's reflection of intimate estrangement it probes familial relations on the very personal and universal /archetypal level. The work is aligned with an issue of humanness that will be dated only by a shift in the human condition itself. Thus the work satisfies the specific requirements of its lens: black male relationships, while working beyond this specificity/ boundary as well.
The reflection of Blacks in America mirrors the societal dilemmas of American society writ large. While essentially an introspection of father/son communication, Flowers for the Trashman is also a vehicle to examine intimacy, isolation in company, and boundaries on a much larger level. The very specific gender of the piece is also fluid; it is the situation itself that is compelling and larger than the beautifully simple text.
The main character asks, "How can we be so far apart...? So far apart, yet so close---so close together?" This is the interrogation the work attempts. It is voiced in the final quarter of the piece and sums its query emphatically. This question should be of interest to us as a nation as we cry for change. If we knew the answer perhaps the illusive unity we seek could manifest. If we asked this in our houses, our churches, our academic spaces, halls of government, in our communities, out on the turfs of the world where we all breathe the same air; what could we learn about appreciation of difference, each other and the path to unity?
We are in the information age. We hyper communicate in multi modes yet in the midst of this explosion of ways in which to communicate; the art of intimate human exchange goes unattended. We get our news from the corporate media and other secondary sources, we miss the primacy of getting our news from each other. We travel together though the event of our lives with earphones, cell phones, and laptops. We socially network with people we will never meet and who may not be the people they claim to be. Yet our co-workers, neighbors, partners, children, parents go unknown in large and significant ways. The way we are is easy to see, the how we got there, often dies with us. The average child can tell you more about his favorite artist than he can his own family. The everyday adult knows how to talk at children but spends little time talking to them as equal humans with viable information about themselves and their environment to offer. We are alone, traveling together on a blue ball spinning in space, more connected than ever before, and yet we are alone, isolated in our individual stories of self, without an appreciation of how the individual stories inform each other we suffer in isolation.
There is space in Marvin's transparent working of the very personal for us to consciously consider the lack of intimate communication on a variety of levels. All these levels serve the function in BAM directives and serve as a space for introspection on unity and its possibility from the personal to the universal.
I am choosing to direct the piece out of my own passion for communication, my appreciation for the artistry of my mentor and appreciation of the classics. An active love of the classic demands the work be kept alive and allowed to do its work. By mounting classic art we enable its longevity by gifting it to new generations.
"If I don't know the folks on the page; I won’t direct the work."
WordSlanger
Ayodele Nzinga , MA , MFA
Black Arts West Tonight
San Francisco's Recovery Theatre opened last night in the Tenderloin district with plays by Geoffrey Grier, The Spot, Ayodele Nzingha, Death by Love and Marvin X's BAM classic Flowers for the Trashman. Nzingha and Grier are students and co-workers of Marvin X, Nzingha since 1981 when she directed the Laney College production of his play In The Name of Love, a poetic drama that Eldridge Cleaver said returned theatre to the Shakespeare tradition. Grier has been associated with Dr. M since 1998 when he performed the role of Huey Newton in One Day in the Life, X's docudrama of his Crack addiction and recovery. Grier now heads San Francisco's Recovery Theatre, an offshoot of X's Recovery Theatre. He is the producer of Night at the Black hawk as the three play production is called, in honor of the famous jazz club which was a few doors down the street from the theatre at 134 Golden Gate between Leavenworth and Jones.
Grier and Nzingha present selections from their full length dramas while X's Flowers is a one-act first produced by the Drama department at San Francisco State University, 1965. Flowers, along with Ed Bullins' How Do You Do and It Has No Choice became repertory works when Bullins and X founded Black Arts West in the Fillmore district, 1966, the west coast counter-part of Baraka's Harlem Black Arts Repertory Theatre.
Nzingha's Death by Love is a touching drama about how HIV/AIDS affects the family. Grier's the Spot is a ritual drama of life on the corner and the impact of prison on the family. Flowers grapples with the father and son relationship. The plays are a painful celebration of Black culture. There is irony in Flowers since the actors are fatherless young men. They are no doubt touched by the play. Since they are brothers in real life, there is a natural unity between them, along with skilled acting learned from their mother, director Ayodele Nzingha. They do not rush their lines and we feel the silences. Ayo's daughter Ayo is the daughter in Death by Love, making this production a family affair.
In the Spot, Stefon Williams is outstanding as father and former street corner hood. His voice reminds one of actors Sonny Jim and James Earl Jones. Stefon opens the Spot with the Sam Cooke classic A Change is Gonna Come.
Bay Area folks should not miss this Night At The Black Hawk which runs tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m. Call 519-355-6339 for information.
Calling all black men
come in come in come
mr. black democrat republication
revolutionary wife beater lover
dead beat dad baby mama
pan african kemet negro
post black in the closet
undercover brother
come in come in come.
dope fiend christian muslim
communist socialist
jah rasta
come in come come in....
--marvin x
The Black men of the Bay area will hold a memorial service for the Honorable John Douimbia, founder of the Black Men's Conference, Oakland California, 1980, Oakland Auditorium.
The memorial service will be held Thursday, February 12, 11am, Duggin's Funeral Service, 3434 17th Street at Valencia, San Francisco. For more information call 415-431-4900 or 510-355-6339.
The Honorable John Douimbia, founder of the Black Men’s Conference
Makes Transition
John Douimbia, founder of the 1980 Black Men’s Conference at the Oakland Auditorium, made his transition recently. It appears he had been dead for several weeks before the coroner was notified, and then only after a friend arrived from out of town to inquire about him. Apparently neighbors and friends had been going in and out of his home “tomb robbing” while he lay dead.
A former merchant seaman, he was affectionately known as John D. Before moving to the West coast, John D, also known as the Count, lived in Harlem and was a hustling friend of Malcolm X. After his release from prison and joining the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X came to Los Angeles and reconnected with John. John invited Malcolm to a meeting packed with white socialists. Malcolm was impressed with John’s organizing and asked if he would help organize the temple in San Francisco. John told Malcolm when he returned from overseas he would look into the matter, which he did. He is one of the pioneers of Mosque 26, although many would consider him a so-called hypocrite, since that was the label put on all those with independent thoughts. John had a long held dream of a secular organization of Black Men. For over twenty years he discussed his dream with various Bay Area brothers, but nothing happened until he ran into Marvin X, and together they planned and organized the Black Men’s Conference, 1980. Participants included Dr. Nathan Hare, Oba T’s Shaka, Dr. Wade Nobles, Paul Cobb, Dr. Yusef Bey, Dr. Lige Dailey, Michael Lange and others. Dezzie Woods-Jones, Betty King and Edith Austin also helped organize the event. The idea went coast to coast with brothers organizing similar meetings in Philadelphia and New York. Fifteen years later, Minister Farakhan organized the Million Man March.
John Douimbia dressed immaculately every day as he walked the streets of San Francisco. The only man who out dressed John was his friend Willie Brown.
His prophetic last words were told to Marvin X and Rashid Easley, “Watch that guy Obama.” “When John told us to watch Obama we didn’t know who he was, had never heard of him,” says Marvin X. John was a perennial figure in San Francisco politics and was a long-time member and officer of the NAACP. The Black men of the Bay Area are eternally indebted to John D.
Funeral arrangements are pending. Call Marvin X for more information: 510-355-6339.
come in come in come
mr. black democrat republication
revolutionary wife beater lover
dead beat dad baby mama
pan african kemet negro
post black in the closet
undercover brother
come in come in come.
dope fiend christian muslim
communist socialist
jah rasta
come in come come in....
--marvin x
The Black men of the Bay area will hold a memorial service for the Honorable John Douimbia, founder of the Black Men's Conference, Oakland California, 1980, Oakland Auditorium.
The memorial service will be held Thursday, February 12, 11am, Duggin's Funeral Service, 3434 17th Street at Valencia, San Francisco. For more information call 415-431-4900 or 510-355-6339.
The Honorable John Douimbia, founder of the Black Men’s Conference
Makes Transition
John Douimbia, founder of the 1980 Black Men’s Conference at the Oakland Auditorium, made his transition recently. It appears he had been dead for several weeks before the coroner was notified, and then only after a friend arrived from out of town to inquire about him. Apparently neighbors and friends had been going in and out of his home “tomb robbing” while he lay dead.
A former merchant seaman, he was affectionately known as John D. Before moving to the West coast, John D, also known as the Count, lived in Harlem and was a hustling friend of Malcolm X. After his release from prison and joining the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X came to Los Angeles and reconnected with John. John invited Malcolm to a meeting packed with white socialists. Malcolm was impressed with John’s organizing and asked if he would help organize the temple in San Francisco. John told Malcolm when he returned from overseas he would look into the matter, which he did. He is one of the pioneers of Mosque 26, although many would consider him a so-called hypocrite, since that was the label put on all those with independent thoughts. John had a long held dream of a secular organization of Black Men. For over twenty years he discussed his dream with various Bay Area brothers, but nothing happened until he ran into Marvin X, and together they planned and organized the Black Men’s Conference, 1980. Participants included Dr. Nathan Hare, Oba T’s Shaka, Dr. Wade Nobles, Paul Cobb, Dr. Yusef Bey, Dr. Lige Dailey, Michael Lange and others. Dezzie Woods-Jones, Betty King and Edith Austin also helped organize the event. The idea went coast to coast with brothers organizing similar meetings in Philadelphia and New York. Fifteen years later, Minister Farakhan organized the Million Man March.
John Douimbia dressed immaculately every day as he walked the streets of San Francisco. The only man who out dressed John was his friend Willie Brown.
His prophetic last words were told to Marvin X and Rashid Easley, “Watch that guy Obama.” “When John told us to watch Obama we didn’t know who he was, had never heard of him,” says Marvin X. John was a perennial figure in San Francisco politics and was a long-time member and officer of the NAACP. The Black men of the Bay Area are eternally indebted to John D.
Funeral arrangements are pending. Call Marvin X for more information: 510-355-6339.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Notes on Teaching Youth
Notes on Teaching Youth
By
Marvin X
Be humble at all times, your future is in your hands, no matter what else, you will not be here always, a new generation is upon us that must be taught our traditions, all the technology of the global village, high finance, the essentials of capitalism no matter if we call ourselves Communist, Socialist, Pan African, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu.
There must be some economic system whereby men and women can engage in commerce, sell, barter, consign. We don’t give a damn what you call it; just organize a way to deliver goods and services to the people.
We only know this: no one should starve in the village, nor be homeless, or illiterate, or in ill health without a medical plan.
Your children shall need your counsel and advice always, so be there for them, first setting example, we know words are cheap. Let the children see us doing the right thing for ourselves, and then they will know what to do, more than likely they are doing the right thing already, just might need a little common sense advice.
In teaching youth, we should consider their level, not our superior educations, whether academic or self taught in the model of Merritt College students Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, Marvin X, et al.
Was not the purpose of those rallies on the steps of the old Merritt College on Grove St. /Martin Luther King, Jr. to “break it down to the masses”? And so we must break down abstract terminology such as freedom, slavery, racism, capitalism, socialism, Pan Africanism, white supremacy.
Give definitions, break words into syllables. Do not assume a twenty-five year old male or female has any knowledge of the above subject matter. Do not assume they can read. Do not assume they have traveled ten miles out of their turf. Do not assume youth living in Newark have visited New York. Do not assume youth in Oakland have visited San Francisco. I took a twenty-five year old female to San Francisco recently, who grew up in Berkeley/Oakland. When we came up from the BART or rapid transit system, she said, “Wow, look at these big buildings. Wow, they are so tall. Wow, look at all these people on the street. Look at these big banks on every corner. And they treated me so nice at the bank, not like Oakland and Berkeley. I didn’t know this world existed. I have to come over here more often."
Mayor Jerry Brown, now California Attorney General, used to say Oakland was closer to San Francisco than San Francisco, in his racist attempt to gentrify West Oakland. But how often do West Oakland youth get on the BART for a visit to San Francisco, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, a romantic city based on tourism, yet how many youth are plugged into the multi-billion dollar tourist industry, mainly they are at the wharf as dummies, robots and hip hop dancers. Thank God for that.
But how shall we teach them economic self sufficiency? Get a job and be pimped for life? Become a wage slave and teach your children to go to college so they can also become a cog in the wheel of capitalism and slavery (C. Eric Williams, who himself became a victim of capitalism and slavery as prime minister of Trinidad, see Marvin X, The Black Power Revolt In Trinidad, Journal of Black Poetry, circa 1972).
Micro Credit Loans for Youth
This is a process of loaning small amounts of money, say one hundred to three hundred dollars to youth so they can “come up” in a legal endeavor, not selling drugs, pimping, murder, but some project to deliver what the people need, such as food, clothing, shelter.
Visit the cities of America and we shall see what needs are addressed on the street, not to speak of inside businesses.
On the street youth sell T shirts, incense, oils, jeans and other urban gear. They sell books, especially in New York. And there are Latin youth selling fruit, vegetables, DVDs and CDs, black youth do this also to a high degree, to the point police do not harass them since they are doing something for self and not causing mayhem.
Absent Fathers
No matter the age of your children, connect with them, they need you, whether they say so or not, no matter if your children are 20, 30, 40, 50, they need you, your guidance, wisdom, love and attention. Sons need you, daughters need you. Tell them what a man must do to be a man. Ask their forgiveness for your unmanly or unwomanly actions. And clean up your act. Do better. Make a visible recovery from your wretchedness. Let your children see that you love them and that your love is unconditional, no matter what they do, success or failure, you are with them to the very end of time.
Black on Black Crime
Black on black crime is symptomatic and problematic of the perilous condition under which we live on a daily basis in the hell holes of America. We shall continue killing each other until we come to know who we are as Divine beings in Human form, that our bodies are the temple of the Divine, our bodies and minds, thus we should delete all negative thought such as hatred, jealousy, envy, and other negative thoughts that prevent us from enjoying the Divine plane of life.
On the matter of murder, my wise adviser told me, “When you kill your brother, you kill yourself. Two of you are dead. The killer is a dead man walking. As the Bible says, As Thou Hast Done, So Shall It Be Done to Thee.
Don’t be hypocritical, youth and adults. I know so many youth and adults who have lost loved ones to violence. No one is rioting over their loved ones, no one is protesting their lost. No one cares. The relatives and friends suffer in silence. They cannot discuss their grief with anyone, no one wants to know of their lost.
There are few mental health and grief counselors in the hood. The Oakland Grief Centers the City set up are a good example of what must be done to alleviate the trauma of life in the Wilderness of North America. What can we expect? More importantly, what can we do to advance our agenda for the masses, the wretched of the earth? No struggle, no progress, power concedes nothing without a demand, it never has and never will—our great ancestor Frederick Douglas told us this in the 19th Century.
There must be a higher level of organizing than rioting through the streets. If and when they come down on the people, do you have food, water, generators in reserve? Do you realize one flush of your toilet consumes five gallons of water? Do you have five gallons of water to drink, let alone in your toilet? Have you heard drought and famine are coming? Are you prepared? They taught us in Boy Scouts to be prepared.
Of Scholars and Teachers
Oh, my God, in the spirit of David Walker, let the poor righteous teachers do their duty to children and youth. We honor them and pray they shall remain on their posts, teaching the uncivilized youth who truly seek wisdom and knowledge. One need only converse with them in a moment of quiet, such as jail, prison or a depressed moment in the hood, away from peers and parents, on the street as I have encountered so many times on the streets of Oakland, especially at 14th and Broadway, my outdoor classroom, aka, Academy of da Corner, and the main scene of rioting over the New Year’s Day murder of Oscar Grant by the BART police.
Teachers and scholars must teach a new way. A radical approach is needed at this time, surely we all agree on this? We must at least have food, clothing and shelter, basic needs. All else is talk, hype, sham, don’t believe the hype!
Shall our children and youth be homeless, abandoned, school dropouts, prison bound, or shall we speak to them with parental authority, warning them of death on the streets, in unsafe sexual encounters, hanging out with drinking and gambling buddies. And please consider the tone test when encountering the police. They can kill you, jail you or release you, depending on your tone of voice. You must pass the tone test with another brother and sister as well. Everybody is on edge, stressed, so watch your tone of voice, watch how you look at people, don't stare. Many people come on the street in a mind-altered state, thus they often imagine you have said something you didn't actually say, or they assume you were staring at them when you weren't. So be cool on the street. Teach youth how to act to survive in the urban jungle. There is no other lesson.
Take Advantage of Obama Drama
Youth should take full advantage of this critical moment of change in the history of America and the world. In the next few months, take advantage of economic and educational opportunities the government will offer as a way out of the depression caused by greed and other cancers of the addiction to white supremacy, especially during Obama's reelection campaign. He will spend a billion dollars to get reelected or reselected, so figure out how much of that billion you can get hustling Obama gear, T-shits, caps, buttons, photos, etc. Don't sit around like a frog on a lily pad. You can copy color pictures of Obama for 35 cents, get picture frames from the dollar store, then sell them for $5.00-10.00 or more. Life is a thinking man's game, so think! You can do it, your ancestors did!
--El Muhajir/Marvin X
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