When Black people heard their poets and playwrights speaking in the language of the ghetto or the North American African's "Mother tongue," or shall we say the basic language of the masses that was certainly banned by the black bourgeoisie culture police who were dismissed and ignored for the most part, especially after the Civil Rights (Rites, Sun Ra) Movement morphed into the Black Power Movement and BAM became its sister (Larry Neal) or mother (Marvin X), the psycho-linguistic crisis subsided simply because Black freedom of speech was liberating to the Black psyche and thus to the Black body and BAM productions became the sacred space where we could deliver our narrations in our own language without fear of the oppressor and his overseers, again, the Black bourgeoisie culture police, led by Bill Cosby in the present era, who is now disgraced for his negrocities (Amiri Baraka term that he told me not to claim--we love you forever and eternally, AB, what a wonderful brother, mentor, comrade in revolution).
Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale, speaking on the history of the Black Panther Party, says when Marvin X brought his BAM classic one-act play Flowers for the Trashman to Merritt College (on Grove Street, aka, Martin Luther King, Jr. in North Oakland) the student movement grew immediately after the performance, and morphed into Black Student Unions and the Black Panther Party. It was the linguistics of Flowers for the Trashman that inspired students to join the BSUs (at Merritt College the BSU was called the Soul Students Advisory Council). The ghetto language of Flowers was inspirational and motivational as were other works of BAM poets and playwrights such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, the Last Poets, Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, et al.
This is why Marvin X says, "In all due respect to BAM philosopher Larry Neal, my experience in BAM revealed we were not the sister but the mother of the political brothers and sisters who gained revolutionary consciousness in the BAM and then went on to join such political organizations as Black Panther Party and political/religious organizations as the Nation of Islam.
Here in the Bay Area, before establishing the Black Panther Party along with Huey Newton, Bobby performed the lead role in my second play Come Next Summer, ironically about a young brother trying to find his revolutionary consciousness.
After his release from Soledad Prison in late 1966, Eldridge Cleaver came to the Bay and I was the first person he hooked up with (see Post-Prison Writings by Eldridge Cleaver and Somethin' Proper, the Autobiography of Marvin X) and soon we founded The Black House, political/cultural center on Broderick Street in San Francisco, 1967. Black House was the hottest spot in the Bay for revolutionary cultural consciousness, especially when Amiri Baraka came to San Francisco State University to direct the Communications Project, with Black House as his off campus headquarters, although he and Eldridge never had a proper conversation because Eldridge was focused on establishing the organization Malcolm tried to establish, the OAAU or the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
FYI, it was my mentor, John Douimbia, mentioned in Malcolm's autobiography as The Count, indeed, the only man in the Bay Area who out dressed the Court was the Honorable Mayor Willie Brown! But the importance of John D is not his apparel but the secular ideology he stressed to Malcolm X. According to JD, he had hustled with Malcolm X in Harlem but lost contact with him until Malcolm got out of prison. After his release from prison and representing the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X came to Los Angeles where JD was organizing while working as a Merchant Seaman. He invited Malcolm to a meeting he'd organized and when Malcolm came he saw JD had organized whites and blacks, so Malcolm asked John if he would help him organize the Nation of Islam in San Francisco. John said, "Yes, Malcolm, when I return from overseas as a merchant seaman, I will return to SF and help the Mosque there, " which he did. But more importantly, at that meeting in Los Angeles, he told Malcolm about the need for a secular, non religious organization. Of course, we know Malcolm was not ready for such, only after he departed the NOI did he feel the need to heed JD's words about a secular organization that ultimately became the OAAU, the spiritual component being Muslim Mosque, Inc.
John D and Willie Brown reminded me of my father, a Race Man who published the Fresno Voice, a Black newspaper in the Central Valley town of Fresno during the 50s along with my parents real estate business that made it possible for Blacks to purchase their first homes in the Valley. But my roots in the valley go deeper. My great grandfather, Epherim Murrill was nearly 100 years old when he died in Madera, 1941. The Fresno Bee newspaper reported his transition and noted he was well liked by Blacks and Whites.
Yes, I am the product of conscious parents or let's say my Mom was a Race Woman and my Dad a Race Man, meaning they were Black Nationalists or simply conscious people dedicated to the advancement of our people. I recall my father speaking often of the Black Belt South and the Cotton Curtain! Dad was born in Kentucky, so all I know about is eating rice for breakfast and dinner. I had no knowledge of Grits until later in my life when I connected with those Louisiana women. I ate so much rice as a teenager, my friends called me Chinaman.
But more importantly, Eldridge wanted to establish a Marxist-Leninist organization and he brought in Black brother Rosco Proctor (Secretary of the CP of California) to guide us in Communist ideology, which we BAM artists rejected outright, but when Eldridge had us studying Negroes With Guns by Robert Williams, I got the bright idea to get rid of Eldridge out of the Black House (even though he was paying the rent from the advance he received for his bestseller Soul on Ice: fyi, EC was the most generous brother I ever met--he could have become a commercial success, but he devoted his life to Black liberation, no matter his gross negrocities (again, AB term). And for that matter, AB could have done the same. We all make a choice, revolution or surrender to the oppressor. Did not Dr. John Henrik Clarke say, "If they would offered me enough, I would have sold out too!
I remember the day when "they" sent a nigguh to me in the Haight/Ashburry of San Francisco. The nigguh sat in front of me at a table and asked me what I needed: guns, money, what? I said Nigguh, git out of my motherfucking face! And the Nigguh disappeared into the night of Hippyville.
If and when you resit the devil, he will flee from you! As per the Black Panther Party, the most important lesson they taught us was how to overcome fear. And I thank them, even though this lesson was in my DNA. My father in law, grandfather of two of my daughters, tells how his father taught his siblings to be fearless in Texas. Apparently, his DNA and mine infected my daughters by his daughter. When I took my oldest daughter, Nefertiti, to the dentist when she was a child, the dentist said to me, "Sir, I've been a dentist for thirty years and your child is the first child to sit in my chair without feat!"
So language can take us beyond the fear zone. Thus we are thankful for the Black Panther Party but most especially the Black Arts Movement for giving us the esthetics of fearlessness.
As the Black Arts Movement Business District moves forward in Oakland and The Bay Area, we call upon a United Front of progressive ethnic groups to confront racism, gentrification, techism and other forms of white supremacy.
We are inspired by the meeting of groups who meet to demand benefits and equity from all tech firms and related businesses causing displacement and removal in their unbridled push to establish white supremacy domination in our communities locally and nation wide.
I am inspired and motivated at our meeting today that included so many professionals from profit and non-profit organizations to confront the beasts in our midst.
Our dearly beloved brother, Paul Cobb, stated several times, how he as a lone person confronted the white supremacy forces and made them surrender, so imagine what we can do with the power of those in the room today.
----Marvin X, Black Arts Movement Business District, downtown Oakland
www.themovementnewsletter.blogspot.com
--Marvin X, co-founder of the Black Arts Movement and the Oakland Black Arts Movement Business Disrtict
7/28/16