Part One: Games Nigguhs Play

Games Nigguhs Play


Parents of Marvin X, Owendell and Marian Murrill Jackmon; he was 40, she was 20 when they married.

Mama told me to leave nigguhs alone, you don't need them nigguhs Marvin, them nigguhs need you. They just using you  Marvin. Don't let them use you, use the mind God gave you, Boy! And Daddy said, "Boy, you so smart you outsmarted yourself! You should be a billionaire, but you fucked up. I told you, whatever you wanna be, be the best. You was a dope fiend, but you wasn't even a good dope fiend. If you gonna be a dope fiend, be the best dope fiend in the world. You let that shit control you, you didn't control it. I never let nothing control me! (Dad was lying here because he had a gambling habit that controlled him. And Mama, she was addicted to nigguhs too, she helped nigguhs until her dying days, and the worst nigguhs were her own ungrateful bastard children, Marvin X included, even though he was her Star child, and all his siblings knew it except him! He had no idea how much his mother loved him and respected him and knew he was going to do great things in the world. But his siblings knew, especially his sister Donna, the greatest storyteller in the family. Her "lies" would put Marvin X to shame!


She  told her boss, "Sir, I can't come into work today because my brother is in his private plane flying to Seattle and we have lost track of him somewhere around Lake Tahoe." RIP Big D!

Poor son, his Mom knew far more about him than he would ever know about himself. She told him he didn't need a wife: according to her, he needed a maid, secretary and Mistress, but not a wife. As a man, she would never consider him for a husband. She saw her son was lost in his imagination and sexuality, especially when he lived on her 2 and 1/2 acre property that included three houses, including a studio apartment where he came to write when taking refuge from the wicked city, and from which he would go into the big house to cry on his mother's knees after abusing his wives. She told him he would never have any good luck as long as he abused women, especially the mother's of his children.

She told him, "Son, please don't have those women hollering and screaming in the night because I can hear them! Tell them to not make all that noise."

Mama wondered why her son came home from being with a woman for several days, and came into her house starving to death. He told her, "Mama, we just didn't eat, Mama, we just made love!"
Mama just shook her head. After all, her son may have gotten his passion from her. She had nine children and raised them as a single mother, and raised two grandchildren as her own. They thought she was their mother and my six sisters were their sisters.

We grew up in the projects of West Fresno until Mom became a successful real estate broker, the first black woman real estate broker in town. During the 40s, she and my father had a successful real estate business, plus they published a Black Newspaper, The Fresno Voice, until my father violated his fiduciary relationship by gambling with the people's money and lost his real estate license, and this when my parents moved to Oakland and became florists on 7th Street in Harlem of the West. But mom and dad separated and she returned to Fresno to open up her real estate business on her own.

Most Blacks, old and young, will tell you they bought their first house from my parents, especially after the war when we suffered redlining and my parents were able to help them acquire housing.

Mom and Dad were Race Man and Woman, i.e., conscious and dedicated to our people. Dad told me he saw Marcus Garvey in Los Angeles. I am sure he was addicted to the Garvey movement, especially after my childhood friend Paul Cobb told me my dad was in meetings with his grandfather and father who were Garveyites in West Oakland. Paul says he is a Garveyite and I am too! Africa for the Africans, those and home and those abroad! One God, One Aim, One Destiny!


The "People" have requested Marvin X write and perform a play about Marcus Garvey.


 In New York, actor Ganno Grills performed the role of Marvin X in Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam. Amiri Baraka's play The Toilet  was part of the New Federal Theatre's production by Woody King.

 Nefertiti, Marvin's oldest daughter, demanded dad pass the baton to her. She is now the Executive Director of Six Square, the Austin, Texas Black Arts and Cultural District, also Associate Publisher of her dad's newspaper, The Movement, Voice of the Black Arts Movement International.




Professor Marvin X with students at the University of California, Merced, Professor Kim Macmillan's class on theatre. Students invited him to hear them read his play Flowers for the Trashman, a classic of the Black Arts Movement.