Left to right: Darrell, Grandfather Owendell Jackmon I, Marvin K, Marvin X
Left to right: Darrell and Marvin K on a visit with their father to Oaxaca, Southern Mexico
Left: Darrell Patrick Jackmon, Abdul El Muhajir
March 1, 1964-March 18, 2002
Right: Marvin X/El Muhajir
All praise is due Allah I enjoyed my second son for 39 years. He was the love of my life, although I deeply love all my children and although I was an absent father for many years, I have reconciled with most of them and they have supported my various projects coast to coast, including Marvin K, Nefertiti,
Muhammida and Amira. Their mothers gave them the discipline (and step fathers) so that I almost never had to raise my voice or whip them. But Darrell was special to me as my mother said I was special to her.
My sister Debbi said he was the reincarnation of myself, "He walked like you, talked like you, laughed like you, studied like you!"
His mental problems began while attending U.C. Santa Cruz. He studied Arabic and Middle Eastern literature, eventually graduating from U.C. Berkeley in Arabic and Near Eastern literature. From UCB he studied at the American University, Cairo, Egypt, visited Israel and Palestine. Was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to the University of Damascus, Syria. Returned to do graduate work at Harvard until his mental health deteriorated and he returned home. He suffered mani-depression. We say his medication lead him to commit suicide by walking into a train.
Dr. Frantz Fanon and Dr. Nathan Hare say manic depression is a "situational disorder" caused by oppression. Both say the oppressed can regain their mental equilibrium by participating in revolution. Revolution is thus therapeutic, the cleansing of toxicity, i.e., trauma and unresolved grief. Dr. Nathan Hare said homicide and suicide are two sides of the same coin:
"I read somewhere toward the back of Wretched of the Earth where Fanon says expressly and with considerable certainty that manic depression is a mental illness born of oppression. At least Abdul will have no more oppression, no more depression, and no more pain, free at last, living on in your memory and memories of others, and, in a way, that is more than symbolic in your work with other victims of the 'situational disorders' that so intrigued and baffled Frantz Fanon. Thirty-nine, as I remember, was the age of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X when they made their transition--Abdul just had a way of resisting that was a little bit different, turning inward what could not so easily be turned outward in these immobilized times--and had a little less luck in coming of revolutionary age in the late eighties and nineties instead of the late fifties and sixties."
--Dr. Nathan Hare, In the Crazy House Called America, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, 2002, p3
Dr. Nathan Hare and his student Marvin X
photo Adam Turner
