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Marvin X | |
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| Born | Marvin Ellis Jackmon May 29, 1944 Fowler, California United States |
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| Education | Merritt College San Francisco State University |
Marvin X (born Marvin Ellis Jackmon; May 29, 1944) is a poet, playwright and essayist.
Born in Fowler, California, he has taken the Muslim name El Muhajir ("the expatriate" in Arabic). His work has been associated with the Black Arts/Black Aesthetics Movement of the 1960s.
He grew up in Fresno and Oakland, in an activist household. He graduated from Thomas Alva Edison High School in Fresno in 1962. His parents published the Black-owned paper of Fresno, California, called the Fresno Voice. [1] The 1947 paper advertised community events, local businesses, including their own real-estate business, and focused on national and state events including: the promotion of anti-lynching laws, Jackie Robinson Day, New York Freedom Trains being integrated, the mission work of the Catholic church with Indians and Negroes, and the $350 million expansion of PG&E in California.
Marvin X has four living children and one son who preceded him in death.
Because of his affiliations with Black Panther activists of the day (Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver) and his work in Black theater with Ed Bullins, X is considered one of the major essayists and playwrights of the Black Aesthetics Movement. [2]
He attended Merritt College, where he met Newton and Seale, and received his BA and MA in English from San Francisco State University. [3]
X has taught at San Francisco State University, Fresno State University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Mills College, Merritt College, Laney College, the University of Nevada at Reno and Reedley Community College. He has lectured at colleges and universities, including the University of Arkansas, the University of Houston, Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, the University of Virginia, Howard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Fresno City College, Medgar Evers College, New York University, and UMass Boston.
X emerged as an important voice in the Black Arts Movement (BAM), the artistic arm of the Black Power movement, in the mid-to-late 1960s. He wrote for many of the BAM's key journals. He also co-founded, with playwright Ed Bullins and others, two of BAM's premier West Coast headquarters and venues — Oakland's Black House and San Francisco's Black Arts/West Theatre. In 1967, X joined the Nation of Islam and became known as El Muhajir. In the 1980s, he organized the Melvin Black Forum on Human Rights and the first Annual All Black Men's Conference. He also served as an aide to former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and created the short-lived Marvin X Center for the Study of World Religions. In 1999, he founded San Francisco's Recovery Theatre. His production of One Day in the Life, the play he wrote about his drug addiction and recovery, became the longest-running African-American drama in Northern California. In 2004, in celebration of Black History Month, he produced the San Francisco Tenderloin Book Fair (also known as the San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair) and University of Poetry. He has taught Black Studies, drama, creative writing, journalism, English and Arabic at a variety of California universities and colleges.
One of the movers and shakers of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), Marvin X has published 30 books, including essays, poems, plays, anthologies, as well as his autobiography, Somethin' Proper. Notable books include Fly to Allah, Beyond Religion, Toward Spirituality, and How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy. In 2011, UC Berkeley Bancroft Library acquired the Marvin X papers. X continues to work as an activist, educator, writer, and producer.
Robert George Seale is an American political activist and author. Seale is widely known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with fellow activist Huey P. Newton. Founded as the "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense", the Party's main practice was monitoring police activities and challenging police brutality in Black communities, first in Oakland, California, and later in cities throughout the United States.
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver was an American writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party.
Huey Percy Newton was an African American revolutionary and political activist who founded the Black Panther Party. He ran the party as its first leader and crafted its ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.
Robert James Hutton, also known as "Lil' Bobby", was the treasurer and first recruit to join the Black Panther Party. Alongside Eldridge Cleaver and other Panthers, he was involved in a confrontation with Oakland police that wounded two officers. Hutton was killed by the police under disputed circumstances. Cleaver stated Hutton was shot while surrendering with his hands up, while police stated he ignored commands and tried to flee.
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
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The Black Panther Party was a Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.
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Seize The Time: The Story of The Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton is a 1970 book by political activist Bobby Seale. It was recorded in San Francisco County Jail between November 1969 and March 1970, by Arthur Goldberg, a reporter for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. An advocacy book on the cause and principles of the Black Panther Party, Seize The Time is considered a staple in Black Power literature.
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