In the mid-1960s, playwright Marvin X founded the Black House, the Black Education Theater and many other Tenderloin stages that served as headquarters for the Black Arts Movement.
In 2004, X put on the Tenderloin Book Fair and University of Poetry, a sprawling daylong lit fest. Now 61, he's writing a book about Islamic history in the Bay Area and is writing a play with Dead Prez.
King: The Black Arts Movement is built on many ideals. Which, for you, are the strongest?
Marvin: The Black Arts Movement is about consciousness-raising music and literature. It's about the Paul Robeson concept of the artistic freedom fighter; about making statements that saturate the political nervous system.
King: You've been called a radical activist. What would you tell a group of 20-year-old playwrights if they said they don't care about radicalism?
Marvin: I would say what Mao Zedong said: "Let a hundred schools of thought contend." I don't want anything to do with them. Go do your thing. I've got a mission to actually change something. Like Bush said, you with me or against me. Contrary to Bush, the main addiction in America is not oil, it's white supremacy. That's the addiction from which all other addictions spring. Deal with the problem of supremacy, and you'll solve the greed for oil, the murder for oil. That's what's radical to me. We need a thousand Frantz Fanons, and white people need to have a 12-step supremacy-recovery program. Go in, have a detox. Maybe it'll help you, and us.
King: Do you think hip-hop is to black culture now what jazz in the 60s was to the Black Arts Movement?
Marvin: No! Jazz in the 60s was aligned with the freedom struggle, the music of Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders. It was liberation music. Hip-hop don't have that, at least not on BET, MTV. That's because the ruling class don't want people awake. They want people asleep. . . . I grew up in a politically charged household. My parents were involved in the NAACP and published a black newspaper in Fresno, so it's not strange for me to be politically conscious.
King: What do you think about the concept of Black History Month?
Marvin: Now people are writing about the Black Arts Movement. But you won't dare invite the originators, who are still alive. You don't want them around because that would reveal your contradictions.
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