Prof. Manning Marable ("Harlem's Heritage")
columbiauniversity on Mar 24, 2009
Speaker: Prof. Manning Marable,
Date: October 2, 2007
Course title: Harlem's Heritage: A Community History, 1900 to the Present
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Malcolm X biographer Manning Marable has died
Manning Marable, whose long-awaited biography of Malcolm X, "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention," will be published on Monday, died Friday. He was 60 years old.Marable, who had led African American studies at Columbia University, was a professor there with many titles. Officially, he was the M. Moran Weston and Black Alumni Council Professor of African-American Studies and professor of history and public affairs at Columbia University. Columbia also notes that he was founding director of African American studies at Columbia from 1993 to 2003 and since 2002, he directed Columbia's Center for Contemporary Black History.
As far back as 2005, Marable was talking about "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention." In February of that year, on Malcolm X's birthday, he told Democracy Now about the materials that he had seen that others had not, including three "missing" chapters from Malcolm's autobiography that he said show the leader in a very different light.
Back then, Marable had already been at work on the biography for a decade -- meaning that he'd spent more than 15 years on the book and died just three days before its publication.
"A Life of Reinvention" by Manning Marable will be published by Viking on Monday.
Marable's other books include "Beyond Black and White: Race in America's Past, Present and Future" (1995), "The Crisis of Color and Democracy" (1995) and "The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life" (2003).
The New York Times reports that Marable suffered from sarcoidosis and had undergone a double lung transplant as treatment for the disease last the summer. Last month he was hospitalized with pneumonia.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Black Studies Scholar Manning Marable Dead at 60
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The widow of Manning Marable has told The Root that the 60-year-old scholar of black studies died this afternoon at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital of complications relating to pneumonia. According to Leith Mullings Marable, her husband had suffered from sarcoidosis for the past 25 years and had undergone a double-lung transplant in July 2010.
Marable, a professor of history and political science at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in New York, was also the director of the university's Institute for Research in African American Studies. His long-awaited biography of Malcolm X -- Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention -- is scheduled for release on Monday, April 4. He had been working on it for 10 years.
"I think he would want to be remembered for having contributed to the black freedom struggle," said Mrs. Marable. "He would want to be remembered for being both a scholar and an activist and as someone who saw the two as not being separated. He believed that both [callings] went together and enhanced each other."
A lifelong Marxist, Marable was a member of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and the Working Families Party. His latest book was a labor of love born from an enduring fascination with Malcolm X. In 2005 he told Democracy Now host Amy Goodman, "Malcolm X was the most remarkable historical figure produced by black America in the 20th century. That's a heavy statement, but I think that in his 39 short years of life, Malcolm came to symbolize black urban America -- its culture, its politics, its militancy, its outrage against structural racism -- and at the end of his life, a broad internationalist vision of emancipatory power ... "
A native of Dayton, Ohio, Marable graduated from Earlham College in 1971, received a master's degree in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Maryland. He taught at Cornell University, Fisk University, Colgate University, Ohio State University and the University of Colorado before landing at Columbia University, where he was the M. Moran Weston and Black Alumni Council Professor of African-American Studies and professor of history and public affairs. From 1993 to 2003, he was founding director of African-American studies at Columbia; in 2002 he began serving as director of the Center for Contemporary Black History there.
The family is planning to hold a public memorial service on May 27 and will have a private funeral within the next few days, Mrs. Marable said. Marable leaves behind three children and two stepchildren.