Manning Marable, Director of the Institute of African American Studies at Columbia University
Columbia University Professor Manning Marable, an influential historian of the black experience in the United States died Friday April 1, 2011 in New York at the age of 60. Marable has authored a forthcoming biography of Malcolm X.
According to his wife, Leith Mullings, Dr. Marable died from complications of pneumonia at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Apparently he had suffered for 24 years from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease, and had undergone a double lung transplant in July.
“I think his legacy is that he was both a scholar and an activist,” she said. “He believed that history could be used to inform the present and the future.”
Marable has authored a forthcoming biography of Malcolm X entitled “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.” The book is scheduled to be published on Monday April 4, 2011.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, on May 13, 1950, Marable wrote in his book, “Speaking Truth to Power,” that he was born into the era that witnessed the emergence of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as nonviolent movements in the South struggling to break the back of white supremacy.
But he was the child of middle-class black Americans, he wrote, his father a teacher and businessman, his mother an educator and college professor.
He watched from afar as blacks in the South rebelled against segregation and racial inequality, and as a teenager found his emergent political voice writing columns for a neighborhood newspaper.
He wrote that his mother encouraged him to attend King’s funeral “to witness a significant event in our people’s history.” He served as the local black newspaper’s correspondent, he wrote, and marched along with thousands of others during the funeral procession. “With Martin’s death, my childhood abruptly ended,” he wrote. “My understanding of political change began a trajectory from reform to radicalism.”
Marable followed a scholarly path but turned toward progressive politics to help shape his understanding of the world and his people. He wrote hundreds of papers and nearly 20 books, including the landmark “How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America,” published in 1983.
At Columbia University, where he was a professor, he was the founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and established the Center for Contemporary Black History.
Besides his wife of 15 years, he is survived by three children and two stepchildren.
In February of 2009, Marable spoke at length with Febone1960.net about his book the “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” Marable’s Febone1960.net interview brought forth a debate as to whether The Autobiography OF Malcolm X an autobiography or a memoir. Take a listen to that interview by clicking (play) above.
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Today Malcolm X would have turned 85 had he not been gunned down 45 years ago.
Thomas Hagan , convicted of the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, was paroled last month after serving 45 years of a 20-year-to-life sentence. Now 69 year old Hagan was released from Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem, NY where he walked into freedom under the shadow of a sign naming the street in honor of the man he had murdered — “Malcolm X Boulevard.”
Hagan had been in a work-release program since 1992 that allowed him to spend five days working and living with his family and two days in the prison. He reportedly intends to work as a substance abuse counselor and hopes to make a more positive mark in the world.
During his incarceration, Hagan testified to the innocence of the two other men tried and convicted for Malcolm’s murder. Hagan had maintained that others participated in the assassination, but that those arrested and convicted were not the ones. (The two men convicted also said they were innocent.) No other arrests were made in the shooting. While his own requests for parole had been turned down 14 times, Hagan’s accused accomplices were paroled sometime in the 1980′s.
Thomas Hagan 1965
Hagan, then in his 20s was loyal to a brand of Islam that Malcolm, the Nation’s popular spokesperson, publicly abandoned after making a pilgrimage to Mecca and discovering the universality of his faith. The Nation’s founder, the honorable Elijah Muhammad, taught that all white people were devils, but in Mecca Malcolm found himself worshipping alongside men of all races, all with heads bowed in reverence to and love for the same God. He left the Nation and adopted orthodox (mainstream) Islam.
2008 Photo of Thomas Hagan
Malcolm also brought to light some inconsistencies in Elijah Muhammad’s own behavior. When he spoke of his experience, and his changed beliefs, many in the Nation were angered. The Nation had brought dignity, structure and purpose to the lives of many men whose existences had been governed by violence, the indignities of racism, and the hopelessness of poverty. Malcolm himself had been introduced to it while in prison. Loyalty to the Nation, and to its prophet, Elijah Muhammad, was fierce. Malcolm’s body was riddled with bullets when he fell to his death in front of his pregnant wife and four daughters in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965. Hagan has expressed regret for the killing, telling the parole board on March 3, according to a transcript,”I don’t think it should ever have happened.”
Although he may be remorseful Hagan’s actions sentenced Malcolm’s family to a life sentence.
Drawing from the wisdom expounded by her late husband, Dr. Betty Shabazz worked diligently at avoiding that sentence for her as well as her family by exercising forgiveness and peace for the men who was responsible for his death.
“One of the things Malcolm always said to me is, ‘Don’t be bitter. Remember Lot\'s wife when they kill me, and they surely will. You have to use all of your energy to do what it is you have to do,’” Shabazz said in a May 1995 speech.”
You might detect from the words of her daughter Attallah in the interview shown above, that Dr. Betty Shabazz did in fact focus her energy to raise her children who were never members of The Nation Of Islam in an environment where they would avoid being defined under the notoriety of their father’s Nation Of Islam days. However, all her efforts would not be able to erase the memory of their father being violently assaulted with gun fire before their very young innocent eyes.
Many rumors surrounded the shooting of the man who was and still remains a hero to many African-Americans. It has been said that it had been orchestrated by both the U.S. government and the Nation of Islam. Dr. Betty Shabazz had blamed Louis Farrakhan, who inherited the leadership of the Nation following Muhammad’s death. Perhaps remembering Malcolm’s counsel, Shabazz reconciled with Farrakhan in 1995 — but not before one of her six daughters, Qubilah, allegedly sought revenge.
Qubilah, “was charged in Minneapolis with trying to hire a hit man to kill Farrakhan. Mother, Betty Shabazz stood behind her daughter, insisting that an FBI informant entrapped her. Qubilah Shabazz made a deal with prosecutors in which they agreed to drop charges if she completed treatment for alcohol and psychiatric problems. She signed an affidavit accepting responsibility for her conduct but maintained her innocence.”
Farrakhan and Betty Shabazz made their reconciliation public when Farrakhan, shook her hand “on the stage of Harlem’s Apollo Theater as 1,400 people cheered at a fund-raiser for her daughter’s defense. Dr. Shabazz also spoke at Farrakhan’s Million Man March in October 1995.”
Unfortunately this was not the happy ending to a troubling story trickled down from the unnecessary assassination of the man who was also known as Malcolm El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Two years later, Betty Shabazz herself was killed – not by strangers but by her own grandson, Qubilah’s child. The 12 year old, reportedly upset because he had been sent to live with his grandmother in Yonkers, NY, set fire to her home. Betty Shabazz was burned over 80 percent of her body.
The young lad also named “Malcolm Shabazz, pleaded guilty to the juvenile equivalent of manslaughter and was given 18 months in a youth detention and treatment center, with extensions possible until he turned 18. There have been several extensions, partly because of several escapes in 1999.” In 2001, his attorney, Merril Sobie, told a NY Times reporter “he thought the teenager had overcome his problems and expressed optimism about him. ‘He wants to go to college,’ [Sobie] said. ‘Malcolm is extremely bright, and I know he has matured a lot.’ ” A year later, the Times reported, that the young Malcolm Shabazz was given three and a half years in prison in connection with beating and attempting to steal $100 from a teenager in Middletown, N.Y. In August, 2006, the same newspaper reported that he was was charged with reckless endangerment, assault and criminal mischief in Mount Vernon, NY, after punching a hole in a doughnut shop window, injuring two people inside.
Hagan has spent a considerable amount of his adult life paying for his irresponsible deed, and unlike Susan Atkins has now been paroled. Atkins was convicted of stabbing to death a pregnant Sharon Tate in 1969 as a part of the Manson gang. Atkins herself was denied parole 18 times including a request after it was discovered that the born again christian was terminally ill. That request was denied and Susan Atkins died in prison on September 24, 2009.
At 69 Hagan will spend the rest of his life with his family and hopes to become a substance abuse counselor making a more positive mark in the world. Should he successful at his quest the children, grand children and perhaps great grand children of Malcolm X will be forever scared by the rippling impact of Hagan’s violent actions inside what is now know as the The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center some 45 years ago.
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NEW YORK – Percy Sutton, the pioneering civil rights attorney who represented Malcolm X before launching successful careers as a political power broker and media mogul, died Saturday at age 89.
Marissa Shorenstein, a spokeswoman for Gov. David Paterson, confirmed Sutton’s death. She did not know the cause. His daughter, Cheryl Sutton, declined to comment when reached by phone at her New York City home on Saturday before midnight.
The son of a slave, Percy Sutton became a fixture on 125th Street in Harlem after moving to New York City following his service with the famed Tuskegee Airmen in World War II. His Harlem law office, founded in 1953, represented Malcolm X and the slain activist’s family for decades.
The consummate politician, Sutton served in the New York State Assembly before taking over as Manhattan borough president in 1966, becoming the highest-ranking black elected official in the state.
Sutton also mounted unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. Senate and mayor of New York, and served as political mentor for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s two presidential races.
“The godfather,” Jackson once called him.
Black-owned radio station
In 1971, with his brother Oliver, Sutton purchased WLIB-AM, making it the first black-owned radio station in New York City. His Inner City Broadcasting Corp. eventually picked up WBLS-FM, which reigned for years as New York’s top-rated radio station, before buying stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit and San Antonio between 1978 and 1985.
The Texas purchase marked a homecoming for the suave and sophisticated Sutton, born in San Antonio on Nov. 24, 1920, the youngest of 15 children.
Among Sutton’s other endeavors was his purchase and renovation of the famed Apollo Theater when the Harlem landmark’s demise appeared imminent.
Sutton’s father, Samuel, was born into slavery just before the Civil War. The elder Sutton became principal at a segregated San Antonio high school, and he made education a family priority: All 12 of his surviving children attended college.
When he was 13, Percy Sutton endured a traumatic experience that drove him inexorably into the fight for racial equality. A police officer approached Sutton as the teen handed out NAACP pamphlets. “N—–, what are you doing out of your neighborhood?” he asked before beating the youth.
Joins Tuskegee Airmen
When World War II arrived, Sutton’s enlistment attempts were rebuffed by Southern white recruiters. The young man went to New York, where he was accepted and joined the Tuskegee Airmen.
After the war, Sutton earned a law degree in New York while working as a post office clerk and a subway conductor. He served again as an Air Force intelligence officer during the Korean War before returning to Harlem in 1953 and establishing his law office with brother Oliver and a third partner, George Covington.
In addition to representing Malcolm X for a decade until his 1965 assassination, the Sutton firm handled the cases of more than 200 defendants arrested in the South during the 1963-64 civil rights marches. Sutton was also elected to two terms as president of the New York office of the NAACP.
After Malcolm’s assassination, Sutton worked as lawyer for Malcolm’s widow, Betty Shabazz. He represented her grandson, 12-year-old Malcolm Shabazz, when the youth was accused of setting a 1997 fire that caused her death.
Sutton was elected to the state Legislature in 1965, and quickly emerged as spokesman for its 13 black members. His charisma and eloquence led to his selection as Manhattan borough president in 1966, completing the term of Constance Baker Motley, who was appointed federal judge.
Failed political efforts
Two years later, Sutton announced a run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Jacob Javits, although he pulled out of the Democratic primary to back Paul O’Dwyer.
Sutton remained in his Manhattan job through 1977, the same year he launched a doomed campaign for mayor that ended with Edward I. Koch defeating six competitors for the Democratic nomination.
Sutton was among the first voices raised against the Vietnam War, surrendering his delegate’s seat at the 1968 Democratic convention in protest and supporting anti-war candidate George McGovern four years later against incumbent President Richard Nixon.
In addition to his radio holdings, Sutton also headed a group that owned The Amsterdam News, the second largest black weekly newspaper in the country. The paper was later sold.
Sutton’s devotion to Harlem and its people was rarely more evident than when he spent $250,000 to purchase the shuttered Apollo Theater in 1981. The Apollo turned 70 in 2004, a milestone that was unthinkable until Sutton stepped in to save the landmark.
Sutton “retired” in 1991, but his work as an adviser, mentor and confidante to politicians and businessmen never abated. He was among a group of American businessmen selected during the Clinton administration to attend meetings with the Group of Seven (G-7) Nations in 1995-96.
Sutton is survived by his wife, Leatrice; his son, Pierre, and daughter Cheryl.
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Had he not been gunned down in the Audubon Ball Room on that dreadful 21st day in February of 1965, Malcolm X would be celebrating his 84th birthday on this upcoming Tuesday May 19, 2009 with his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
However, nothing speaks greater as to who Malcolm X was and may have become than his his eldest daughter Ambassador Attallah Shabazz who at the tender age of six, witnessed the assassination of her father.
Today, Ambassador Shabazz carries on the work of not only her father, but her ancestors of whom she is part of the sum. Ms. Shabazz doesn’t feel burdened by her fathers legacy. “I am not under a shadow,” she told Los Angeles Times writer Lawrence Christon. “I’m under a light.”, and although she has chosen a different medium to express herself, she remains “under his light.”
Hear for yourself as Ambassador Shabazz describes in her own words, the Malcolm X she knows with Febone1960.net Presents Conversations With Ambassador Attallah Shabazz.
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Malcolm X was assassinated 46 years ago in the Audubon Ballroom located north of Harlem in Washington Heights. Malcolm who adopted the new name El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz collaborated with writer and journalist Alex Haley in the writing of his autobiography.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X is now widely recognized as a major landmark in American literature, and considered essential reading for anyone interested in African American literature, culture and politics. It tells the remarkable story of Malcolm X’s personal, religious and political transformations, and is said to be the most comprehensive text we have for understanding and interpreting Malcolm X’s life.
Manning Marable, Director of the Institute of African American Studies at Columbia University
Professor Manning Marable does not agree and has worked for the last eight years on the biography of Malcolm X. Marable insist that the Autobiography is a memoir and not a biography. A memoir provides the highlights of a life whereas a biography gives all the facts details.
In his own words, Marable tells of the three missing chapters deleted from the autobiography, and other missing information that will be available in his new book entitled Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. According to Marable, the book is due out in 2010 under the Viking Press.
Click Above Haley & Malcolm photo to access the interview.
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