Manning Marable, Influential Historian Of The Black Experience Dies At Age 60

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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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Under His Light: Eldest Daughter of Malcolm X Speaks Out As His 84th Birthday Approaches

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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.

Manning Marable who insist that The Autobiography of Malcolm X was a memoir and not an autobiography speculates through his books on who Malcolm X was and what he would have become but for his assassination.

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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The Autobiography of Malcolm X: Autobiography or Memoir?

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Aex Haley & Malcolm X

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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