Manning Marable, a prolific author and founding director of the Africana and Latin American Studies Program at Colgate, died Friday at age 60.
He had taught in Colgate’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, starting in 1983, after having earned degrees from Earlham College (BA), the University of Wisconsin (MA), and the University of Maryland (PhD).
He taught a range of courses here including African American Social Thought and African American Freedom Struggles.
Friends at Colgate remembered Marable for his zest, his intellectual clarity, and his commitment to social justice.
An informal gathering for those who wish to share their memories will
take place at 4:15 p.m. Tuesday, April 12, in the fourth-floor lounge in
Alumni Hall. A more formal event celebrating Marable’s work and his
lasting contribution to Colgate and beyond is being planned for the
fall.
His most recent work, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, was published Monday, just three days after his death. The biography, at nearly 600 pages, has been characterized in media accounts as a re-evaluation of Malcolm X’s life that challenges long-held beliefs about the civil rights leader.
Marable’s other works include:
• How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America
• Race, Reform, and Rebellion
• Beyond Black and White: Race in American’s Past, Present and Future
• The Crisis of Color and Democracy (recognized as Book of the Year by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights)
• W.E.B. DuBois: Black Radical Democrat
• The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life
Marable left Colgate in 1987 for Ohio State University, where he was chairman of the Department of Black Studies, and subsequently taught ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
In 1993 he moved to Columbia University, where he founded and directed the Institute for Research in African-American Studies.
Marable is survived by his wife, Leith Mullings, who is a professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, three children, Malaika, of Silver Spring, Md.; Sojourner, of Atlanta; and Joshua, of Boulder; a sister Madonna, of Dayton; three grandchildren; and two stepchildren.
More
• CBS News video: New book questions who killed Malcolm X
• New York Times: Manning Marable, Historian and Social Critic, Dies at 60