Manning Marable, African-American Studies Scholar passed away on April 1, 2011. More here http://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/...
Dr. Marable was a major voice in the African American struggle for justice. In the 1990,s Manning Marable was one of the five leading African-American activist to host a series of national discussions on organizing a movement of the Black Left. Out of the discussions emerged the National Black Radical Congress (BRC), founded on June 19, 1998. Manning used writings and lectures to address racism, sexism and classism in US; and specific in the Black community. Manning’s powerful voice was heard clearly in such noted publications and books as: How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (1983), Black Liberation in Conservative America (1997) and The Great Wells of Democracy (2003), and in a political column, "Along the Color Line," which was syndicated in more than 100 newspapers. In every major Black newspapers,
To read some of the essays, see- Race, Reform and Rebellion; The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. First published in 1984. Third Edition, 2007. And, Black American Politics: From the Washington Marches to Jesse Jackson, (1985) And, Historical Studies in Race, Class Consciousness and Revolution. (1981) More recently, he edited. Let Nobody Turn Us Around; Voices of Resistance, Reform and Renewal. 2000.
Manning co-authored a chapter on race in the first edition of my work, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. (1994)
Manning Marable’s final work, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention provides an excellent biography and a history of an era. Marable spent the last ten years of his life working with students, interns, and others to write this remarkable work, published just before his death.
The book includes a sharp criticism of the famous earlier work by Alex Haley, Malcolm X: an Autobiography (1965), written based on a series of lengthy interviews with Malcolm X. Haley is also known for his writing of the book Roots that became a major television series. As Marable explains, the 1964 and 1965 versions of The Autobiography of Malcolm X presented Malcolm as he wanted to be present himself, his preferred public persona as edited and promoted by Alex Haley. The Autobiography became the primary script and for Spike Lee’s important film on Malcolm’s life and the book and film have in turn been our primary sources for understanding Malcolm and his role in Black politics. Marable provides extensive evidence that Haley left out three important chapters in order to promote his own view of Malcolm X. Alex Haley was a moderate Republican. His first two articles on Malcolm were for the Saturday Evening Post and for Playboy Magazine. While Malcolm spoke primarily to a Black audience about the Black experience, the Haley book proposal and negotiations were clearly directed toward a primarily White reading audience of the 1964 era.
Manning Marable’s epic political biography reconsiders Malcolm in light of present information, released files, and evidence internal to the Haley autobiography. Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention provides extensive context to aspects of Malcolm’s life and struggles within the African American community. Marable describes in detail the role of the Nation of Islam in U.S. ghettos, internal violence in NOI, and sexism within the Nation and in Malcolm’s personal life. He also describes significant transitions of Malcolm’s perspective from the Nation of Islam to the acceptance of a more orthodox Islam and Malcolm’s later Pan-African perspective, a significant political development of the era and a topic largely ignored in Haley’s work. Manning describes numerous additional important aspects of the interaction between Malcolm and the developing Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr., with Trotskyists and socialists such as Grace Lee Boggs and many other important conflicts of the era. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention allows us to see Malcolm both as he wanted to portray himself and importantly in the historical context of subsequent developments in Black America.
DSA Honorary Chair Cornel West says of the book,
“Manning Marable is the exemplary black scholar of radical democracy and black freedom of our time. His long awaited magisterial book of Malcolm X is the definitive treatment of the greatest black radical voice and figure of the mid-twentieth century. “
Duane Campbell
Read an excellent tribute in The Nation here:
(http://www.thenation.com)
http://www.thenation.com/...