I was very interested in the news that Dr. Manning Marable had been awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History, for his book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, this week.
I hope that the interest generated by the news will inspire younger generations of readers to explore the life history and political impact of Malcolm X, but that it will also serve to highlight Marable's work, as an historian, political thinker and one of the voices of the black left.
Marable, who died on April 1, 2011, at age 60, did not live to see his opus published just a few days after his death. As such, he was not available to either receive kudos, nor to respond to critics and the controversy sparked by the more than 600-page work.
Marable's political views and practice have also become part of the attacks by the right wing on President Obama, and at the time of Marable's death, right-wing sites had a field day spewing drivel about the POTUS being a "commie" or a "socialist" since the president has a familiarity with Marable's scholarly work, and Marable wrote and spoke extensively on the phenomena of Obama's election in the context of U.S. racial and social history. He articulated not only a left perspective on why he endorsed Obama for president, but what he saw the role of progressives should be in voting, and at the same time pressing the president and the Democratic Party from the left. In his interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, right after Obama's election , Marable discussed the significance of the election of our nation's first black president and the challenges this offers for leftists:
I think that the real challenge now is not so much what Obama does, but what do progressives do? Because we have — we’re now in an uncomfortable and unusual situation, where, for many people left of center, we actually have a friend in the White House. You know, I can’t remember, during my lifetime — and I’m fifty-eight years old — where I can actually say that, that someone who understands clearly the positions of the left. Now, we had a lot of silly talk about Obama being a socialist during the last two weeks of the campaign. He’s not. He’s a progressive liberal. But for those of us who are indeed democratic socialists, those of us who are on the left, how do we relate to the government, where someone who ideologically is not an enemy, someone who understands the agenda and the issues that are of concern of the truly disadvantaged? How do we relate to that government? How do we relate to the politics of that administration? This is a real challenge for progressives.
These views did not endear Marable to some of Obama's critics from the left, who may not have the analysis posited by Marable, who always explored the complex intersections of race and class in the context of American history and electoral politics. Marable, who as a Marxist, Democratic Socialist found plenty to critique in U.S. policy, was also clear about what he saw the role of those who consider themselves to be left of center should be, when confronted with the advent of the first black president, and where the left should situate itself. Marable was clear in understanding and calling out the rabid racism released during the Obama candidacy and presidency, along with the accompanying Islamophobia and xenophobia. He did not advocate for black Americans, or for the left to leave
en masse to vote for a third party, even though he himself was elected chairman of the
Board of Movement for a Democratic Society in 2007.
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To get a better understanding of Marable's thinking, I suggest you read Barack Obama and African American Empowerment: The Rise of Black America's New Leadership, which he co-edited with Kristen Clarke, from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
His introduction, Racializing Obama: The Enigma of Postblack Politics and Leadership, is worth reading, as are his conclusions.
The Obama victory will be of great assistance in waging the struggle for racial justice. But electoral politics is not a substitute for social protest organizing in neighborhoods and in the streets. A new anti-racist leadership must be constructed to the left of the Obama government, one that draws upon representatives of the most oppressed and marginalized social groups.
As I mentioned earlier, Marable's history of Malcolm X has engendered criticisms, and his receipt of the Pulitzer will probably fan the flames anew. For many years, Marable spearheaded data collection and reexamination of his life-much of that data is available online at The Malcolm X Project at Columbia University.
Malcolm X, who became El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was also not able to answer his critics or supporters after he was cut down by assassins on Feb. 21, 1965. Most of what the general population knew about him and his life was garnered through the pages of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was assisted, or ghostwritten, by Alex Haley and rushed into publication after his death.
On February 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom, in Washington Heights, multiple assassins fired shotguns and pistols at Malcolm as he stepped to the lectern for a speech. Two hours after hearing the news, Haley wrote to his agent, “None of us would have had it be this way, but since this book represent’s [sic] Malcolm’s sole financial legacy to his widow and four little daughters . . . I’m just glad that it’s ready for the press now at a peak of interest for what will be international large sales, and paperback, and all.”
The publisher, Nelson Doubleday, fearing for the lives of his staff, cancelled his deal with Haley; Barney Rosset, the bold and ingenious proprietor of Grove Press, picked up the contract. He would not be sorry. Between 1965 and 1977, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” sold six million copies worldwide, and the book continues to sell briskly, both to general readers and to students for whom it is required reading. In 1992, Spike Lee set off a bout of “Malcolmania,” with his three-hour-plus film. In its wake, people as unlikely as Dan Quayle talked sympathetically about Malcolm. A poll showed that eighty-four per cent of African-Americans between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four saw Malcolm as “a hero for black Americans today.” The video for Public Enemy’s “Shut ’Em Down” put Malcolm’s face on the dollar bill. A vivid but secondary figure in his own time, Malcolm X had achieved the status of an icon. And he did it with a book that he never lived to see published.
I am neither an historian nor Malcolm scholar. I did live through his time, and had one life-changing brief
interaction with him. As a member of several political groups that looked up to the latter Malcolm as an example, and since I had family members who were members of the Nation of Islam, as well as those who left it to either follow Malcolm or move in different directions, I do not want to become embroiled in the critiques of Marable's work. I think there is room for far more scholarship on Malcolm's life, changes and impact, rather than people having primarily depended upon the Alex Haley piece, or Spike Lee's vision on film.
I direct my students to actual recordings, audio and video of many his speeches.
If you are curious about some of the controversy around Marable's book, Democracy Now hosted a fairly contentious debate on the subject with guests Amiri Baraka, Herb Boyd and Michael Eric Dyson.
I would like to offer my congratulations on the Pulitzer award to Dr. Marable's wife Dr. Leith Mullings, and his family. You can hear Mullings discuss Manning and his book at a lecture she gave at CUNY Graduate Center in May, 2011.