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Books by Manning Marable
Black Liberation in Conservative America
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Living Black History /
How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America
Race, Reform, and Rebellion /
W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat /
Race, Reform, and Rebellion
The Great Wells of Democracy /
Afro-Cuban Voices: On Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba
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Blacks In Higher Education
An Endangered Species
By Manning Marable
Over the past two decades, a central theme in
American higher education has been "diversity." Most
universities and colleges have made genuine efforts to diversify their
courses, faculty, and administrative personnel. Despite the obvious
political attacks against affirmative action scholarships, symbolized by
California's Proposition 209, most colleges have continued efforts to
foster outreach to racial minorities and women.
The good news is that many of these reforms are
finally producing results, especially in regard to gender diversity. In
recent weeks, for example, there was intense media coverage about black
public intellectual Cornel West's decision to leave Harvard University
for a new appointment at Princeton. One factor in West's decision may
have been the extraordinary steps Princeton has taken recently to make
its leadership more diverse.
As the New York Times recently reported,
Princeton recently named Shirley M. Tilghman its president, the first
woman to hold this position. Women also hold positions as Princeton's
provost, dean of the prestigious Woodrow Wilson School, and dean of the
Engineering and Applied Science School. In the eight Ivy League
universities, three of the president's are women, including Brown's Ruth
Simmons, an African American. About 22 percent of the more than 2,000
college and university presidents in the U.S. are women, up from 9.5
percent in 1986, and only 5 percent in 1975.
Women have made less progress, however, in efforts to
diversify the ranks of the senior faculty. Today, the percentage of
women with full-time, tenured appointments are 52 percent of all female
faculty, compared to 70 percent among male faculty. Only about 20
percent of all full professors, the highest academic rank for university
teachers, are women.
However, about 56 percent of all students enrolled in
U.S. colleges are women. These positive statistics about greater access
for women unfortunately don't seem to carry over for African Americans.
Last month I delivered a keynote address at a conference, "Marginalization
in the Academy" organized by Dr. William Harvey and sponsored by
the American Council on Education, that examined the status of blacks in
higher education. The conference's findings were both enlightening and
disturbing.
The most optimistic findings show that the numbers of
blacks attending graduate schools have consistently increased. As
reported recently in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education,
as of 2002 there were 139,000 African Americans attending graduate
programs, representing over a 100 percent increase since 1984. As of
2000, over 9,300 African Americans were attending law schools, which was
50 percent more than the number of blacks enrolled in 1990.
In academic year 1999-2000, blacks received
approximately 5,300 professional school degrees, a number comprising
6.7% of professional degrees awarded that year. Between 1989 and 2002,
the number of African Americans who annually receive professional
degrees has gone up about 70 percent. The number of black Ph.D.s
produced in 2000, 1,656 doctorates, is over twice the number of blacks
earning Ph.D. degrees in the late 1980s.
If the sojourn of black scholars in white academe
ended there, it would appear to many to represent a remarkable
multicultural transformation of white higher education. Unfortunately,
the story doesn't hardly end here. Most other recent trends actually
undermine access and opportunity for most African Americans in higher
education. For example, the overall percentages of African Americans
employed in faculty, administrative, and professional managerial
positions remain miniscule.
In 2001, the total number of African-American faculty
at all institutions was 61,183, a figure representing only 6.1 percent
of all U.S. faculty. The overwhelming majority of black teaching faculty
are located in historically black colleges and universities, in two-year
community colleges, and at largely under-funded public universities where
teaching demands are high and resources for research, laboratories,
travel to academic and professional conferences and libraries are
modest.
The higher up the academic hierarchy one goes, the
whiter the institution or scholarly society becomes. A 2001 survey of
the twenty-seven highest ranked research universities in the United
States indicates that 3.6 percent of all faculty are black.
African-American educators remain underrepresented in the upper levels
of academic administration. To really obtain a true picture of how
"white" higher education is, one must disaggregate from what
is frequently defined as "faculty" those who are actually
adjunct professors, administrators who are counted as instructors, and
faculty working on limited, term contracts.
At the highest levels of America's educational
hierarchy, African Americans virtually disappear. The American Academy
of Arts and Letters (AAAS) is perhaps the nation's most prestigious
academic society. Of the AAAS's more than 3,700 members, only 160 are
African-American intellectuals, approximately only 1.6 percent of the
Academy's membership. There is on the list only one prominent
African-American historian, John Hope Franklin; three prominent black
sociologists: William Julius Wilson, Kenneth B. Clark, and Orlando
Patterson; in anthropology, there is just Johnnetta Cole; in philosophy,
only K. Anthony Appiah and Cornel West.
With these and other similar exceptions, when one
considers the hundreds of outstanding African-American scholars who are
today redefining the contours of academic disciplines throughout the
humanities and social sciences, their lack of representation in the
American Academy of Arts and Letters is indefensible and outrageous.
There is also within the changing politics of American higher education
what can be called the reconfigured reality of race: the deteriorating
white support for affirmative action and race-based scholarships, a
retreat from a needs-blind admissions, and the implicit "writing-off"
or elimination of most low-income and urban poor students from having
access to elite schools.
In higher education, therefore, the real issue isn't
"diversity" it's "empowerment," or rather, the lack
of it. Blacks still remain underrepresented at every level of the
educational hierarchy. There's an urgent need to revive Dr. Ronald
Walter's brilliant concept of a national congress of black faculty, to
lobby for real change at predominantly white institutions.
We need to place greater external political pressure
especially on research universities to increase scholarship and
mentorship programs to expand the academic pool of potential black
faculty and administrators. Major universities should establish
partnerships with historically black colleges, to channel resources and
to enhance black faculty development. Knowledge is always power, and we
need a more effective strategy for black empowerment with these
all-too-white institutions.
* * *
* *
Dr. Manning Marable is Professor of History and Political
Science, and the Director of the Institute for Research in
African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. Along
the Color Line is distributed free of charge to over 350
publications throughout the U.S. and internationally. Dr. Marable's
column is also available on the Internet at
www.manningmarable.net
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 |
Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
* *
* * *
Dr.
Manning Marable
(May 13, 1950 - April 1, 2011)
Scholar, Activist, Mentor
By Russell
Rickford
Prof. Manning Marable, an ebullient teacher and
institution-builder who embodied the reciprocal
possibilities of scholarship-activism, and a Du
Boisian intellectual who sought in the black past
lessons for the radical transformation of American
democracy, died on April 1, 2011 at the age of 60.
 |
Dr.
Marable was a prolific scholar whose
labor in the arenas of history,
political science and social criticism
inspired popular and academic audiences.
He was a “race man” in the best sense of
the tradition—“our grand radical
democratic intellectual,” in the words
of philosopher Cornel West. His
wellspring of love for black folk
nourished a passion for democracy and a
vision of Africana studies as a crusade
for the material and spiritual
liberation of all oppressed people.
Marable’s deep knowledge of the African
Diaspora made him a force in the field
of black history; his courage and
progressive politics made him a treasure
for “the grassroots.”
For
Dr. Marable, “living black history” was
more pilgrimage than principle. His
journey began on May 13, 1950 in Dayton,
Ohio. Born to James and June Morehead
Marable, schoolteachers who enforced a
regimen of U.S. and world history books,
the young bibliophile soon discovered
the gift of historical imagination.
Acutely conscious of race matters, he
was further politicized by the April
1968 assassination of Martin Luther
King, Jr. He was among the first
mourners to arrive at the Atlanta church
that hosted King’s funeral. (He covered
the event for Dayton’s black newspaper.)
A high school senior at the time, he
perched on the steps of Ebenezer Baptist
in the predawn shadows to await the
masses. |
A precocious
student, he completed his bachelor’s in 1971 at
Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana (while leading
the black student union) and went on to earn his
master’s (1972) and Ph.D. (1976) in history at,
respectively, University of Wisconsin, Madison and
University of Maryland, College Park. Between the
mid-1970s and early 1990s, Dr. Marable served on the
faculty of Tuskegee Institute, University of San
Francisco, Cornell University, Fisk University,
Colgate University, Purdue University, Ohio State
University, and University of Colorado, Boulder.
As a scholar
who traversed the disciplines of history, political
science and sociology, Dr. Marable grounded his work
in the black American experience while exploring the
larger African Diaspora, traveling to Kenya,
Tanzania, Cuba, South Africa and Brazil. He
developed political and academic contacts throughout
the black world, seeing the remaking of racialized
societies as the primary task of the engaged
intellectual. Armed with the theories of
Du Bois,
C. L. R. James and
Antonio Gramsci, he mastered political economy,
emphasizing material solutions to social inequality
and exposing the interlocking shackles of race and
class.
During the
first half of his career, Dr. Marable headed the
Race Relations Institute at Fisk, the Africana and
Latin American Studies Program at Colgate, and the
Department of Black Studies at Ohio State. However,
it was his directorship of
Columbia
University’s Institute for Research in
African-American Studies, which he founded in
1993, that marked his most significant personal and
political transitions.
Facing the
sudden acceleration of
sarcoidosis, an illness he had battled for
years, and increasingly devoted to the socially
redemptive power of political ideas, he crafted the
Institute in the image of
Du Bois’s Atlanta University project. Under Dr.
Marable’s stewardship, the Institute married
scholarship and social transformation, launching
initiatives to bolster the case for African-American
reparations, fight the specter of racialized mass
imprisonment, and reclaim the radical vectors of
Malcolm X’s legacy. Meanwhile, Dr. Marable
cultivated two generations of scholars, activists
and students, discovering in each individual a
unique genius for advancing the cause he lovingly
described: empowering the black masses to reclaim
their agency and “return to their own history.”
Dr. Marable
wrote prodigiously. The legal pads he dispatched in
longhand became the masonry of a scholarly edifice
that included more than 30 books and edited volumes,
as well as hundreds of articles in academic and
popular journals.
From the Grassroots,
Blackwater,
How Capitalism Underdeveloped
Black America,
Race, Reform and Rebellion,
Beyond Black and White,
Let Nobody Turn Us Around (with Leith
Mullings),
The Great Wells of Democracy,
Living Black History, and now, Malcolm X,
anchor the shelves of countless students and
circulate endlessly in prison yards, their covers
curled and shabby, their wisdom pristine. Committed
to class-conscious analysis rendered in
straightforward prose, Dr. Marable also produced
and distributed free of charge, a public affairs
column—“From the Grassroots” (later “Along the Color
Line”)—that for three decades reached a vast
readership through the black press, reinvigorating
Du Bois’s legacy of political commentary and
agitation.
Much of Dr.
Marable’s energy was spent building—and not merely
interpreting—the movement for racial justice. As he
observed, “It is only when we stand against the
current, confronting the powerful forces of
prejudice and inequality, that the tools of
scholarship become meaningful.” Some of his most
rewarding experiences came through his involvement
with the Institute of the Black World in the 1970s
(an association that enabled him to chauffeur—and
thus interrogate and debate—the great Pan Africanist
historian Walter Rodney). He participated in the
National
Black Political Assembly, the
National Black Independent Political Party and
the
Democratic Socialists of America
in the 1980s and the
Committees of Correspondence
in the 1990s. His long record of leadership on the
left included his role as co-founder of the
Black Radical Congress in 1998 and his
participation in the
2001 United Nations World Conference on Racism in
Durban, South Africa.
From Jamaica to
Cuba to Sing Sing Prison, Dr. Marable lectured. He
made frequent media appearances on programs like
Democracy Now! He served as founding editor of
Souls, a journal of black history, politics
and culture. He established Columbia’s Center
for Contemporary Black History. He created archives
and digital resources for teachers and researchers.
He served on the board of the
Association for the
Study of African-American Life and History. He
received many commendations, including the 2005
National Council for Black Studies Ida B. Wells—Cheikh
Anta Diop Award for Outstanding Scholarship and
Leadership in African-American Studies, as well as
two honorary degrees: John Jay College of the City
University of New York (2006); and State University
of New York, New Paltz (2000).
Dr. Marable was
a generous mentor. A Marxist feminist who was also a
“Malcolmite”; a black history savant with pop
culture tastes (“You can’t handle the truth!” was
one of his stock phrases); a dissident social
scientist who remained faithful to the political
promise of the hip-hop generation, he brandished
these identities with passion and grace, convincing
his pupils that they, too, could achieve a more
perfect whole. Ultimately, that eclecticism
reinforced his vision of what social history and
critical theory might accomplish: the construction
of a liberation movement that shatters social
barriers based on color, class and gender.
Dr. Marable is
survived by his wife, the anthropologist Leith
Mullings; his three children, Malaika Marable
Serrano, Sojourner Marable Grimmett, and Joshua
Manning Marable; two stepchildren, Alia Tyner and
Michael Tyner; a sister, Madonna Marable; his
mother, June Morehead Marable; three grandchildren
and an extended family in New York, Ohio and
Tuskegee.
Donations can
be made to The Manning Marable Memorial Social
Justice Fund which will provide grants and awards to
organizations and individuals that reflect an honor
Dr. Marable’s commitment to the struggle for
justice. Checks can be made out to The Manning
Marable Social Justice Fund and sent to:
The Manning Marable Memorial
Social Justice Fund
c/o The Adco Foundation
328 8th Avenue
Suite 404
New York, NY 10001
Attention: Dana Ain Davis
Source:
IRAS
* *
* * *
|
|
Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the
Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
*
* * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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* * *
Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 22 July 2008 |
