Manning Marable (May 13, 1950 – April 1, 2011)

We note with sorrow the passing of New Labor Forum Editorial Board member Manning Marable. One of America’s most influential public intellectuals, Marable’s critique of the American political economy helped shape the thinking of a generation of scholars and activists on the Left.

Since 1993, Dr. Marable served as Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies at Columbia University. He was founding director of Columbia’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies from 1993 to 2003. Under Dr. Marable’s leadership, the Institute became one of the nation’s most prestigious centers of scholarship on the black American experience.

Marable was the author or editor of nearly twenty books, including: The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life; co-author—with his wife, Leith Mullings—of Freedom: A Photographic History of the African-American Struggle; Black Liberation in Conservative America; Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990; W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat; How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society; and the long-awaited Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, providing a significant reevaluation of Malcolm X’s political contributions, and published only days after Marable’s death. For over thirty years, Marable also wrote a political commentary series, “Along the Color Line,” that appeared in more than four hundred newspapers and journals worldwide. He was regularly featured in national and international media, and spoke widely on behalf of labor and civil rights.