Alumni Spotlight

Manning Marable '71

Facing History

Manning Marable '71

Manning Marable '71 can point to the precise day on the calendar when he discovered his life's calling. It was April 9, 1968. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was buried that day, and a 17-year-old Marable was there to cover the event for the black newspaper in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio.

"I convinced my mother to let me fly to Atlanta. I stayed at a cousin's house overnight, then took a bus downtown the next morning," Marable recalls. The young reporter was so excited at the prospect of witnessing history firsthand, he arrived at Ebenezer Baptist Church at 6:30 a.m., three and a half hours before the funeral began. He was the first person there.

"By noon, there were 100,000 people there," he recalled in an interview during a visit to Earlham in September. "I was able to witness the service, and when they put his casket on a wagon pulled by mules, I was walking behind it. That experience had a pivotal effect on my life. I fully felt the significance of King's sacrifice, and when I was able to put that into words, I discovered that I wanted to spend my life telling the story of black history."

Marable, the founding director of the Center for Contemporary Black History at Columbia University, has devoted himself to teaching and writing about the history of black Americans throughout his professional life. He is the author or editor of 25 books. Marable has hundreds of articles, book chapters and speeches to his credit, and taught in a range of academic disciplines including African-American studies, economics, ethnic studies, history, political science, sociology. But for Marable, history is the key to all of his professional pursuits.

"All of my work is about helping people face the history of this country," says Marable. "The question I always return to is, 'how do we sustain a democratic society in light of all the injustice that has occurred in our society?'"

Marable talked with the Earlhamite while he was on campus to deliver a convocation lecture on September 17, 2007. Seated in the newly refurbished greenroom in the basement of Carpenter Hall, Marable cut an elegant figure in a crisply tailored gray suit and multicolored tie. In addition to discussing his scholarly interests, Marable reminisced about his days as an Earlham student, and not all the memories were positive ones.

"My first week on campus, there was a KKK rally, with hooded Klansmen, at Richmond High School," Marable remembers. "When black students would cross the bridge, they would very often be spat on or people would yell, 'nigger.'"

Marable notes, however, that he was not content to remain cloistered on campus. As a president of a black student organization, he encouraged his fellow black students to volunteer at a community center on Richmond's north side and helped introduced young people in the local African-American community to Earlham. Marable and other students also lobbied Earlham's administration to offer black studies courses and to hire African-American faculty members. He happily notes the progress that Earlham has made in the intervening years.

"It is such a difference to be introduced for my talk by one black faculty member and to be taken to lunch by another," says Marable. (While there were no African-Americans on the teaching faculty when Marable was an Earlham student, there are now four tenured African-Americans and a handful of others on the tenure track. Additionally, African-Americans hold several upper level administrative positions, including one dean's office and one vice presidential post.)

Still, Marable's enthusiasm for the progress that has taken place at Earlham and elsewhere is tempered by realism about problems that persist in American society. He points to the falling numbers of African-American males who attend college and the dismantling of affirmative action programs. Marable is especially concerned that black students' access to higher education is under threat even as prison populations are ballooning.

"In the 21st century, criminal justice is the key issue for human rights," Marable says, noting the two million Americans are currently incarcerated, and that one third of African-American males 18 to 29 years of age are entangled in the criminal or juvenile justice systems.

Marable, who regularly teaches at Sing-Sing Prison, notes that he has made it a priority to make his work accessible to larger audiences, particularly the disenfranchised. On that score, he considers the Internet incredibly important.

"The digital divide is narrowing," he argues, noting that with its multimedia capabilities, the Internet provides scholars and teachers a wonderful way to present information.

A good example of this is Marable's Web site MalcolmXProject.net. It includes historical documents, video and audio clips, news clippings, government documents and other materials related to the life and death of Malcolm X. The site precedes his new biography of the slain civil rights leader that will be published in 2009 or 2010. Marable says the book offers a new take on the life and legacy of one of the most important American leaders of the 20th century.

"There is a basic misunderstanding that Malcolm was a promoter of violence. That's basically untrue." Marable notes that while Malcolm X advocated armed self-defense during a period when African-Americans were under grave threat of violence, he did not advocate violent aggression.

"He also evolved politically from a black nationalist to a kind of internationalist," Marable says. "He was also a courageous and deeply self-critical man who fearlessly pursued his notions of freedom."

Marable has also completed years of research into Malcolm's assassination."I think we've figured out the murder," he says. Marable promises new information on that score as well.

In preparation for his subsequent book, Marable is currently teaching a course on the intellectual history of Harlem, which says will be along the lines of Edward Said's Orientalism. Marable plans to explore how factors ranging from the Harlem Renaissance to stereotypes related to poverty and crime have made the neighborhood so famous and influential.

"I want to explore how Harlem came to be the symbol of black urbanism," he says.