Leading author and public intellectual Cornel West implored Earlham students to listen for a calling, rather than simply seeking a career, and to find their own original voices, instead of serving as echoes of the dominant culture, during a convocation lecture entitled, “Manning Marable’s Malcolm X and the Vision of Democracy,” on Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 1 p.m. in Goddard Auditorium.

Addressing a capacity crowd, Dr. West spoke for an hour, without notes, quoting such writers as Plato, W.B. Yeats, and Samuel Beckett and weaving together reflections on the civil rights movement, black music, religion and politics. He urged students to embrace the sort of truly transformative education that he said was "Earlham College at its best."

 The talk was a tribute to the late Manning Marable ’71 who died last spring, days before the release of his monumental book, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. It is one of several lectures that Dr. West has delivered on the topic. Friends for three decades, Dr. West touched on his relationship with Marable during his lecture at Earlham, suggesting that Marable could serve as a model for other scholars in the depth of his study of the past coupled with his ability to speak with an individual voice.

Marable was M. Moran Weston and Black Alumni Council Professor of African-American Studies and Professor of History and Political Science at Columbia University. He was founding director of the African-American Studies program at Columbia from 1993-2003. Marable was author or editor of many books, among them The Crisis of Color and Democracy (1995), which was awarded the Book of the Year by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights) and Great Wells of Democracy (2003). After graduating from Earlham with a B.A. in history, Marable earned his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park. He maintained ties to Earlham, returning to the College several times to deliver lectures. 

He said in a 2009 video interview, “I am a moral philosopher because of Earlham College.”

Dr. West recently accepted a position at Union Theological Seminary, which he will begin in July. He is currently Class of 1943 Professor at Princeton University, and he will maintain ties to that institution as  Professor Emeritus. He has previously taught as Harvard, Yale and the University of Paris. He is the author or editor of more than 30 books, including the best sellers Race Matters (1994) and Democracy Matters (2004). He has also released three spoken word recordings, acted in two of the Matrix films, appeared in numerous documentaries and is a frequent guest on radio and television programs. He describes himself as a, “blues man of the life of the mind, a jazzman in the world of ideas, forever on the move.” 

Marable’s book, which took him a decade to research and write, has drawn widespread praise for its scholarship and was a finalist for a 2011 National Book Award. It also has stirred controversy in some circles by challenging the official story of the assassination of Malcolm X and by suggesting that the legendary civil rights leader had exaggerated his criminal past and had a more difficult marriage than previously reported.

Dr. West’s lecture at Earlham served as a tribute to Marable and a celebration of the book, which — in Dr. West’s view — reveals Malcolm X’s humanity more completely than has occurred in the past.

Malcolm X was a leader in the civil rights movement. He was a leader of the Nation of Islam from 1952-64, and was largely credited with increasing the membership and raising the profile of the group. A gifted orator, he garnered considerable media attention, including a television special entitled, “The Hate that Hate Produced,” hosted by Mike Wallace, which aired in 1959. After he left the organization in 1964, he remained a national figure, but became a target of assassination attempts. He died on Feb. 21, 1965, at the age of 39, after being shot 15 times while delivering a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. Three members of the National of Islam were convicted of his murder.

This event was made possible by the Kazue Fukuda Hawkins Fund, the Coppock Fund, the Emerson Fund, the Simkin Fund and the Voss Fund.