Manning Marable

Manning MarableColumbia University Press mourns the loss of Manning Marable, who died over the weekend. Marable, a leading scholar of black history and a leftist critic of American social institutions and race relations, was a valued member of the Columbia University community, where he taught, and a Columbia University Press author.

In an obituary in the New York Times, Marable’s “transformationist” approach is described as urging “black Americans to transform existing social structures and bring about a more egalitarian society by making common cause with other minorities and change-minded groups.”

The obituary also quoted Cornel West, who called Marable “our grand radical democratic intellectual. He kept alive the democratic socialist tradition in the black freedom movement.”

For more on Marable’s legacy The Nation has an excellent post on their blog The Notion and the blog of John Nichols.

Columbia University Press is the proud publisher of three books written or edited by Marable: Black Leadership (1998), Dispatches from the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience (2000), and the seminal Freedom on My Mind: The Columbia Documentary History of the African American Experience (2000).

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