Malcolm X biographer Manning Marable has died

Manning Marable, whose long-awaited biography of Malcolm X, "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention," will be published on Monday, died Friday. He was 60 years old.

Marable, who had led African American studies at Columbia University, was a professor there with many titles. Officially, he was the M. Moran Weston and Black Alumni Council Professor of African-American Studies and professor of history and public affairs at Columbia University. Columbia also notes that he was founding director of African American studies at Columbia from 1993 to 2003 and since 2002, he directed Columbia's Center for Contemporary Black History.

As far back as 2005, Marable was talking about "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention." In February of that year, on Malcolm X's birthday, he told Democracy Now about the materials that he had seen that others had not, including three "missing" chapters from Malcolm's autobiography that he said show the leader in a very different light.

Back then, Marable had already been at work on the biography for a decade -- meaning that he'd spent more than 15 years on the book and died just three days before its publication.

"A Life of Reinvention" by Manning Marable will be published by Viking on Monday.

Marable's other books include "Beyond Black and White: Race in America's Past, Present and Future" (1995), "The Crisis of Color and Democracy" (1995) and "The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life" (2003).

The New York Times reports that Marable suffered from sarcoidosis and had undergone a double lung transplant as treatment for the disease last the summer. Last month he was hospitalized with pneumonia.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

 

Comments

[Louis D. Armmand]

Another brilliant and productive voice is now silent, yet he leaves a rich legacy of scholarship so rare for his discipline, a least in US institution of higher learning. I had plan to meet him when he next visited Los Angeles, but I will meet his scholarly spirit through the study of him opus. It shall be noted, also, that his wife, Leigh Mullen, is also a fine scholar.

[Vick]

Suspicious..!

.

[Carolyn]

@Vick:
Please don't say that....I don't think I could bear to hear or know of an
orchestrated demise of this brilliant and courageous scholar. Reports from his wife states that he died of pneumonia. She's an astute and renown scholar and if there was any indication of foul play--it would be out there and she would be at the forefront.

[blackone]

I'm sorry to read this. He tried to keep us sane, and informed. He didn't shy away from the "masses". May God bless his family.

[Sojourner Marable Grimmett]

Thank you for the review.