About me: Manning Marable, a professor of history and political science and director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, specializes in African-American history. He was the founding director of the Center for Contemporary Black History, established in 2002 and the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, where he served from 1993 to 2003.
A prolific author, Marable's works include Beyond Black and White: Race in America's Past, Present and Future (Verso 1995), The Crisis of Color and Democracy (Common Courage Press 1995), which was awarded the Book of the Year by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights (1996); The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life (Basic Books 2003); Freedom: A Photographic History of the African-American Freedom Struggle, which he coedited with Leith Mullings and Sophie Spencer-Wood (Phaidon 2002); and "9/11: Racism in a Time of Terror," in Souls (Winter 2002).
He received his BA from Earlham and his PhD from University of Maryland. Prior to coming to Columbia, Marable taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Ohio State University, where he was chairman of the Department of Black Studies. He also served as the founding director of the Africana and Hispanic Studies Program at Colgate University.
Professor Marable is a national leader in the development of web-based, educational resources on the African American experience. With Columbia’s Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, he has directed the production of two courses on W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X, respectively; a multimedia version of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, in 2001; and a massive multimedia version of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, featuring 440 historical annotations, 78 newsreel and film clip footage of Malcolm X, 216 photographs, over 200 government documents and original oral history interviews with Malcolm X’s friends and associates. In 2005 Dr. Marable and members of his Malcolm X Biography Project designed the content for the multimedia educational kiosks featured at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center at the historic Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, the site of Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination.
In 2002, Dr. Marable established the Center for Contemporary Black History (CCBH) at Columbia University, an advanced research and publications center that examines black leadership and politics, culture and society. CCBH produces Souls, a quarterly academic journal of African-American Studies, which is published and distributed internationally by Taylor and Francis Publishers. With the support of the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation), CCBH’s Africana Criminal Justice Project has conducted a national survey of Black Studies departments to promote the development of new courses on race, crime and justice; compiled hundreds of original texts in an African American archive examining “the meaning of justice” throughout black history; and taught courses on hip hop culture and critical criminology inside Riker’s Island Correctional Facility in New York City. CCBH also directs the digital knowledge production of Black Studies educational resources.
Since 1976, Dr. Marable has written a political commentary series, “Along the Color Line,” that appears in over four hundred newspapers and journals worldwide. He is regularly featured in national and international media. He donates much of his time fundraising and speaking on behalf of prisoners’ rights, labor, civil rights, faith-based institutions, and other social justice organizations. Dr. Marable lectures annually in Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York, in a Master’s Degree Program for prisoners.
Dr. Marable is a prolific author. Since earning his Ph.D. three decades ago, he has written almost 200 articles in academic journals and edited volumes. He has written and/or edited 21 books and scholarly anthologies.
Please send all emails to the following address: mm247@columbia.edu.
