May 13, 1950

April 1, 2011 (aged 60)

(William) Manning Marable, (born May 13, 1950, Dayton, Ohio—died April 1, 2011, New York, N.Y.), American scholar who was a leading figure in scholarly research regarding the African American experience, most notably as an author and as a professor (from 1993) at Columbia University, New York City, founding director (1993–2003) of Columbia’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies, and director (from 2002) of Columbia’s Center for Contemporary Black History. His much-anticipated magnum opus, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, was published posthumously, just three days after Marable’s death. The extensively researched revisionist biography challenged Alex Haley’s definitive classic, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), on several points and raised controversial questions about who was responsible for the black nationalist’s murder in 1965. Marable was educated at Earlham College, Richmond, Ind. (A.B., 1971), the University of Wisconsin (M.A., 1972), and the University of Maryland (Ph.D., 1976). Before joining the faculty at Columbia, he taught black and other ethnic studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. (1980–82); Fisk University, Nashville (1982–83); Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y. (1983–86); Ohio State University (1987–89); and the University of Colorado (1989–93). Marable’s other significant publications include From the Grassroots: Social and Political Essays Towards Afro-American Liberation (1980), How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (1983), On Malcolm X: His Message and Meaning (1992), Beyond Black and White (1995), Speaking Truth to Power (1996), The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life (2002), and major biographies of the African American activists W.E.B. Du Bois and Medgar Evers (coedited with Evers’s widow). From 1976 he also wrote a syndicated newspaper column. Marable, who suffered for many years from sarcoidosis, had a double lung transplant in 2010; his unexpected death derailed a planned publicity